Grosse Ile NHS – Tragedy and Triumph
In the late 19th century my grandfather was brought by his mother and stepfather from County Antrim, Ireland to Canada. Since they settled in Nova Scotia, I always assumed that the point of entry was Halifax; until I visited the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. There, with the help of the museum’s genealogists, I was able to find the record of the ship upon which he arrived and it turned out to be at Quebec City, not Halifax. In fact, between 1832 and 1937, Quebec City was the principal port of entry for immigrants from Europe, over four million of them. Pier 21 only became the main port of entry after Grosse Ile was closed, as I wrote in this post. However, before the immigrants who were hoping to settle in Canada via Quebec City could land, they had to first stop at the quarantine station on Grosse Ile to be inspected, disinfected and if diseased, detained until cured. Over 7,000 never made it off Grosse Ile, including over 5,000 Irish who died in 1847 and are buried in a mass grave, the largest outside of Ireland. After driving by the sign for Grosse Ile and the Irish Memorial National Historic Site many times, I finally decided it was time for a visit and I’ll try to convince my readers that they too should make time to visit this monumentally important Canadian site.
History of Grosse Ile
Grosse Ile owes its creation as a quarantine station to one disease – cholera. I had no idea that cholera only appeared as a disease in the early 1800s, apparently originating in India where the first of six cholera pandemics broke out in 1817. Advances in modern transportation made sure the disease made its way to Europe by 1826 where it wreaked havoc until 1837. This in turn caused many people to flee the continent and head to America. By 1830 about 30,000 immigrants a year were arriving at Quebec City, mostly from Great Britain and Ireland. People at this time did not know that cholera and many other diseases were caused by bacteria i.e. germs and the prevailing thought that dated all the way back to classical Greece was that bad air or miasma more properly, was responsible. People also did not know that cholera is not a particularly contagious disease. You get it by ingesting contaminated water or food, not from contact with someone who already has the disease.
It was known that people were dying by the thousands in Europe from cholera and efforts were immediately made to contain the outbreak by trying to prevent anyone suffering from the disease to enter what was then the British colony of Canada. Grosse Ile is one of 21 islands in the St. Lawrence that make up the Isle-aux-Grues archipelago. It lies some 48 kms.(30 miles) downstream from Quebec City and has a location that allows anyone on the island to easily intercept any ships coming up river through the narrow channel that leads past the island. By 1832 the first version of the Grosse Ile quarantine station was opened and all ships coming from Europe were required to stop and disembark passengers and crew for inspection and possible quarantining in the island’s facilities. The baptism of fire came in 1834 when the cholera epidemic arrived in Canada. The reality was that the colonial authorities, not aware of how disease was spread, were flying by the seat of their pants and how effective these early efforts were to contain cholera is debatable.
What Grosse Ile is mostly remembered for today are the ghastly events of 1847 that saw over 5,200 Irish immigrants die on the island from another disease, typhus which is spread from the bites of fleas and lice and is not contagious. 1845-1849 saw Ireland devastated by The Great Famine that killed over a million inhabitants and drove another million or more to emigrate, almost all to North America. By 1847 the famine was at its worst and Irish families, already weakened by starvation, were jammed like sardines into what became known as ‘coffin ships’, many headed to Quebec City because it was cheaper to get to than Boston, New York or Philadelphia. It was the filthy conditions in these ships that led to the typhus outbreaks on board and by the time these ships arrived at Grosse Ile many had already tossed dozens of bodies overboard.
Those who landed with typhus were separated from those who were healthy, the latter being quarantined while the sick were treated with methods that simply didn’t work. They died by the thousands and were buried in one gigantic mass grave where their remains are still interred. The only saving grace is that we do have a record of their names. While the number of dead was horrendous, to put it into context, another 95,000 Irish who came to Quebec City in 1847 did not die and their descendants are here today.
There was another cholera outbreak in 1854, but with nowhere near the death toll of 1847. Not long after this last outbreak, the work of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch began to transform the world of medicine with the discovery that many diseases were caused by bacteria and that vaccines could be developed to prevent people from contracting them in the first place. This led to the modernization of Grosse Ile under the leadership of Dr. Frederick Motizambert who managed the island for thirty years. Hospitals were built along with three hotels that catered to the three classes of passengers who were now arriving in the passenger liners that were a feature of the Gilded Age. The numbers of immigrants soared in the early twentieth century, reaching a peak of 225,000 in 1914. With the outbreak of WWI immigration virtually halted and never really recovered until after WWII. In 1937 the Grosse Ile station was closed, there no longer being the need to closely monitor immigrants as cholera, typhus and other potentially fatal diseases were largely under control. As noted, Pier 21 in Halifax took on the role of the principal landing point for European immigrants and Grosse Ile was largely abandoned. It was used as an experimental site for bacteriological warfare in WWII and later as a quarantine station for livestock brought into the country, but by the 1970s it was almost completely derelict. In 1984 it was designated as a National Historic Site and since then Parks Canada has embarked upon a series of reconstructions including the 1st and 3rd class hotels, the disinfection station and many other vital pieces of the puzzle that made up Grosse Ile.
