Language, monuments, and the politics of memory in Quebec and Ireland

Eire-Ireland:Journal of Irish Studies, Spring-Summer, 2003 by Kathleen O'Brien

In the context of Irish nationalism, the French language at Grosse Ile resonates with another invisible dissonance. The eighteenth-century ideals of the French Revolution--liberte, egalite, fraternite--were instrumental in the United Irishmen's early efforts to mobilize Catholic participation in the 1790s to gain more power for Ireland. By 1909, however, remembrance of the 1798 Rising and the famine served to highlight the failures of those eighteenth-century ideals in Ireland. Thus, the image of the French language on the Grosse Ile monument suggested a broad historical perspective on the French connection with the Irish struggle for independence, even as it effaced the hostility to Catholicism espoused during the French Revolution. By 1909 French Catholic Quebec's allegiances with France had their own displacements within Protestant British North America. The disappointment of the Irish rebels with France's minimal intervention in the 1798 Rising would have resonated with Quebec's memory of France's abandonment of the region to the British after less-than-decisive military encounters near Quebec City and Montreal in 1759-60. For French-speaking viewers the French text at Gross Ile amplified local chaffing under British rule and perhaps rekindled empathy with Irish families and support for Irish independence. At the same time strains of underlying discord echo in all directions.

Among Irish speakers of English in Quebec in 1909, sentiments toward French Canadians would have ranged widely, but the choice of English for two of the four text panels subtly reveals shifting alliances among Irish immigrant factions. The Grosse Ile Celtic cross appears to mark the famine tragedy with one commemorative voice but the words, images, and design choices on the text panels expose famine memory as a splintered component in post-famine immigrant life. In contrast with the monument's neglect of Protestant efforts during the famine, the 136-page commemorative souvenir published shortly after the monument's dedication notes that Anglican and Catholic chapels were on the island from the opening of the quarantine station in 1832 and pays tribute to several Protestant clergymen (Jordan 1909:58-60). Recent research indicates that at least fifteen Anglican ministers were involved at Grosse Ile, and thirty-four mostly French-speaking quarantine center employees also died there (Quigley 1997b:20-40). The English language of the souvenir publication, prominently sponsored by English publishers, the Telegraph Publishing Company, further suggests shifting language priorities in post-famine Quebec.

The Irish text panel is the monument's clearest display of negotiated messages for each linguistic group. If the Irish language could not be read by Anglophones or Francophones, who was it designed to address? How should its presence be interpreted? Purely as a visual image, the distinctive script could function as an emblem of cultural identification for Irish immigrants in Quebec, a generalization perhaps more readily made by non-Irish observers than by Irish people themselves. This is so because not all Irish immigrants would find the text legible nor would any consensus of cultural identity link them all with those who could read it. Rather it is the cultural "otherness" displayed in the Irish script that fractures the meaning of the panel and necessitates the most consideration.