With over 600 documented ghost stories, Montreal is easily the most haunted city in Canada, if not all of North America. Haunted Montreal dedicates itself to researching these paranormal tales, and the Haunted Montreal Blog unveils a newly researched Montreal ghost story on the 13th of every month!

This service is free and you can sign up to our mailing list (top, right-hand corner for desktops and at the bottom for mobile devices) if you wish to receive it every month on the 13th! The blog is published in both English and French!

With the summer here, Haunted Montreal is running a whole season of ghost tours and haunted experiences! Our ghost tours include Haunted Old Montreal, Griffintown, Downtown and the mountain!

Our Haunted Pub Crawl is offered every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

We also offer paranormal investigations! In addition to our investigation of the old Sainte-Antoine Cholera Cemetery, Haunted Montreal is proud to announce our latest experience – Paranormal Investigation – Colonial Old Montreal.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page!

Private tours for all of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours start at $215 for small groups of up to 7 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

Lastly, we have an online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise. More details are below in our Company News section!

This month we explore Montreal’s Forgotten Irish Famine Cemetery at the Wellington Basin on the Lachine Canal. With plans to build a new neighbourhood on the hallowed ground, there are fears that new ghosts and paranormal activity may emerge in this already haunted area.

Haunted Research

Plans are afoot to build a whole new neighbourhood in the Bridge-Bonaventure sector of Point Saint Charles, just south of the Lachine Canal at Griffintown. Once the cradle of Canadian industrialization, the area has long since fallen into dilapidation and is now considered ripe for redevelopment.

Glossy designs depict new high-rise condominiums, trendy spaces for commerce and arts – and even an “urban beach” in the old Wellington Basin!      

However, this utopian vision is partially located on the site that hosted Montreal’s first Irish Famine Cemetery in 1847.

Known as “Black ‘47”, the year of 1847 was perhaps the most tragic in Montreal’s history. It was the year when 75,000 Irish Famine refugees landed in Montreal, a city with a population of 50,000 at the time.

Many of them were suffering from starvation, typhus and other diseases. Thousands perished on Montreal’s shores and were usually buried in mass graves. Many of these crisis cemeteries have been largely forgotten.

To learn the horrific details of this episode, please read Haunted Montreal Blog #35 – The Black Rock.

Today, the Black Rock is the only Irish Famine Cemetery currently marked on the island of Montreal.

However, new research is unveiling several other forgotten Famine cemeteries, including one at the Wellington Basin site.

Local historian Sylvain Gaudet has recently unearthed documentation verifying that well over one thousand Irish Famine Dead are still buried in mass graves in the Wellington Basin vicinity.

Further desecration will almost certainly result in more ghosts in the already haunted area.

In April 2024, Canada Lands announced big plans to redevelop the Wellington Basin and surrounding area. The federal Crown corporation wants to create a mixed-use neighbourhood by building 2,800 housing units, an artisan district and even a public beach in the old basin.

Canada Lands acquired the canal-side real estate from Transport Canada in 2010. Over the past couple of years, it has been holding public consultations that ultimately resulted in their master plan.

The Lachine Canal was built in three distinct phases, each one designed to enlarge the waterway for increasing ship sizes.

The third phase, built from 1874 to 1885, saw the deepening and enlargement of canal, including the Peel Basin, and the construction of the Wellington Basin. This project resulted in the largest industrial area in all of Canada until 1959.

Historically, the Peel and Wellington Basins have played a major role in the industrial development of Montreal and Canada.

Because of its depth and size, the Peel Basin was a “reversal” basin and was the only section of the Lachine Canal that allowed ocean vessels to move through. It was nicknamed the “terminus of Montreal.”

The original Wellington Basin was roughly 13.6 hectares in size. As the largest basin in the Lachine Canal, it mostly serviced the transshipment of coal.

Overall, this maritime hub was a staging area for ocean vessels and smaller ships destined for the Canadian interior. Busy railroad tracks also bordered the area to facilitate inter-modal transportation.

However, hundreds of bodies were exhumed during the construction of the Wellington Basin, which cut into the footprint of Montreal’s first Irish Famine cemetery.

Local historian Sylvain Gaudet has been hard at work researching the Wellington Basin site and its environs. For example, he located the La Minerve edition of July 22, 1847, which estimated the number of Irish Dead who had been buried to date as the Famine crisis raged on:

“It is calculated that there are now around 1500 to 2000 corpses buried around the sheds, a foot or two deep.”

Juxtaposing the burials in 1847 with the excavation of remains in 1876, it becomes apparent that over a thousand bodies remain buried on the Wellington Basin site.

Indeed, when workers excavated the Wellington Basin in the1870s, only 200-300 coffins were exhumed according to newspaper reports from 1876 and 1877.

Articles describe how workers and politicians dealt with exhumation of all of the bodies. The Daily Witness on August 3, 1876 wrote:

“Discovery of Human Remains. Three coffins containing human bones have been dug up by the men working at the new basin, near Wellington Bridge. It is thought those are the bodies of emigrants who died of the ship fever in 1847-48. The workmen were not a little horrified to disinter the remains of men so unexpectedly.”

An article called “Disinterring Human Remains” appeared in The Daily Witness on August 7, 1876:

“The spoon dredger employed at the canal basin occasionally brings to the surface human remains, being some of those of the unfortunate immigrants, four or five thousand in number, who died of ship fever in 1847 and 1848. It is said that these remains are sometimes kept in the vicinity of the works for some length of time before being taken away, and it is a matter many more will be exhumed before the work is concluded. It has been suggested that a trench be dug nearby and the coffins be placed in it, and covered up with disinfectants as soon as discovered.”

