HISTORY

Photo: Library and Archives Canada/C-066294

Grosse Île — Quebec’s Irish island

How do you update the site of one of the most horrific events of human suffering on Canadian soil?

Locate Grosse Île (Map: Steven Fick/Canadian Geographic)

Pelletier’s performance may have stirred reflections of what these visitors experienced earlier in the day on an island tour. For not only is Grosse Île a scenic stop on the St. Lawrence, it’s also the scene of one of the most horrific events of human suffering on Canadian soil.

For more than a century, Grosse Île, 48 kilometres east of Québec, was a quarantine station where immigrants to Canada were screened for disease. For most of those years, from 1832 to 1937, the quarantine process was relatively routine. In the summer of 1847, however, hell visited Grosse Île. A raging typhus epidemic left as many as 5,000 men, women and children — mostly enfeebled Irish fleeing a cruel famine — dead and buried on the island, many in mass graves.

By any measure, what happened on Grosse Île 164 years ago — indeed, the entire sweep of the island’s immigration role — is a significant chapter in Canada’s story. And it is the main attraction at a Parks Canada property called Grosse Île and the Irish Memorial National Historic Site. But, as Pelletier’s summertime concert attests, it’s not the island’s only marketable asset.

“It’s a big island,” jokes Grosse Île visitor-experience manager Jo-Anick Proulx. “We have to think big.”

The ideas Proulx and his team have come up with, including the concert series, are the main thrust of a plan to draw people whose interests extend beyond the island’s quarantine story. Parks Canada hopes this diversification will reverse declining visitation numbers, which peaked at 42,000 in 1997, when events were held to mark the 150th anniversary of the Irish diaspora. Attendance has slid to the mid-20,000 range in recent years.

What’s happening on Grosse Île is part of Parks Canada’s nationwide renewal program for the 167 historic sites the federal agency manages. The past decade has seen overall attendance slump some 16 percent, a trend that national historic sites director general Larry Ostola attributes, in part, to a “history deficit disorder,” or a decline in awareness and interest in Canada’s past.

Ostola says historic sites need to reach an untapped pool of visitors, specifically new Canadians and youth, through updated approaches. “We want to be sure that we are relevant to a new generation,” he says, “that Canadians can have meaningful personal experiences at these very special places.”

A relatively new concept in tourism thinking drives Parks Canada’s strategy. The Explorer Quotient (EQ) identifies nine types of visitors, based on their individual needs and interests, ranging from Free Spirits to Cultural Explorers and No-Hassle Travellers. This approach, says Proulx, will “let visitors experience the site the way they want, instead of just being passive observers.” (Discover your EQ.)

The different profiles of potential visitors to Grosse Île seem to mesh with the multiple aspects of the island’s identity. Although best known for its immigration history, the island has also served as a biological-weapons development centre, an animal-pathology research station, a pioneering radio communications outpost, an advance-warning defence position, a haven for St. Lawrence Estuary flora and, in the early 1800s, a picnic destination for British soldiers.

The Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada recognized Grosse Île as a national historic site in 1974, a move that launched a prolonged process to determine how the island would be showcased. The driving force behind the preservation of what remained of the island’s quarantine history was Québec’s Marianna O’Gallagher, a teaching nun and specialist in Irish-Quebec history. Her grandfather Jeremiah designed the towering granite Celtic Cross memorial erected on the island in 1909.

O’Gallagher died last year at the age of 81, but she passed on knowing about the major new investments in Grosse Île. The federal government has contributed some $3.5 million under its economic stimulus plan. Projects include extensive repairs to the enormous disinfection building, interior renovations to the Catholic chapel and the installation of a new exhibit in the lazaretto, or quarantine building, one of a dozen such shelters built in 1847 and the last remaining structure dating back to that year.

Another project is the restoration of the first-class hotel. Accommodation on the island replicated the first, second and third class of travel that immigrants experienced on incoming ships, with rooms onshore about the same size as cabins afloat. The hotel has a spectacular view of the St. Lawrence, just one of the features Parks Canada hopes will attract small conferences and meetings, starting in September. Eventually, the hotel or another restored building may host overnight stays for small groups.

For nature lovers, Grosse Île now offers a 2.5-kilometre hiking trail, to which new lookouts were added last year. The Mirador Trail penetrates the island’s virgin forest, home to 21 rare species, with unusual names such as dwarf water smartweed and Tuckerman’s quillwort. Grosse Île is one of several islands in the Isle-aux-Grues archipelago, most of which are privately owned, and is recognized as one of the most accessible sites on which to explore the unique vegetation of the brackish St. Lawrence Estuary. To these attractions can be added the aforementioned concert series and a program of lectures on topics ranging from astronomy to ornithology.

Proulx sees Grosse Île evolving as the tourism hub of the archipelago. Much of the development on the island has been done in partnership with the surrounding community. Indeed, it’s a powerful seasonal engine for the area’s economy. Local businesses provide some of the interpretive guides and maintenance services and run the cafeteria. A local promoter organizes the concert series, and area companies operate the only authorized boat access to the island. Travel packages, including mainland accommodation and island tours, are popular in summer.

Parks Canada officials say thinking big about Grosse Île builds on the sacred Irish heritage of the island, rather than diminishing it. As Proulx puts it, “We can’t change the history of the island, but we can change how we present it.”