Our best day yet

Today was a day I will remember for some time, we visited Grosse Ile.

Now Grosse Ile is the island in the St Lawrence that all immigrants arriving into Canada from 1834 to 1937 had to stop and get checked out for disease.

It was originally built to hold approximately 200 immigrants at one time, but in the spring of 1847 when the St Lawrence opened for sailing there were 35 ships with 300 immigrants aboard waiting to enter Canada. Most of these immigrants were from Ireland due to the Irish potato famine, but the situation on board the ships was poor and so many people were ill before they arrived at the quarantine station.

The island is right in the middle of the river, 7 miles from either shore so no one could escape.

Our tour boat picked us up at 845am and we headed out, there were 116 of us on board, six adult tourists and 110 school children with their chaperones. The captain came along and asked if we six would like to ride up on the bridge. His grandparents had been born on the surrounding islands so he had lots of stories, one was how his grandfather used to pull the anthrax on the ice sleigh around the island.

These are some of the posters etc. that the immigrants were seeing over in Europe, enticing them into coming to Canada, free land, wheat taller than you can stand, huge crops only taking a couple men to yield. Never was there a poster about our winters and then they arrive to the quarantine station.

The first room they entered, they were told to line up men on one side, women on the other, they were told they were going to be inspected for disease as it had been discovered aboard the ship they had arrived on. The doctors and nurses checked the passenger over thoroughly, the first disease they dealt with was cholera and then typhus..along with many others including smallpox.

No matter whether you were sick or not the next step was sterilization, they were told to put all their valuables in the boxes, their cloths in the bags and head for the showers.


We were told the immigrates did not want to enter into the showers and many protested, the shower water contained a small amount of mercury to get rid of the lice.

Notice the hoops in the shower, this is so the people could not cower into the corner and not get cleaned.

Once through the inspection area, the infected were taken to the east side of the island and isolated from the rest, until they were clear of disease.

The others were put into tents in the early years and after into hotels, if you were third class on the boat you were in the third class hotel, first class in the first class hotel etc. The first class hotel had seperate rooms with six bathrooms on each floor, the third class hotel slept eight in a room and only two bathrooms on a floor



On the west side on the island a Celtic Cross has been erected to honor all the Irish that perished especially in 1847.



These are the mass graves, three deep they are, and this is just the few they kept open, all behind they have allowed the forest to creep back in. That awful year of 1847, 12000 arrived in the first wave and over 5700 of them died.

There were more than just the Irish, everyone entering Canada had to stop, no one was exempt, just that those coming from certain countries had better ships so disease was not such a problem. We had a talk with a Russian fellow(an actor) and he was headed for Saskatchewan as soon as he was released from the island, no one got off without the doctors okay.

The home of the doctors, nurses, telegraph operators, ambulance drivers were still there, if not in original condition some have been restored.

As I said the sick were sent to the east side and held in tents or later in these quarantine rooms but how could you get well when you had to sleep beside or with all the other disease.




There was also a red room for those that had small pox, they had to stay many months before release.

For those that were well, the stop was anywhere between 5 to 15 days, and those that were sick stayed until they were well or died, which unfortunately most died.

After 1937, the vacine program was being implemented all through Europe and they no longer used the island for quarantine, it was used for animal quarantine and lastly for a chemical warfare experimental station. It was closed in 1980's when the National Park service took over and made it a historical site.

The other two couples were from Edmunston New Brunswick and they have given us many hints on what else we should see.

We were back to the shore at 3pm and headed toward the airport, Mom and Dad's plane was only 5 minutes late arriving at 6pm, they have already gone to bed, I do not think they slept much last night.