Page 24 - Sports Energy News, Cornwall, Issue No 120

24 Issue #120 January 2023 www.sportsenergynews.com

Continued from page 22 Those arriving in Bytown equalled were part of a small courageous the sisters and those assisting the
or exceeded in number the town’s network determined to offer help, victims, cut off their dirty clothes,
responding to the crisis in Toronto,
population, reckoned around 5,000, including Dr. Edward Cortlandt, the relieved them of their infestation
also contracted typhus and died.
lowered by economic recession. Oblate Fathers, Protestant clergy of lice, washed and cared for them.
Common or mass graves of the and women volunteers from all There were between fifteen and
Michael McBane tells the story
Famine victims are located all denominations in town. None knew twenty funerals every morning.
of that fateful year in Bytown 1847,
along the St Lawrence River: 5,424 the cause of typhus. All took the Remarkably, each death was met
Élisabeth Bruyère, and the Irish
are buried at Grosse Île, 3,300 in risk of contracting it: eleven nuns with the dignity of a funeral. “In
Famine refugees. When the Famine
Montreal, 1,124 in Toronto, and in did, including Sister Bruyère, along total, 531 patients were admitted to
refugees, many sick with typhus,
Kingston 700 died in its fever sheds with three priests and the emigrant hospital and the sisters registered
arrived at Bytown in early June, they
and were buried nearby. Graves agent Burke, though all but one city 163 deaths in 1847.”
encountered fear and hostility from
such as those found in Cornwall official survived.
some residents. Even Élisabeth While almost 7,000 Irish
contain fifty remains and other sites
Bruyère confessed her fear of dying “The emigrants kept coming,” emigrants poured into Bytown that
remain to be identified.
but declared, “I will not refuse to writes McBane, “and by mid- year, many passed through and
Bytown-Ottawa, 1847 and
treat them.” Oblate Father Adrien summer four large fever sheds, settled up the Ottawa and Gatineau
MacDonald Gardens Park
Pierre Telmon, Emigrant Agent the Emigrant Hospital, an annex, Valleys and along the Rideau,
Packed on board river steamers George Burke, and Sister Bruyère as well as tents, were full.” With drawn by family and friends. Many
and on barges towed behind established a temporary emigrant people dying on Barracks Hill, in moved on as well, but 3,100 settled,
them, exposed to the elements, hospital (located at present day the streets of the town, hovels in becoming farmers, or working
thousands of Famine refugees were Bruyère Street). Along with her Byward, and fever sheds along the in the lumber industry and in the
transported along the Ottawa River community of nursing sisters, the Rideau Canal, the whole of Bytown growing town. Their descendants
or up the Rideau Canal to Bytown. Sisters of Charity or Grey Nuns, was the site of a humanitarian entered the mainstream of society,
The conditions ensured the spread they prepared as best they could to disaster. and this strong Irish presence
of lice bearing the typhus bacteria. meet the flood of refugees. They In the absence of a medical cure, shaped the evolution of the city.

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