Visiting Grosse Ile
There is only one way to get to Grosse Ile using public transportation and that is on one of the boats owned by the LaChance family who have been ferrying people to the island for three generations. Croisieres AML offers a number of packages, but I strongly recommend the First Class Tour which features a fully guided tour of the island with a Parks Canada guide. While I was a guest of Parks Canada and had my own guide, what I saw and did was identical to the what you will see and do on the First Class Tour. The tour lasts almost a full day and you need to bring your own lunch as there is no restaurant on the island. If you are wondering if it is worth dedicating an entire day to visiting Grosse Ile, the answer is definitely yes. There is more than enough to keep you occupied from the time the boat docks until it leaves some six hours later.
The boat departs from the village of Berthier-sur-Mer some sixty kms. (37 miles) east of Quebec City and the trip takes about 35 minutes during which there is narration in French only, about the history of the Isle-aux-Grues archipelago. Even if you can’t understand a word, the trip down the St. Lawrence is very enjoyable.
I was a bit concerned about the age of our captain.
Actually he was the son of the Captain and will be the fourth generation of the LaChances to operate this service.
As you approach Grosse Ile the first thing you see is the Celtic Cross on the western end of the island. A little later you will get the chance to see it up close.
You will also see some of the buildings that have been restored.
And some that have not. This is the 2nd class hotel.
And here your Parks Canada hosts and guides will be waiting for you.
Disembarking passengers will be divided into French and English tour groups that will take different routes to explore Grosse Ile, but each will visit the same places on the island in the course of the day.
My personal guide was Andreanne Landry who my Parks Canada host Philippe Gauthier described as having ‘an encyclopaedic knowledge of Grosse Ile’. He was not exaggerating. During the course of my tour I asked dozens of questions and there was not one that Andreanne could not answer.
This is a map of Grosse Ile from Parks Canada that clearly shows how the island, from day one, was divided into three distinct section.
The Western Sector is the smallest, but contains most of the important buildings on Grosse Ile as well as the Irish Cemetery and the Celtic Cross. You tour this part of the island on foot. The Central Sector and the Eastern Sector are toured by way of a tram that makes frequent stops at a number of locations.
The general idea was to keep the sick and healthy immigrants as far apart as possible with the healthy ones being put up in hotels in the Western Sector and the sick ones in hospitals in the Eastern Sector. In between were the residences of the permanent workers and their churches.
This is a photo of the map each visitor receives. There are no less than 39 designated sites on Grosse Ile so you can now understand why you need almost as full day to visit this place.
While some of the other groups began their tour at the Disinfectant Station and others boarded the tram, Andreanne started with a detailed explanation of the history of Grosse Ile and then we headed by foot to the 1st Class Hotel. It may seem strange today to think of dividing incoming passengers by class, but 150 years ago it was unthinkable for 1st class passengers to have to anything to do with the perceived riffraff of the 2nd and 3rd class passengers. The reality is that Jack Dawson would never have gotten anywhere near Rosa in the real Titanic.
So three hotels were built for each class of passenger with amenities befitting each class. The 1st class passengers got their own bathroom and a space equivalent to what they would have on board the ship they arrived on. Here’s a man’s berth.
And a ladies’.
This is what passed for the lap of luxury. Honing in on that menu on the bed of the man’s room I did note that they did eat like royalty with filet mignon for lunch and a ten course meal for dinner.
From the 1st Class hotel we walked through the forest to the Celtic Monument which was erected in 1909 by the Ancient Order of Hibernians which has three fundamentals – Irish, Catholic and American. From the boat it didn’t look all that big, but up close it’s actually huge. There are inscriptions in English, French and Irish Gaelic.
From here, the highest point on Grosse Ile it is a short walk to the Irish Cemetery which was opened in 1832 and conducted individual interments until 1847 when the sheer numbers of the dead forced mass burials in trenches with coffins packed three deep. It holds the remains of over 6,000 souls, almost all from Ireland. The crosses you see today were placed there many years later in a standard grid pattern.
Here you will also find the oldest and the newest monuments on Grosse Ile. The oldest is the Monument to the Physicians which was put up in 1849 to commemorate the deaths of six doctors who died while treating patients for cholera and typhus.