Spoon dredgers were a type of vessel used to maintain canals and ports. By removing the accumulated sediment from the bottom of waterways, these impressive machines kept the waters navigable.

The Daily Witness of September 7, 1876 went on to describe how the bodies were being disposed of:

“Quantities of Human Remains Discovered, A Fat Graveyard. Lately, as many as 20 coffins have been unearthed in the new Wellington Basin. Barrels have been provided in which to place the skulls and bones, while the coffins are being burned. A large box of the remains have already been interred in the Roman Catholic cemetery. Up to date, about 200 coffins have been removed.”

The Famine Dead being unearthed and desecrated found an ally in Bernard Devlin, the Member of Parliament for Montreal Center and President of the Saint Patrick’s Society at the time.

Bernard Devlin was an Irish-born lawyer, Quebec-based political figure and Canadian parliamentarian. Described as a “champion of many causes” and noted for his “splendid abilities,” Devlin was regarded as “Canada’s most prominent criminal lawyer.” His personal motto was “justice and equality to all classes and creeds, undue favor to none.”

The Daily Witness of September 21, 1876 reported that Bernard Devlin was making plans for the reburial of the Famine victims. In a column titled “THE UNKNOWN DEAD”, the newspaper stated:

“At a meeting of St. Patrick’s Society, Messrs. Devlin, M.P., Me- Grath, Dennis Coughlan, T. Doran, and F. B. McNamee were chosen as a Committee to pick out a lot in the Roman Catholic Cemetery, in which to inter the remains of those disinterred in the Lachine Canal investigation. Yesterday they selected a spot near the Fireman’s lot, and in this all the remains found will in future be placed.”

As a member of the ruling Liberal party, Devlin enjoyed close ties with Alexander MacKenzie, Canada’s second prime minister.

MacKenzie, a Scotsman, had empathy with the Irish as fellow Celtic people. As such, he fully supported Devlin’s initiative and even backed it up with financing. According to the True Witness on Friday September 22 1876:

“MR. DEVLIN, M.P., had an interview on Saturday with the Premier relative to the burial of the remains of the Irish emigrants exhumed recently in the progress of the Lachine Canal enlargement. Hon. Mr. MacKenzie ordered the purchase of a lot in the Catholic Cemetery and will pay all expenses connected with their removal and re-burial.”

The location of the plot for the transferred Famine victims is presently unknown, apart from the fact that it was purchased near the Firemen’s lot.

The plot dedicated to Montreal’s firefighters was acquired in 1867. Trustees of both the Catholic and Protestant cemeteries donated plots of 500 square feet to the Montreal Firefighters’ Benevolent Association for the burial of deceased firefighters. On May 1, 1875, matching monuments designed by Robert Reed were installed in both Catholic and Protestant cemeteries.

Regarding the Famine burial plot, it is estimated that two to three hundred corpses were transferred during construction of the Wellington Basin. The True Witness and Catholic Chronicle of June 20, 1877, made this estimation in an article called “Ship Fever Victims”:

“The coffins of the ship fever victims number some two or three hundred, and lie three tiers deep in a trench in the Wellington Basin. There are those in the neighbourhood who remember the bodies being buried during the ship fever of 1847 and 1848.”

There are many more articles that describe the horrors unearthed by workers during the construction of the Wellington Basin.

Returning to the present day, the area surrounding the Wellington Basin is considered one of the most haunted parts of the Lachine Canal – and Montreal. To learn more, please read Haunted Montreal Blog #51 – Lachine Canal.

Two paranormal phenomena tend to materialize in this area, as covered by hit TV show World’s Scariest Hauntings.

Firstly, the ghost of Mayor John Easton Mills has been spotted wandering the site around the hour of midnight.

Mayor Mills was instrumental in helping the refugees and preventing attacks against them. He contracted typhus himself during his duties and died on November 12, at the young age of 54. An elaborate funeral was held and he was declared “Montreal’s Martyr Mayor” for his heroic efforts.

His ghost is known to roam the site of Montreal’s first fever sheds, at the Wellington Basin, late at night. It is as though he is still caring for his charges in a paranormal afterlife.

Secondly, there are recordings of hundreds of orbs floating about in the air around the old basin.

In World’s Scariest Hauntings, one local resident described going into a trance when the orbs appeared to him. He felt as though the dead buried throughout the site were wailing.

Lastly, the Wellington Basin is connected to Montreal’s most infamous ghost story – the deranged tale of Headless Mary.

Dockworker Michael Flanagan was one of the prime suspects in the murder and decapitation of prostitute Mary Gallagher. She had been brutally butchered in the Griffintown flat of her best friend, Suzy Kennedy, on June 27, 1879.

During the sensational trial, prosecuted by Bernard Devlin himself, Suzy Kennedy was found guilty and sentenced to hang on December 5th of the same year. However, Michael Flanagan walked scot-free because there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him. Many of the citizens were shocked that a woman could commit such a violent crime, especially against a member of her own gender. Women in the Victorian era were often seen as delicate and defenseless creatures.

Even though Suzy Kennedy’s sentence was reduced to life in prison, one ironic fact about the story remains. On December 5th, 1879, the day Suzy Kennedy was originally to hang, Michael Flanagan fell through through the ice while working on the Wellington Basin and drowned.

At the time, many Griffintowners speculated that Mary Gallagher’s vengeful spirit had pushed him off the dock and that his drowning was the result of her ghost’s intervention.

Returning to the present, Canada Lands has made good on its promise to consult local stakeholders. Haunted Montreal has helped compile a team including historians, an anthropologist, archaeologists and other stakeholders to locate and document the forgotten cemetery.

