#grosse ile
#OTD in 1848 – At Grosse Île, Canada, 40 immigrant vessels wait to unload.
#OTD in 1848 – At Grosse Île, Canada, 40 immigrant vessels wait to unload.
The island of Grosse Île lies 30 miles downstream of Quebec City in the St. Lawrence River. Once a quarantine station for ships bringing immigrants to the Canadas from Europe, mid-nineteenth-century outbreaks of cholera and typhus led to several thousand Irish deaths aboard ships in quarantine and on Grosse Île itself. This trauma has lived on in the Irish diaspora’s memorialisation of the island…
