None of my ancestors lived in Quebec City. Unfortunately. But, in the case of my descendants, they will be able to say at least one of their ancestors did. Me.
I lived almost four years on rue Sheppard in the Quebec City neighbourhood of Sillery, not far from Sarah, Charlotte, Harriet, William, and Charles Avenues. I was told the streets were named after an Irishman, or perhaps an Englishman or Scot, who developed the area. Without any evidence to the contrary, I believed the story. A few blocks from my apartment building were Maguire and Prescott Avenues.
Les Irlandais
Soon after moving to Sillery to study at nearby Université Laval, I quickly became aware of “the Irish” who lived there, although they were small in number at the time, and I assume their numbers are even smaller today.
Here’s how I learned about Quebec City’s Irish community. While riding downtown on the bus one day with a Francophone girlfriend, I overheard high school students talking back and forth in English and French, without an accent in either language. I asked who they were. My girlfriend said, “Les Irlandais.”
All the years I lived in Toronto, I never felt as Irish as I did in Quebec City. People, especially Anglophones, assumed I was one of les Irlandais because of my red hair. One man, overhearing me speak English to a friend, asked what my last name was. He was curious to find out if he had attended school with my father. The Anglophones in Quebec City form a small, tight-knit community where everyone knows each other.
For a brief time, I taught English and math at St. Patrick’s, an English Catholic high school with a long Irish history. Perhaps not surprisingly, the principal had an Irish surname, Mr. McNamara.
Presentation about the Irish in Sillery
Anyway, all this about me to say I would love to attend the presentation about the history of the Irish in Sillery that will be delivered Thanksgiving Monday, October 12 at Irish Heritage Quebec‘s monthly meeting. It will be delivered by the organization’s president, Joe Lonergan. He will describe the rise and eventual disappearance of the Irish from the Sillery coves within St. Colomba’s Parish. He will also touch on a later and largely different Irish community that rose on the Sillery plateau.
Parish St. Colomb d’Sillery. 19th-century map. Source: Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.
The meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. at McMahon Hall, 1145 de Salaberry, Quebec City. Refreshments will be served and parking stubs for Îlot St-Patrick will be validated. They hope many friends and members will attend.
So, if you are planning a trip to Quebec City Thanksgiving weekend, how about staying until Tuesday morning and attending the presentation? Afterward, tell me all about it.
Irish Heritage Quebec has a Facebook group. A high resolution version of the map is available here.
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