The goal is to avoid any more desecration at the Wellington Basin site and to commemorate the remarkable history of the area, especially the Famine Dead still buried there.

To realize the project, there is a lot of work to do. With the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, the Lachine Canal was rendered obsolete and was closed to shipping traffic. Over the years, workers filled in most of the Wellington Basin with contaminated earth, reducing its size considerably.

As such, the project will require the removal of thousands of cubic meters of toxic fill from the basin. Decontamination is estimated to cost about $77 million and the project has a 10-year timeline.

In conclusion, the Wellington Basin area is rife with tragic history and also contains what is left of Montreal’s first Irish Famine Cemetery. With over a thousand bodies still buried there, Canada Lands is wise to proceed with the utmost caution.

Company News

Haunted Montreal is proud to announce our latest haunted experience – Paranormal Investigation – Colonial Old Montreal.

Hosted by professional Ghost-hunter Dominique Desormeaux of Investigations 13, Haunted Montreal’s “Paranormal Investigation – Colonial Old Montreal” takes guests on a dark adventure into the mysterious world of ghost hunting!

With the summer in full swing, Haunted Montreal is running a whole season of ghost tours and haunted experiences! Our ghost tours include Haunted Old Montreal, Griffintown, Downtown and the mountain!

In the meantime, our Haunted Pub Crawl is offered every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page!

Private tours for any of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $215 for small groups of up to 7 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

You can also bring the Haunted Montreal experience to your office party, house, school or event by booking one of our Travelling Ghost Storytellers today.

Hear some of the spookiest tales from our tours and our blog told by a professional actor and storyteller. You provide the venue, we provide the stories and storyteller. Find out more and then contact info@hauntedmontreal.com

Our team also releases videos every second Saturday, in both languages, of ghost stories from the Haunted Montreal Blog. Hosted by Holly Rhiannon (in English) and Dr. Mab (in French), this initiative is sure to please ghost story fans!

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

In other news, if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a gift, you certainly can!

We are offering Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates through our website and redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual events (no expiration date).

Finally, we have an online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise. We are selling t-shirts, magnets, sweatshirts (for those haunted fall and winter nights) and mugs with both the Haunted Montreal logo and our tour imagery. Purchases can be ordered through our online store.

Haunted Montreal has temporarily altered its blog experience due to a commitment on a big writing project! New stories at the Haunted Montreal Blog will now be offered every two months, whereas every other month will feature an update to an old story. As always, these stories and updates will be released on the 13th of every month!

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl, paranormal investigation or virtual event!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that really helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours.

Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on September 13^th: Update on the Mary Gallagher Ghost Story

The École de technologie supérieure (ETS) has been busy buying up real estate in Griffintown to expand its campus. One controversial purchase was the land on the south-east corner of William and Murray Streets – also known as the “Mary Gallagher Corner”. Indeed, her headless ghost returns to this spot every seven years on the anniversary of her death. During the design stage, Haunted Montreal pleaded with the ETS to preserve the infamous corner. It would seem that they complied. The new building going up on the site preserves the corner intact, good news for those hoping to spot Headless Mary when she returns next on June 27, 2026. To learn more, please read Haunted Montreal Blog #46 – The Ghost of Mary Gallagher.

Author:

Donovan King is a postcolonial historian, teacher, tour guide and professional actor. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, he combines his skills to create the best possible Montreal ghost stories, in both writing and theatrical performance. King holds a DEC (Professional Theatre Acting, John Abbott College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill), MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary) and ACS (Montreal Tourist Guide, Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec). He is also a certified Montreal Destination Specialist.

Translator (into French):

Claude Chevalot holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics from McGill University. She is a writer, editor and translator. For more than 15 years, she has devoted herself almost exclusively to literary translation and to the translation of texts on current and contemporary art.

With over 350 documented ghost stories, Montreal is easily the most haunted city in Canada, if not all of North America. Haunted Montreal dedicates itself to researching these paranormal tales, and the Haunted Montreal Blog unveils a newly researched Montreal ghost story on the 13th of every month! This service is free and you can sign up to our mailing list (top, right-hand corner for desktops and at the bottom for mobile devices) if you wish to receive it every month on the 13th!

Haunted Montreal is offering a full season of outdoor public tours starting in the spring! Tickets are now on sale!

The Haunted Montreal Pub Crawl also runs year round on Sunday afternoons.

Lastly, our ghost walks can still be booked for private groups, including Haunted Griffintown and Haunted Downtown. Haunted Mountain is not available due to dangerous icy conditions on Otsirà:ke / Mount Royal until it melts in May.

Our March blog is Part 2 of our January edition about the Réseau express métropolitain (REM). In Part 1, the question arose as to whether or not the REM will become haunted due to an Irish Famine cemetery disturbance. While there is much debate about this potential paranormal problem, there are no proposals yet on the table to protect the $6.3 billion electric train network from the Irish Famine Ghosts in the cemetery where the monorail pylon is going to be inserted.

Haunted Montreal, experts in all things haunted, offers a perfect and inexpensive solution and asks for the help of you, our dear reader, to assist in implementing it!  

Haunted Research

The Réseau Express Métropolitain recently extracted over a dozen skeletons from the Black Rock Famine cemetery. Many of them were children who had succumbed to typhus. Tragically, they were buried in mass graves after crossing the Atlantic Ocean on “coffin ships”. The REM’s rationale for the exhumation was to install a concrete pylon for its upcoming $6.3 billion electric train network. This act prompted fears that ghosts of the Irish Famine Dead could easily haunt the system. Artists have already begun creating visuals depicting a paranormal station atop the pylon that serves as a disturbing connection between the living and the dead.

