Читать книгу Twelve Diseases that Changed Our World - Irwin W. Sherman - Страница 15

Grosse-Ile, lying in the middle of the St. Lawrence River, is a picturesque island with a background of majestic peaks. Grosse-Ile is also a place where thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children were detained and died. The Grosse-Ile station came into being when reports to the colonial government in Canada told of sick people from the Old World, especially the Irish, who were about to arrive via the St. Lawrence River. In response, the Assembly of Lower Canada (as Quebec was then called) passed a resolution on 23 February 1832 that made Grosse-Ile a detention station for sicknesses commonly believed to originate “in the homes of the human riff-raff.”

The writer Susannah Moodie, who emigrated to Canada from England in 1832, described her own impression:

“I looked up and down the glorious river; never had I beheld so many striking objects blended into one mighty whole! Nature had lavished all her noblest features in producing that enchanted scene. The rocky isle in front, with its farmhouses at the eastern point, and its high bluff at the western extremity, crowned with the telegraph . . . the middle space occupied by tents and sheds for cholera patients and its wooded shores dotted over with motley groups added to the picturesque scene . . . Never shall I forget the extraordinary spectacle that met my sight the moment we passed the low range bushes which formed a screen in front of the river. A crowd of many hundred Irish emigrants had been landed during the present and former day and all . . . men, women and children, who were not confined to the sheds (which resembled cattle pens) . . . were employed in washing clothes or spreading them out on rocks and bushes to dry. The people appeared perfectly destitute of shame or a sense of common decency. Many were almost naked, still more partially clothed. We turned in disgust from the revolting scene . . . Could we have shut out the profane sounds which came to us on every breeze, how deeply we should have enjoyed an hour amid the tranquil beauties of the . . . lovely spot.”

Although the detention of immigrants at Grosse-Ile was presumably instituted as a means of protecting the public health, in actual fact it served as a vehicle for maintaining class distinctions and scapegoating the “wretched refuse” of Ireland.

In 1833, as the number of sick immigrants arriving in Canada dwindled, the Grosse-Ile detention station fell silent. A decade later, however, it once again became active due to the changes that were taking place in Ireland. Indeed, between 1845 and 1849 the population of Ireland would decline by over 2 million. Half of these would die of starvation, disease, and malnutrition, while the other half would emigrate. The United States was traditionally the route for Irish immigrants, but in 1847 the United States enforced an increase in the cost of passage and ships that were overloaded were to be confiscated. This opened up new routes to the United States from Canada as ship owners sought a cheaper option. Hundreds of thousands of Irish were crowded aboard unsanitary sailboats unfit for transporting human beings. During the voyages of these “pest ships,” people who died, along with their possessions, were hastily wrapped in canvas and thrown overboard as if they were dead birds or garbage.

Although ships usually took 45 days to cross the Atlantic Ocean, 26 of those that set sail in 1847 took over 60 days to reach Grosse-Ile. In 1847, over 5,000 people died en route, and a like number were buried in a mass grave on the island. Four physicians at Grosse-Ile, aided by a crew of eight, worked from dawn until dark every day digging trenches and burying the dead three deep. By August, dirt had to be imported to the rocky island to bury more bodies. In spite of this, rats were coming off the ships to feed on the cadavers. All told, the number of deaths on Grosse-Ile probably exceeded 9,000, and many thousands more died elsewhere in colonial Canada during that “summer of sorrow.” The epidemic disease that prompted the Irish to leave their homeland and choose immigration and almost certain death in the passage to a foreign land was the disease known as “late blight.”