IrishCentral published an article about an incredible woman who persevered, despite great resistance from her parish priest, to honour the survivors of the Irish famine buried in a pioneer cemetery in western Quebec.
As a result of the efforts of Elaine Gannon, a monument now stands in the old graveyard in Martindale, a small rural town north of Ottawa. The monument consists of a 12-foot Celtic cross and a triple cenotaph with a listing of the names of those buried.
Irish Central reports, “Inscribed at the base of the Celtic cross in English, French and Irish are the following words: ‘May the light of heaven shine on the souls of the Gaels who left Ireland in the years of the Great Famine to find eternal rest in this soil. They will be remembered as long as love and music last.'”
Ceremony Sunday
This coming Sunday, September 18, a special ceremony will be held at Martindale Pioneer Cemetery to unveil a plaque with information about the individuals who worked to put the memorial in place.
Decades of perseverance
This story dates back to the 1960s when Elaine Gannon, now known as Catholine Butler, began visiting the abandoned graveyard. Many of the headstones were engraved with shamrocks and harps and covered in weeds.
Elaine tried to restore the cemetery, but the parish priest stood in her way. He insisted the best way to restore it was to have it destroyed.
She became custodian of the only listing of those buried on the site.
Before the official records were destroyed, the parish priest granted Elaine a one-night-only reprieve to view them. She spent the entire night writing out in longhand a list of those interred in the cemetery, and for years she kept those names close to her.
Learn more
To learn what happened next, read the rest of this fascinating story, One woman’s fight to honor Canada’s Famine Irish, in IrishCentral.
A much longer version of this story and photos are available on The Celtic Connection website.
The names on the monument are listed here:
Of them, the earliest appears to be 1871, but most burials were from the 1880’s & later.
Martindale Parish Registers are online at Ancestry.ca in “Quebec, Canada, Vital and Church Records (Drouin Collection), 1621-1968”. You can browse them by going directly to the location option and selecting “Martindale”. They cover 1884-1941 and begin with entries by Father McCarthy and later entries by Father Blondin. The records I looked at were all recorded in English.
Farrelton’s registers, labelled 1851 and covering until 1941 are also online at Ancestry.ca in the Drouin Collection (they actually begin in 1850) but many of the images are poor due to faded ink. They include a very great number of Irish names.
Great info, Jean! Thanks for taking the story another step further.
This is great information Jean. Thanks for sharing.