Part 1 of the blog speculates about some of the ghosts who might infest the REM network, from ghostly priests to Famine beggars to the old mayor of the City of Montreal himself.

Part 2 offers Haunted Montreal’s analysis of the situation and an innovative and inexpensive solution to try and protect the $6.3 billion electric train system from becoming haunted by Irish Famine ghosts and spirits.

It must be noted that there was a strong reaction to the suggestion made in Part 1 of the blog that the REM could become haunted as a result of the graveyard disturbance. Opinions on the issue are polarized with many believing the horrible hauntings are inevitable and other stakeholders insisting otherwise.

Fergus V. Keyes, fellow Director of the Montreal Irish Monument Park Foundation, does not believe the REM will become haunted by malevolent spirits.

He wrote his lengthy rationale on the Haunted Montreal Facebook page in response to Part 1 of the blog:

“It is important to note that the REM organization has been absolutely terrific when working with the Montreal Irish Community on this project. They did not suddenly come across these remains but knew that the area where they were excavating likely was the main cemetery for the 6000+ Irish that died and were buried in the area in 1847 and that there was certainly a strong possibility that they might uncover some remains of the victims. After meeting with Montreal Irish representatives more than a year ago, they invested a great deal of time, money, and engineering costs to mitigate any disturbance in the area. They also arranged, and paid for, a full religious ceremony representing various religious denominations that were in Montreal at the time including First Nation representatives. This included having trained archaeologists on the site before they even started digging and these archaeologists remained there for the entire month of November – once again paid for by REM.”

Keyes continued: “Once some remains were discovered, they immediately notified the Irish Community and at the end of the dig allowed some of the Irish representatives to visit the actual site and view all of their procedures. Their excavation represents an area of no more than 1% of the entire area where this main cemetery is probably located.”

In conclusion, Keyes stated: “REM has treated these remains with the greatest of respect, and once some tests are completed that might determine the gender, approximate age, and perhaps yield some DNA, the Irish community intends to rebury these remains in close proximity to the Black Rock in a proper ceremony. So in my opinion, no – the site will not be haunted by the victims of the tragic event of 1847, and more likely the REM organization will be blessed & protected by these victims for the beautiful care that they took in showing them such a great deal of respect.”

However, the REM were extremely disrespectful to the human remains of the Irish Famine Ancestors. They drove a caisson (a big metal tube) through the cemetery, likely slicing bodies apart, before lowering a basket into the tube to remove human remains.

These damaged skeletons were then sent to a creepy laboratory to be studied. Their final resting places, along with their skeletons, were totally desecrated.

Indeed, the Montreal Irish Monument Park Foundation was so pleased with the “quality” of the work that Directors Fergus Keyes and Victor Boyle presented the REM with an award at the Centaur Theatre in early February, 2020. They did this without consulting the Board of Directors.

Given these disturbing circumstances, the spirits of the cemetery might very well take advantage of the pylon to begin infesting the system with paranormal activity.

Indeed, according to founder of 13 Paranormal Spirits and ghost expert Dominique Desormeaux:

“Ghosts will feast on the electrical side. They look for a source to be able to manifest themselves, so yes, ghosts will haunt the REM. I’m telling you, you will see people complaining about strange stuff happening at the REM and to the people working there. The ghosts will even cause trouble for the train and there will be often be power shortages and train malfunctions.”

When pressed for examples, Desormeaux elaborated:

“Full shadows and full body apparitions. They removed the bodies of the dead people from their final resting place – that is one of the reasons they will have problems. Like I said, there will be multiple ghost and apparition sightings, high spikes in the electromagnetic field, burning lights, contact between the living and the dead, strange voices, touching, etc.”

Desormeaux pointed out that the Black Rock funerary marker is engraved with the following words: “To Preserve from Desecration the Remains of 6000 Immigrants Who died of Ship Fever A.D. 1847- 48.”

The Famine cemetery at the Black Rock has a long history of desecration. In the past, it has been used as a dump, a rail yard, and today a highway runs over the cemetery. Officials have consistently tried to erase it, deny its existence and have never ceded the burial ground to the Irish community.

The Oxford Dictionary defines “desecration” as: “the act of damaging a holy thing or place or treating it without respect,” whereas for Cambridge it means “to damage or show no respect towards something holy or very much respected.”

Technically, the Famine Cemetery was damaged when the large hole was dug through the mass graves to accommodate a giant concrete pylon for the monorail. With the removal of over a dozen skeletons from their final resting place, the damage cannot be denied.

Whatever the case, the remains are in a laboratory for the time being and will supposedly be re-interred at a later date in a “respectful ceremony”. This announcement can be seen as very dubious, given that there was zero governance in the process, The full Board of Directors of the Irish Monument Park Foundation was not consulted, let alone the wider Irish-Montreal community whose ancestors were desecrated by the REM.

Unfortunately, one result of this cemetery disturbance is the worry that the $6.3 billion network will now become haunted, compromising Montreal’s goal of providing top notch public transportation.

For those who scoff at the idea of a haunted train system, it is noteworthy that haunted trains already exist in Canada and the States.

Indeed, one of the Saskatchewan’s most infamous paranormal tales, The Ghost Train of St. Louis, is one such haunted legend. It is such a popular Canadian ghost story that it was featured on a postal stamp in 2014 and continues to attract tourists to this very day.

South of the border, a phantom funeral train apparently runs from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois, every April around the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s death. The ghostly train, draped in black and adorned with streamers, stops watches and clocks in surrounding areas as it passes.

There is no guarantee the REM won’t be affected by the paranormal after unearthing the Famine Dead.

