Page 22 - Sports Energy News, Cornwall, Issue No 120
P. 22
22 Issue #120 January 2023 www.sportsenergynews.com
“People Pulling Together for you”
613.936.0660 • www.minimaxexpress.com
605 Education Rd. Cornwall, ON, K6H 6C7
Continued from page 17 of emigration precipitated an The British Government, in many contracting typhus, and a
economy, caused widespread panic unparalleled decline in the control of immigration policy, number dying. McGowan writes
that mass starvation was inevitable. population, reduced from 8 million facilitated the exodus by failing to that by the end of 1847, “one fifth
The exodus began, with emigrants to less than half that by 1911. apply few, if any, conditions for of those who left Famine conditions
more likely to be Catholic, Irish The existence since the the passage. Motivated by profits, in Ireland for safe haven in British
speaking, and illiterate. Napoleonic Wars of shipping lanes many, though not all ship owners, North America were dead. That
From a population of eight transporting timber from British agents, and captains added decks the fever epidemic also carried
to cram as many passengers on off doctors, clergy, orderlies, and
million at the outset of the Famine, North America to Europe, including board and to minimize the cost of nurses who had tended to the sick
the population of Ireland by 1861 Ireland, facilitated the transit across provisions. Motivated by the desire and dying only deepened the extent
had dropped by three million - with the Atlantic. The exodus of Irish for more profitable pasturage, of the tragedy.”
one-third of those having died of meant that they could substitute for landlords often subsidized the
famine and related disease - and the the ballast stone normally required, removal of their tenants to Canada The scale of the humanitarian
remainder having emigrated. The with the added benefit of collecting and elsewhere. disaster can be gauged by the fact
flight from the land and generations a return payment. that 441 ships landed at Quebec,
According to Professor Mark discharging 80,000 emigrants,
Mike’s contact Karate McGowan, the leading historian of mostly Irish.
these events, 106,812 men, women,
Almost 17,000 emigrants made
and children, mostly Catholic, their way to New Brunswick in
departed for Canada. Conditions 1847, most of them to the Port
on board were so frightful they of Saint John. Six hundred Irish
earned the moniker ‘coffin ships.’ refugees died and were buried at
On average, 26 passengers died on the quarantine station of Partridge
each voyage. Some 6,116 died on Island. Others died at Middle Island,
the passage across the Atlantic. Miramichi, and at St. Andrew’s.
After a passage of as little as
In Montreal, of the thirty-six
four, or as many as eight weeks Sisters of Charity tending to the
across the Atlantic, the refugees Irish, twenty-eight contracted
arrived in pitiable state. If typhus typhus, seven of them dying.
had broken out on board, known as Its Mayor, John Easton Mills,
ship’s fever, the ship had to call in
organized relief, caught typhus and
at the quarantine station at Grosse died. Toronto was a city designed
Ile. Otherwise, ships could move for 20,000 people, yet over 38,560
up the St Lawrence to Quebec, arrived there, most of them Irish
Montreal and, often on barges, to Famine refugees. Bishop Michael
Kingston and Toronto. Inevitably, Power of Toronto, born in Halifax
typhus broke out repeatedly along
to Irish parents, died ministering
the route. to the sick. Dr. George Grasett
or 613-577-9054 hospital, 11,329 died. Some forty among the first health care workers
613-932-9054
Of those in quarantine and in and head nurse Susan Bailey,
French and Irish priests helped,
Continued on page 24
