Grosse Île
Grosse-Île is situated in Quebec, right in the heart of the St. Lawrence River. This island is steeped in history, but also in tears, anguish, and a great deal of courage. In 1832, the island was transformed into a quarantine site in the face of the rise of cholera in Europe. People of several nationalities had to stay there, but the Irish would soon be the main travellers to be welcomed there (Celtic cross). The social transformations induced by the enclosure policy practised by the British power created the conditions favouring the potato disease and accentuated the social inequalities between Her Majesty’s subjects and the Catholic Irish. Expelled or driven by famine, the Irish arrived by the tens of thousands on the new continent. Starving and seriously ill, they had to pass through Grosse-Île to heal or die. Thousands would never leave. History must not erase the courage of the hospital staff, the overwhelming majority of whom were French-speaking. Let us particularly note the dedication of the nuns, who, driven by an unshakeable faith, risked their lives to care for thousands and thousands of human beings made even more weakened by an ocean crossing that was never comfortable and always trying. Dying while stammering words in the arms of someone who spoke another language must have been a difficult experience where compassion had to find its way beyond words. But colonial history would not end on such a beautiful note. The island would become, in the greatest secrecy, during the Second World War, a laboratory (last image) where neurotoxic products would be manufactured. All this would be disposed of later, by throwing tons of harmful products into the waters of the Gulf, with no regard to the fauna, the flora, and those who feed on them. In the early 1990s, from my first steps on the island, which had become accessible, a strong emotion literally overwhelmed me. I couldn’t get the comparisons with a concentration camp out of my mind. Yet, in a way, it was a camp for life. I had forgotten these images, which I rediscovered somewhat by chance. This forgetting may be due to a kind of overflow of the soul, or to the presence of ghosts that inscribe themselves in every object, every board, I don’t know. I share these images with you as a duty of remembrance.