Luckily, to prevent Famine ghosts from haunting the $6.3 billion REM system, Haunted Montreal has come up with an innovative and inexpensive solution:

Paint the pylon Haint Blue

Haint Blue originated in the deep American South. Today, in cities and towns throughout the south, one will find these bluish-green tints on shutters, doors, porch ceilings and windowsills, gracing many historic homes.

However, the first painted strokes of Haint Blue adorned not the homes of the rich, but the simple shacks of African slaves.

Known as the Gullah or Geechee people, the original Haint Blue creators were descendants of African slaves who worked on rice plantations in South Carolina and Georgia. Many of their ancestors came from Angola, which may be where the name Gullah originated.

These people have kept alive the traditions, stories, and beliefs of their ancestors, including a fear of haints.

Haints, or haunts, are spirits trapped between the world of the living and the world of the dead. These are very angry and dangerous spirits, but according to legend, they cannot cross water. The Gullah people dig a pit in the ground, fill it with lime, milk, and whatever pigments they can find, stir it all together, and paint the mixture around every opening of their homes.

The haints, confused by these watery pigments, become tricked into thinking they cannot enter.

In painting the REM pylon that pierces the Black Rock famine cemetery Haint Blue, it is quite possible that the Irish Famine ghosts would be tricked to avoid haunting the electric train network.

What, one might ask, is the Irish connection to Haint Blue.

It turns out that Haint Blue is widely used in the South, including Caribbean nations such as Barbados and Monserrat, which have large numbers of Irish descendants, including the legendary Redlegs.

The Redlegs are the descendants of 50,000 Irish men and women who were sold into the white slave trade between 1652 and 1659.

This little-known episode in Irish history is documented in Seán O’Callaghan’s To Hell or Barbados: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ireland.

Cromwell decreed that “troublemakers”, including the poor, the hungry, Catholic clergy and landlords be sent Connaught in the west of Ireland. This policy of ethic cleansing prompted the rebel songs “Tobacco Island” and “To Hell or Connaught“. Those who refused to go were sent to Barbados instead to work on the British sugar plantations.

Innocent Irish people were rounded up from across the country by teams of Oliver Cromwell’s “man-catchers”.

In chains, they were herded south into holding pens in Cork and Waterford, then crammed into African slave ships. One in five died en route to Barbados and those who survived were sold at the slave market.

The women were stripped and checked for virginity. Those deemed “good breeders” were sold to studs, to make future slaves and brothel girls.

The men were checked for muscle tone and strength of teeth, then branded with a hot iron their owners’ initials.

Their descendants are still there today. While many have since assimilated into the mainstream culture, some of the Redlegs still live in absolute poverty. Isolated, un-assimilated and uneducated, they are yet another group of victims of British injustice.

How did the Redlegs come to use Haint Blue? The most prominent theory is that because the of the interbreeding and cross-cultural exchange between Irish and African slaves, the use Haint Blue was adopted culturally as a method to protect people from dangerous spirits.

Even in North America Haint Blue has gone mainstream, with paint companies such as Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore marketing the colour and magazines such as Costal Living and Architectural Digest reporting on it.

There is a lot of public money invested in the REM, including from the Canada Infrastructure Bank, CDPQ Infra (a wholly owned subsidiary of Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec) and the Government of Quebec.

According to financial activist Paul Boden:

“If the REM becomes haunted, it will be a total waste of taxpayer’s dollars because nobody wants to ride on a train that is infested with ghosts and rife with paranormal dangers.”

Boden agrees that Haunted Montreal’s solution is solid: “Paint it Haint Blue! A brilliant proposal to keep the ghosts at bay. Rooted in history and folklore, this is likely the best way to protect the REM system from becoming haunted. Kudos to Haunted Montreal for monitoring the city’s ghosts and providing solid solutions to protect us when they are disturbed. These guys deserve an award!”

Isabelle Lachance, REM Community Spokesperson, said at this time there are no plans to paint any pylons, although the REM is listening to community concerns.

As such, Haunted Montreal is proposing a campaign to lobby the REM to do the right thing with the offending pylon:

Paint it Haint! Peignez-le Haint Bleu!

We are asking our readers to contact the REM via their website to request that the pylon be painted Haint Blue to try and protect future riders and employees of the multi-billion dollar electric train network from the Irish ghosts who haunt the Black Rock Famine Cemetery.

As many of our readers know, Mayor Valerie Plante has been in conflict with the local Irish community over her proposal to co-brand the Griffintown REM Station with a controversial politician. As her Ambassador, I wrote an Open Letter about it with many media links.

Incredibly, the REM has announced the names of all stations expect Griffintown (originally labelled “Peel Basin”), suggesting that there are political heritage maneuvers happening behind the scenes.

It will certainly be interesting to see how everything unfolds as politics, heritage, and commemoration clash with ghosts and the paranormal in a unique situation! Ultimately, choices made today will define whether or not the REM will paint the pylon Haint Blue or risk becoming infected by the upsetting Irish Famine ghosts.

Please add your voice by contacting the REM via their website with your concerns!

Company News

Haunted Montreal is excited to announce that our full 2020 season of public tours is now online and tickets are on sale!

In addition, for this first time ever, we are operating year-round with our award-winning Haunted Pub Crawl, every Sunday at 3 pm in English and often at 4 pm in French.

Private tours are also available for the Haunted Pub Crawl. We also offer weather permitting, private tours of Haunted Griffintown, Haunted Downtown, and our new Paranormal Investigation into the old Saint-Antoine Cemetery.

The Haunted Mountain Ghost Walk is not offered in the winter due to dangerous and icy conditions on the slopes.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl or paranormal investigation during the 2019 – 2020 season!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours.

Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on April 13: Bonhomme Sept Heures

Bonhomme Sept Heures is a character from Québec folklore that was used by parents to keep their children obedient, starting in the days of “New France”. Translated, his name means, “The Seven O’Clock Man”. This creature is described as a tall, lanky old man with a long, crooked nose who roams the streets at night, carrying a large burlap sack. Bonhomme Sept Heures is known to snatch up children who have stayed out past their 7 o’clock curfew, stuff them in his sack, and quietly leave town. According to the folklore, the children would never be seen or heard from again.

Donovan King is a postcolonial historian, teacher, tour guide and professional actor. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, he combines his skills to create the best possible Montreal ghost stories, in both writing and theatrical performance. King holds a DEC (Professional Theatre Acting, John Abbott College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill), MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary) and ACS (Montreal Tourist Guide, Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec). He is also a certified Montreal Destination Specialist.

With over 350 documented ghost stories, Montreal is easily the most haunted city in Canada, if not all of North America. Haunted Montreal dedicates itself to researching these paranormal tales, and the Haunted Montreal Blog unveils a newly researched Montreal ghost story on the 13th of every month! This service is free and you can sign up to our mailing list (top, right-hand corner for desktops and at the bottom for mobile devices) if you wish to receive it every month on the 13th!

Haunted Montreal is now in winter mode and is not offering a season of outdoor public tours until the spring. The good news is that we are pleased to announce that the Haunted Montreal Pub Crawl runs year round on Sunday afternoons. We are also looking for an indoor haunted location for our new Paranormal Investigation. Lastly, our ghost walks can still be booked for private groups, including Haunted Griffintown and Haunted Downtown. Haunted Mountain is not available due to dangerous icy conditions on Otsirà:ke / Mount Royal until it melts in May.

Our January blog examines the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) and asks whether it will become haunted due to an Irish Famine cemetery disturbance. The REM is a new automated light rail network under construction in the greater Montreal area. At a cost of $6.3 billion, it will include 26 stations and span the region.

In November, workers digging a hole for a pylon near the Victoria Bridge discovered the bones of over a dozen Irish Famine victims from 1847 at the site of the Black Rock. Given these Irish refugees were fleeing westward, it is entirely possible their disturbed spirits will come back to haunt the new electric train network.

Haunted Research

On June 12, 2019, Montreal’s Irish community gathered for a ceremony to bless the hallowed land at the Black Rock Famine cemetery, where an estimated 6000 ancestors of Montreal’s Irish community lied buried. The purpose of the ceremony was to bless the burial ground’s soil due to concerns about potential disturbances during the construction of the REM (Réseau express métropolitain).

It must be noted that the REM did not offer solid collaboration with the local Irish community. They only consulted two members (out of four) of the Irish Monument Park Foundation’s Board of Directors. Furthermore, the Irish Monument Park Foundation had a history of lack of governance and failed leadership. Fergus V. Keyes and Victor Boyle made a decision to green-light the desecration of the Famine Cemetery without even consulting the Board of Directors.

The REM’s engineers and architects took a gamble when they decided to plant a monorail pylon into the vicinity of the sacred Irish burial ground, which is the largest Famine cemetery in the world outside of Ireland. Because moving the train line away from the cemetery was deemed unfeasible, the gamble involved potentially disturbing Montreal’s Irish Famine Dead.

The tragic tale as to how this cemetery came into being is a result of brutal British colonialism, famine and some even say genocide against the Irish in the U.K.’s very first colony. The burial ground was hastily prepared during the typhus epidemic of 1847 and the dead were trenched anonymously.

After workers discovered the human remains of their ancestors while building the Victoria Bridge in 1859, they installed The Black Rock atop the Montreal Famine cemetery. The purpose of marking the cemetery was to protect it from desecration. For the full and terrible backstory about Black 47’s impact on Montreal, please read Haunted Montreal Blog #35 – The Black Rock.

As the REM workers went about their construction tasks, in December word broke that their pylon project had essentially pierced the cemetery. While the REM claimed that excavation was being done with extreme care and sensitivity, the fact remained that over a dozen of Montreal’s Irish ancestors were being dug up from the graveyard.

Generally-speaking, the Dead do not like to be disturbed, especially when their funerary marker, the ominous Black Rock, is engraved with the following words:

“To Preserve from Desecration the Remains of 6000 Immigrants Who died of Ship Fever A.D. 1847- 48.”

Not wanting the Famine Dead to come back to haunt the city, on December 9, I organized a hasty ceremony to offer a minute of silence to Montreal’s Irish ancestors. Their anonymous remains were being exhumed from their final resting place by careful and meticulous archaeologists in a tube-like machine.

I wanted Montreal’s Irish ancestors to know that we love them and that they are in our thoughts and prayers as they begin a second terrible journey, this time to a laboratory. When we get the remains back, there are plans to re-inter them as respectfully as possible given the circumstances.

To further complicate matters, Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante announced in November, 2019, that she wanted to co-brand Griffintown’s REM station after a divisive and controversial politician.

This sparked an outcry from the Montreal Irish community, which turned especially bitter when the Irish asked her to back off to mourn the ancestors being excavated – and instead she doubled down against the Irish community!

As an Ambassador of the City, Tour Operator and Montreal Destination Specialist, I sent her an Open Letter with dozens of media links about the scandal. Mayor Plante has not responded yet.

Haunted Montreal is asking our readers to politely ask Mayor Plante to rescind the unfortunate proposal by contacting her through her webpage. Please personalize your message and write from the heart.

Please also sign the petition here.

Despite my best efforts to assuage the Irish Famine Dead, there is no guarantee that their ghosts will not go on to haunt the $6.3 billion dollar REM network.

Indeed, I would say the likelihood is actually quite high that some of these spirits might choose to return to haunt the electric train network.

