DAY 7 , PART 1 - Grosse Île - June 16, 2017

Every night on the ship some of us stayed up later than we should have. The prevailing attitude was I'LL SLEEP WHEN I GO HOME! We'd often end up in The Knot to unwind after our day, then one thing would lead to another (guitars, trivia games, etc) and the next thing you know it's 1 am. This happened every night; a small group of us would stay up past any reasonable hour. Eventually it caught up to us, but that's a tale for my Day 9 post...

Anyway, we set sail from Quebec City around 9pm on June 15, and we were expecting to arrive at our next anchorage, Grosse Île, a little after midnight. Grosse Île is a small island in the middle of the St. Lawrence River, in an area where the river becomes tidally influenced and the fresh water is brackish. One of our journey participants was Sandra, whose home town is l'Islet, about 25 km from Grosse Île. Sandra was far more gentle on herself than I am, and, being possessed of good judgement, often went to bed before midnight. But this was a special night. We were sailing into her 'hood, so she stayed up for the occasion. 

That's Sandra, and the ship's cook, Paul, being silly. And that steamer in the background they are presenting to you? Also named Sandra!

Sandra hadn't spent too much time on the quarterdeck in the evenings, so she laughed when I told her it was where all the juicy conversations happen. (Sandra's laugh, by the way, was hearty and genuine, and brought a smile to everyone within earshot. She laughed easily, and it is the kind of laugh that makes you join in whether you know what's funny or not.) We covered a lot of good topics that night: relationships, philosophy, our life's journeys. Stuff that you wouldn't necessarily tell a therapist, let alone someone you'd known for just a few days, but that's the magic of the quarterdeck at night. Sandra laughed when she realized that what I'd said was true... all the deep and meaningful stuff comes out back aft.  JR says the quarterdeck is the heart and soul of the ship's company, no matter what ship, and I believe he's right.

The evening flew by, and when we heard the sound of the engines change we knew we must be close to our anchorage. Wanting to witness the arrival, we headed forward to stand on the deck above the bridge. By this time it was after midnight, and everyone else had gone to bed or were below in The Knot or The Legacy Room, so it was like we were on our own private (gigantic) yacht. The few lights of Grosse Île grew brighter as we approached, but even in the dark it looked beautiful. The crew dropped the anchor, which was really cool to watch. Big anchor chains hold the anchors in place on either side of the bow. When the Captain gives the command ("Let 'er go, let 'er go, let 'er go"), the big winch up front spools out the anchor chains and it is loud and fast, and sparks fly off the chains as they pass over the winch. It's pretty cool, and Sandra and I were glad we stayed up to see it.

I got a whopping five hours of sleep that night (according to my Fitbit!), then had a quick tour of the engine room (stay tuned for a post full of pictures of that!) before it was time to explore the island of Grosse Île the next morning. Grosse Île is a National Historic Site run by Parks Canada, and was the main point of entry for immigrants coming to Canada between 1832 and 1937. I found the park particularly interesting, because Pier 21 in Halifax (now known as the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, and one of my favourite museums of all time) essentially picks up the story where Grosse Île left off. 

Immigrants from all over Europe passed through Grosse Île, where they would be stopped, given a medical exam, and would be placed in quarantine for a few days up to several weeks or even months... assuming they survived whatever illness that had befallen them. When we arrived at Grosse Île we were given a cursory medical exam in the big intake building near the dock. 

The doctor instructs us to line up, and stick out our tongues and say ahhhhhhh.

The nurse walks down the line checking for swollen glands and rashes.

After our medical exam, we walked through to the disinfection facility. Here, every passenger had to have a shower while their clothes and belongings were placed in big steam chambers for disinfection.

Dozens of showers like this line a long corridor in the disinfection building. 

We got a brief lesson in some of the most common diseases of the day, include smallpox, typhus, cholera, etc. including their transmittal and symptoms (uh... gross). Then we were all ushered outside onto trams and driven around the island to see the other original buildings that made up the quarantine station. 

At times, the island would have housed hundreds of people, some waiting to be released to start their new lives in Canada, some waiting to be released from their earthly suffering. It was the strangest feeling to be in a place that at once must have held so much hope and so much despair all at the same time. 

One of the fixtures of the island was the hospital, called the Lazaretto. During particularly desperate times, the Lazaretto would have been completely overcrowded, with many people sharing bunks.  At one point it was discovered that bright light hurt the eyes of people who were suffering from small pox, so they painted one of the rooms red. Apparently, it helped with their recovery.

C3 photographer Martin Lipman caught me thinking about how fortunate I am to have never gone through what these immigrants went through, just to get to here.

 Although immigrants from nations all over Europe passed through this checkpoint on their way to their new lives, Grosse Île's main focus is on the Irish because of the sheer numbers who came here, and the sheer numbers who died here. Ireland went through a particularly dark political period during the Great Famine of the 1840s. Desperate, families pulled up stakes by the thousands, sailing across the Atlantic in so-called coffin ships, many of them starving, many of them suffering from typhus. It is estimated that 100,000 Irish passed through Grosse Île in 1847 alone. Many of them simply didn't survive the journey. Many made it no further than their quarantine. It all seems long ago and far away now, but so many people are going through the exact same thing today. Syria came to mind over and over again.

After visiting the Lazaretto, we stopped at the Catholic chapel (one of two chapels, the other being Protestant) where we begged our fellow C3 participant, Heather Rankin, to sing for us. She had been singing for us all week, songs that had been passed through her family in English and in Gaelic, and for this occasion she chose a song for her Irish ancestors.

Heather Rankin sang for us, and for them.

After Heather's poignant performance, we headed for the cemetery and the monument. More than 5000 Irish died and were buried on Grosse Île, many of them unidentified.

There is a beautiful new monument near the graveyard, listing the names, by year, of every person who died at Grosse Île.

Sam and Jennifer, looking at the names of the deceased. Photo by Martin Lipman

Some of them were too sick upon their arrival to share their names, especially if they were travelling alone or if the rest of their family had died en route. Many of them were Gaelic speakers only, and didn't speak English or French, therefore had no means of communicating, especially if they were ill. These people are listed as "Unknown", and there are hundreds of them on the monument. Who were they? How did they end up here, so far from home? What were their final moments like?

We carried on from the cemetery, heading back towards the shore. Overlooking the St. Lawrence is a large, stone Celtic Cross erected in 1909 by the Ancient Order of Hibernians to remember those who didn't survive the journey from Ireland.

There are three plaques on the monument, one in English, one in French, and one in Gaelic. The Gaelic one is scathing, describing the famine as artificial. I asked our tour guide what it meant, "the artificial famine", and he pointed out that there was plenty of food in Ireland during the 1840s, grown by the very people who were starving. But because they were tenants of the land, they had no right to the food they were growing, and the landowners chose to maintain their high prices and profits, and allowed their tenant farmers to starve. When I asked how the Ancient Order of Hibernians got away with putting this inscription on the monument in 1909, he said that was simple. It was in Gaelic. Anyone who would have objected to it couldn't read it. Bad ass.

Our time on Grosse Île drew to a close, and it was time to get back in the Zodiacs and head back to the ship for lunch. We pulled up anchor and headed down the river just a short distance to our next stop, Sandra's hometown: the enchanting little community of l'Islet.