The Grosse Ile Memorial was inaugurated in 1998 in the presence of then President of Ireland Mary McAleese. It is a solemn memorial that contains the names of all those who are known to have died on the island. While it starts out overwhelmingly Irish as you progress through it chronologically the names switch to German and Scandinavian, then Italian and then Eastern European reflecting how the countries from which the immigrants came gradually moved eastward from Britain and Ireland.
It is a very moving monument, evoking feelings quite similar to those I felt at the Vietnam monument in Washington. Sometimes, just naming names is enough.
Walking east from the cemetery you come to the shores of Cholera Bay where you look across and see the abandoned Upper Block which once housed the sailors and their families who worked on the island. If they ever decide to do a remake of The Shining this place would be a great location.
We were hit with a sudden downpour at this point and had to take refuge in the Bakery building before bolting to the 3rd class hotel where we stopped to eat our lunch. Inside you can see a photo of the small boats that used to ferry the immigrants from the passenger boats to Grosse Ile.
There is also a model of the Superintendent’s House, long since destroyed by fire. For the time it was quite luxurious.
With the rain abated, we continued the visit to Grosse Ile by travelling the one and only road that goes the length of the island, making frequent stops on the way there and back.
Leaving the Western Sector you pass by the guardhouse which overlooked the gate that once prevented people from leaving one sector for another.
The Central Sector was where most of the island’s employee lived and included a school, two churches, a Marconi wireless station, a nurse’s residence and the homes of a number of physicians.
Here are a few of the highlights.
This is the small Anglican church from where you can get a great view of the wharf, the Disinfection Station and the 3rd class hotel.
There was a battery on the island from where artillery could sink any ship that tried to avoid stopping at Grosse Ile. Andreanne did not believe that it ever had to be used.
The Catholic Church is much larger and more ornate than the Anglican.
We were greeted at the door by the priest who welcomed us in.
The interior held enough seats, not pews, to accommodate well over 100 worshippers.
After giving us a guided tour and blessing us on our journey, the father returned inside to await the next visitors.
The Eastern Sector is where the hospitals were located of which only one remains and it has two interesting features.
This is a lazaretto, so named for the Biblical Lazarus who came back from the dead, whether literally or figuratively I can’t say. It is the oldest remaining building on Grosse Ile and was one of twelve that first housed healthy immigrants and then in 1847 had to be converted to a hospital. How many did perform a Lazarus and how many succumbed nobody can say, but it’s a very sombre place.
At one end of the lazaretto you’ll find the Red Room and I’m not referring to the Canadian Senate. Apparently as late as 1904 immigrants were still arriving with symptoms of smallpox. The current belief at the time was that sunlight was harmful to smallpox sufferers so they were put in this room where there was only red spectrum lighting.
I don’t know if the treatment worked on not, but I could see the next stop being a mental hospital if you were kept here too long.
This is the original Grosse Ile ambulance which also doubles as the island’s hearse. Note the giant bell below the driver’s seat that he could ring to warn of his approach.
The Disinfection Station
I’m going to conclude this tour of Grosse Ile where most of the latter day immigrants, including my grandfather, would have started their visit, the Disinfection Station which first opened in 1892. The present configuration dates from only 1927. It is adjacent to the wharf and at one time had railway tracks that hauled the possessions of the immigrants from wharfside into the building.
At the entrance we are greeted by the Inspection Nurse who does a quick check for some of the most common signs of disease. Luckily I pass and I can go on.
However, just to be doubly sure, the authorities are not only going to disinfect us, but the ship we arrived on as well. This exhibit shows a steam powered machine that would be connected to the ship by a large hose into which sulphur would be blasted through the entirety of the ship. It must have smelled like returning to hell once the crew reboarded the ship.
OK, I’m not sick, my ship is fumigated, what next?
Now proceed to one of the Waiting Rooms.
Mr. Dunlop, it’s your turn.
Take off your clothes young man, yes all of them. And put them into this numbered bag. Put your valuables in one of the boxes.
We will also be fumigating your baggage.
Now you need to take a shower. I’ve spared my readers too much realism so I’m leaving my clothes on for this pic.
Actually for many if not the most, it might have been the first shower they ever had.
OK, collect your now disinfected belongings.
And welcome to Canada where free land awaits you in the west.
I’ll conclude my visit to Grosse Ile with only one more necessity.
As I get back about the LaChance III our Grosse Ile hosts and new found friends are there to see us off.
It has been a memorable and eye opening experience to find out what my grandfather went through on landing on Grosse Isle and even more so, the 7,000 + who never made it past here.
In the next post I’ll continue my exploration of some of Quebec’s most important National Historic Sites at Chateau Saint-Louis. I hope you’ll join me.
Oh, BTW, the triumph in the title refers to the 4 million + people who triumphed over adversity in Europe and started a new life in Canada.