I imagine an REM commuter, sipping a Starbucks Café Latté while reading a newspaper, suddenly spewing their frothy java across the carriage as it pulls into Beaconsfield station!  The appearance of a ghostly Famine refugee wearing tattered rags over a skeletal frame could easily trigger such a reaction!

There are many reasons to believe the REM could be already haunted upon its scheduled opening dates, in various stages from 2021 to 2023.

Firstly, I personally believe the western portion of the REM is going to be the most haunted part of the network should the ghosts decide to infest it. It is important to remember that these Irish refugees were involved in a westward migration to escape the British colonization, which was exacerbated by the Famine.

Many of the Irish refugees hoped to reach the United States of America, far away from the clutches of the British Crown and its dreaded colonization enforced by heavy-handed Redcoats.

Secondly, the death toll in Montreal was staggering. By the end of the epidemic in 1848, an estimated 6,000 Irish typhus victims had been “trenched” in the mass graves located next to the fever sheds in Pointe Saint-Charles.

To further the tragedy, almost 1000 Montreal residents also died of typhus, including at least eight Catholic priests, thirteen nuns, and seven Anglican clergymen. Lastly, the devoted mayor, John Easton Mills, also succumbed to typhus on November 12, 1847.

Mills had personally tended to the sick in the fever sheds and his fearless compassion earned him the sobriquet “Martyr Mayor of Montreal”.

Certainly the city’s former mayor, who is already reputed to haunt the site of Montreal’s first famine cemetery on the Lachine Canal, would be interested in a public works project like the REM. Could the ghost of our heroic mayor, John Easton Mills, be spotted riding on the system?

Another ghost who might ride the REM’s rails could be that of Catholic priest M. Gottefrey, who perished in the course of his duties assisting the Irish typhus-victims. Having contracted the deadly disease, he made a serious and deadly miscalculation while trying to receive his last rites.

The Annals of the Grey Nuns reports that on July 11th, 1847:

“M. GOTTEFREY, having to exercise his ministry at the convent, arrived in the evening, probably after returning from the SHEDS. A few of our sisters met him, he told them with his vivacious and joyous humour: “Courage, my dear sisters, the sufferings are short, but the reward is eternal.” In wishing goodnight to the superior whom he found very anxious and preoccupied with her patients, he said to her: “Take care to not kill yourself.” It was 6:30 in the evening. He directed himself towards the Church of Notre-Dame de Bonsecours to be given the Holy Sacrament which he wished to receive as the last rites.”

“Reaching the third floor of the sacristy and wishing to open the door giving passage to a gallery, he forgot, perhaps, or he did not know most probably that we had got rid of this gallery, and since he had made a great effort to open this door which we had taken care to nail shut sufficiently, he rushed into a drop of more than THIRTY feet high. We transported him to the Hotel-Dieu, where it was not long before he expired.” (pages 37-38)

According to paranormal experts, M. Gottefrey’s ghost already haunts Notre-Dame de Bonsecours Church, along with other spirits. Tourists have captured images in the stained glass windows that could very well be the good Father.

Given his tragic accident and death, some paranormal experts believe that he never crossed to the other side. Will the spirit of M. Gottefrey haunt the REM?

There is also the chance an anonymous, skeletally-thin Irish girl might appear. Clutching a tin cup and wearing a tattered nightgown, the poor girl might even ask the REM clients for some coins.

This emaciated young Irish girl was first spotted in late July, 1847. Montreal’s citizens began to panic when they spotted her begging on the corner of Notre Dame and McGill Streets. Clearly stricken with typhus and its accompanying dusky hue of the skin, she was “clad only in a nightgown and with a tin cup in her hand while a policeman was keeping the street clear of all pedestrians until means could be found to convey her back to the quarantine sheds.”

In his dissertation thesis, Ports of Recall: Memory of the Great Irish Famine in Liverpool and Montreal, Colin McMahon writes:

“For John Loye, [former] President of the United Irish Societies, the discovery of remains at the memorial site [in 1942] jogged memories of stories told to him by his grandmother, Margaret Dowling, who was a young witness to the arrival of Irish Famine refugees in Montreal. Loye recalled her describing the pitiful scene at the corner of Notre Dame and McGill streets.” (page 188)

Lastly, there are many reports and theories about some of the Irish refugees being buried alive. In the same thesis, McMahon observes:

“An even more unsettling anecdote survived the century to surface in 1942—told by a Mrs. Bergen to her friend Margaret Dowling, who then passed it down to her grandson, who finally relayed it to the Montreal Gazette. Stricken with typhus in 1847, Bergen “was believed dead and put in a coffin which was lowered in to the pit. Her husband, a quarantine subject rushed among the coffins and saw her skirt protruding through the lid of the coffin. He opened it to find she was still breathing.” Such stories reportedly “gave rise to the belief that many of the victims were buried alive as the Government wished to dispose of them to make room for fresh cases.” (page 188)

Those who were indeed buried alive are also likely candidates to haunt the REM, as are the Dead who were trenched anonymously in the middle of the night with no proper funeral.

Like jabbing a stake through the heart of a vampire, the REM’s pylon mimics this effect on an industrial scale, albeit through the heart of Montreal’s sacred Irish Famine cemetery at the Black Rock.

Who is to the say the Dead won’t feel invited to join commuters on futures rides of the REM heading westbound? In planting the pylon through the middle of the cemetery, one can say that Black Rock Station will be the only paranormal platform on the REM network that is used exclusively by the Dead.

Company News

Haunted Montreal is now into winter mode! For this first time ever, we will be operating year-round with our award-winning Haunted Pub Crawl, every Sunday at 3 pm in English and 4 pm in French.

