An Gorta Mór and the Campaign to Preserve Grosse Île as an Irish Historic Site

An Gorta Mór and the Campaign to Preserve Grosse Île as an Irish Historic Site E. Moore Quinn Grosse Île, an island three miles long and one mile wide located in the St. Lawrence River near the city of Quebec and under the jurisdiction of Parks Canada, became important on the transnational stage in 1832 as a quarantine station for immigrants arriving from various parts of Europe and the British Isles. Today, the first material cultural item that visitors observe as they approach Grosse Île via ferryboat is a striking Celtic cross. Celtic crosses, which have been called "a unique artistic legacy," are typically carved on four sides with a ring adjoining the arms.1 Generally they are supported by rectangular or cubic shafts in stepped bases. The cross at Grosse Île aligns with these descriptions. Made of gray Stanstead granite and rising to a height of forty-six and a half feet, it is situated on Telegraph Hill, "the highest point on Grosse Île."2 From its 140-foot outcrop, the cross stands as an impressive presence for those approaching the island. Most first-time visitors would not know, prior to their setting foot on Grosse Île, that several important time frames have been at play on the island, time frames fraught with calamities, claims, and counterclaims. Neither do most visitors know ahead of time that three distinct languages are carved on the cross: English, French, and Irish. Tourists and others become aware of the distinct language panels as they walk about the site; should they take the tour, they are apprised of the additional fact that not all of the panels display the same message. This article tells the story of what happened when two ideological systems clashed: one oriented to the future and to a broader understanding of the [End Page 96] meaning of Grosse Île; the other to a crisis moment of the distant past and to a more circumscribed interpretation of the island's meaning. In assessing these conflicts and their outcomes, it is worth asking: How do theories of place enrich our understanding of the connections between language, culture, and history? Likewise, how do material cultural objects serve to galvanize ethnic groups intent on advancing what they consider to be their best interests? Most important, because a large part of the Grosse Île debacle was instigated, catalyzed, and resolved by language, it is useful to consider how selected words can be used by politically motivated groups to accomplish collective ends. In getting to the heart of these matters, an initial look at the timelines of history is in order. The first period of importance on Grosse Île ranged from 1832 to 1847, when a quarantine station was put into operation in order to inspect immigrants to Canada who might be carriers of diseases like cholera and typhus. Although the station functioned for the first fourteen years with relatively little fanfare, this was to change in 1847. Often called "Black '47," it was the worst year of Ireland's Great Famine, known in Irish as An Gorta Mór, literally, "the great hurt." Presumably, the broad outlines of An Gorta Mór are known to readers of this journal. However, it behooves the discussion to mention a few key aspects of Irish life in the mid-nineteenth century. For instance, for most of the Irish poor, the potato had become the sole crop of sustenance. A series of localized potato failures meant that people turned increasingly to the "Lumper," a hardier variety that had proven itself to be disease resistant. Thus, when the airborne blight Phytophthora infestans struck in the fall of 1845, more than 75 percent of the population was subsisting upon a potato monoculture; other foodstuffs were being grown for export. At first, the severity of the poor harvest was underestimated, partly because Irish agrarian unrest commanded a good deal of media coverage in the British press. The prevailing economic and political ideas in Britain tended toward providentialism, the doctrine that "human affairs are regulated by a divine agency for human good."3 With the predomination of this mind-set, governmental agents and policy makers were hardly willing to entertain the idea...