The long-standing dream to create a memorial park in Montreal at the site of the largest mass grave of Irish famine victims outside of Ireland is one step closer to realization.

The Montreal Irish Monument Park Foundation announced in March that Montreal-based architecture and urban-planning firm Lemay had been awarded the contract to design the Irish Monument Park. Lemay is the same firm that undertook the work of the recently opened welcome pavilion and campanile at Montreal’s St. Joseph’s Oratory.

Foundation board member Scott Phelan told The Catholic Register that the park, and the Black Rock, the “oldest monument to the Irish famine in the world,” that will sit at the centre of the park, should be as emblematic of Montreal as the cross on Mount Royal.

“We feel that the Black Rock speaks to the character of who we are as Quebecers and Canadians,” said Phelan.

“We're hoping in the future, if we do our job properly, that people who come to the city will say, ‘Yes, we want to walk up to the cross at Mount Royal, we want to see the Big O (Olympic Stadium) and we want to go to the Irish cemetery. We hear it's remarkable.’ ”

In 1847, Montreal, population 50,000 at the time, received 75,000 Irish refugees fleeing the Great Hunger. They arrived on the notorious “coffin boats,” so called because often upwards of half the passengers did not survive the trip from Ireland to North America. Between May to November of that year, 6,000 would die of typhus. The city was overwhelmed. When it became impossible to keep up with coffin-building, thousands would be buried together in trenches in a strip of land near the St. Lawrence River south of the Port. Fast forward 178 years and most of those bodies lie buried there still.

The mass grave was quickly forgotten. The only marker of the site was erected in 1859 at the insistence and expense of the Irish workers who built the Victoria Bridge. 

The “Black Rock,” a 30-ton stone pulled from the river during the construction of the bridge, is engraved with the words “to Preserve from Desecration the Remains of 6,000 Immigrants Who died of Ship Fever.” The Black Rock will be the centrepiece of the monument park. Over the years, it has kept the memory of those who perished alive, despite attempts at one point by Hydro Quebec to relocate elsewhere. An Irish outcry forced it to reconsider. In the later 19th century, Irish Catholics in particular originated the annual Walk to the Stone to make sure that memory survived.

Over those forgotten years, the 3.6-acre strip of industrial wasteland that is due to become the site of the Memorial Park has been bought, sold and, in preparation for Expo 67, a four-lane highway was built “right over the cemetery, right over the mass grave.” 

Like all good Irish stories, the story of the memorial stone and the attempt by the Montreal Irish community to preserve the remains and the memory of the dead is a meandering and complicated one.

“There's no way to make the story all that short. We have our elevator pitch down pretty good. But frankly, the story itself is so multifaceted and fascinating it is worth taking time to tell it,” said Phelan.

Phelan said there are at least two stories to be told. The one is of the tragedy of the 6,000, but the second is of those gritty Irish bridge-builders and all who have followed them who have endeavoured to honour the dead.

The Irish Monument Foundation was formed in 2014 with the goal of “trying to figure out who owns the land.” More than 10 years later, with the cooperation and financial commitment of Hydro-Quebec, City of Montreal and the provincial government, the requisite land has been gifted to the Irish community and plans can now be laid for the development of the memorial park.

“The museum and the visitor centre,” said Phelan, “is going to tell the story about what led up to this, the Irish famine itself, the contributions of the Irish to the city, to the province and to the country.”

On both the Lemay and foundation websites, AI-generated images of the future site are displayed. Included in the plans are an amphitheatre, a memorial wall, educational trails and a bench area on the site of the “fever sheds,” the sheds built by the Grey Nuns where the typhus-sufferers were housed. The Celtic cross is a prominent and frequent motif used by park planners.

There are several hurdles still outstanding. The first is the moving of Bridge Street, a $20-million project currently included in the Montreal 2025-2030 budget, and the second is fundraising. If both are successful, Montreal should see the memorial park being built in 2029. 

Phelan said it is worth both the hard work and the wait to see its completion.

“It's a story that needs to be celebrated because these divisive days when it seems to be ‘us and them’ all the time, it tells this story of our character, who we really are at the core,” he said.