Private tours are also available for Haunted Griffintown, Haunted Downtown, the Haunted Pub Crawl and our new Paranormal Investigation into the old Saint-Antoine Cemetery, weather-permitting for outside tours.

The Haunted Mountain Ghost Walk is not offered in the winter due to dangerous and icy conditions on the slopes.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl or paranormal investigation during the 2019 – 2020 season!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours.

Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on February 13: Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel

The oldest church in Montreal, the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel, is one of the most haunted locations in Old Montreal. Not only are there the bodies of several nuns buried in the crypt, but it is also the location of Saint Marguerite Bourgeoy’s sacred corpse, a miraculous statue, and a famous 1848 painting called “Le Typhus” by Theophile Hamel. There are also several reports from tourists at having photographed either a man in a tuxedo or a priest from the outside of the church’s stained-glass windows. Some believe the ghost captured on film is none other than Famine priest M. Gottefrey, who suffered a terrible injury in the church hours before dying in the summer of 1847 while caring for Irish refugees.

Donovan King is a postcolonial historian, teacher, tour guide and professional actor. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, he combines his skills to create the best possible Montreal ghost stories, in both writing and theatrical performance. King holds a DEC (Professional Theatre Acting, John Abbott College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill), MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary) and ACS (Montreal Tourist Guide, Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec). He is also a certified Montreal Destination Specialist.

HAUNTED RESEARCH

The Black Rock, or Irish Stone, holds an important place in the heart of Montreal’s Irish community. Sometimes a city can be haunted by an event so tragic that it leaves dark, indelible traces in the public imaginary. This feeling of being haunted by a terrible past can be exacerbated when the commemorative site to mark the tragedy is compromised. Such is the case with Montreal’s Black Rock, the first monument in the world dedicated to Black ’47, the year tens of thousands of Irish refugees crossed the Atlantic Ocean aboard “coffin ships” in search of a better life.

Unlike a typical ghost story that focusses on apparitions and the paranormal, this story is about how citizens are haunted by a dark, ingrained memory.

The Black Rock is the guardian of Montreal’s Irish Famine Cemetery. The graveyard is presently criss-crossed by an urban blight of highways, railway tracks, parking lots, electricity pylons and industrial billboards. The commemorative site is largely inaccessible and consists of the Irish Stone, a massive black boulder, squeezed onto a tiny traffic island straddled between two busy highways on Bridge Street. In an unsightly industrial zone, gaudy advertisements on giant billboards glare down on the Black Rock, which is encircled by a wrought iron fence peppered with rusting metal shamrocks.

Installed in 1859, after workers discovered human remains while building the Victoria Bridge, the Black Rock was dredged up from the river and placed atop the graveyard to mark the Famine cemetery. The monument’s purpose is engraved in the stone: “To Preserve from Desecration the Remains of 6000 Immigrants Who died of Ship Fever A.D. 1847- 48.” Today, its purpose is largely forgotten by the thousands of commuters speeding past every day. From a commemoration point of view, Montreal’s Irish Famine Cemetery can perhaps best be described as “disgraceful”.

In the summer of 1847, Montreal was inundated with thousands of desperate Irish Famine refugees and was totally unprepared to deal with the influx. Known in the history books as Black ’47, it is the year more than 75,000 Irish Famine refugees landed on Montreal’s wharves. At the time, Montreal’s population was only 50,000 people, so the city was completely overwhelmed.  Many of the refugees were hungry, emaciated and diseased.

Fleeing brutal political oppression and a potato famine in Ireland, these emigrants suffered dangerous crossings over the Atlantic Ocean on what were described as “coffin ships”. Never designed to transport human beings, these were rickety ships that transported Canadian lumber and other products to Europe and took on human cargoes of desperate refugees, on the return crossing, to supplement profits. Hundreds of often-starving families were crammed below-deck and forced to live in overcrowded and filthy conditions. The food wasn’t nutritious and there wasn’t even enough water for washing during the 3 month crossing, only for drinking. With only buckets being used for toilets, the holds of the ships soon became contaminated with human waste.

This proved to be the perfect breeding ground for a deadly epidemic disease known as typhus. Also called Ship’s Fever, it is transmitted by fleas and lice infected with the rickettsiae bacteria, which breed in filthy conditions and feed on humans. Scratching the bite would allow the bacteria to enter the bloodstream and replicate.

The incubation period was 1 – 2 weeks. Those infected could expect a high fever, headache, dull pains and loss of appetite. On the 5th day, a rash would appear on the abdomen and the face would become bloated and congested. Many victims would develop complications, including a clouded mental state, followed by muscular twitchings, then delirium. The final stage was a deep stupor before the skin took on a dusky hue and turned black before the victim died. The mortality rate was estimated at about 30% – 50%.

From the coffin ships, diseased corpses were thrown overboard during the crossing.

Schools of sharks were often spotted trailing the vessels. As they entered the Saint Lawrence River, they approached a quarantine station that had been set up at Grosse Ile, near Quebec City. The station witnessed thousands of deaths but could not contain the epidemic.

It moved upriver towards Montreal after passengers transferred onto steamships at Quebec City. Montreal was at the end of the long sea journey because the Lachine Rapids prevented ships from continuing westward. To do so, passengers had to transfer onto smaller boats to traverse the Lachine Canal.

Montreal’s Famine challenges began on June 7, 1847, when 2,304 typhus-stricken Irish migrants disembarked on the city’s wharves. It was just the beginning of a long and difficult summer as Montreal was inundated with thousands of the most debilitated and wretched beings ever thrown upon its shores. Many of the sickly refugees collapsed on Montreal’s wharves in the Calcutta-like heat that was baking the city that summer.

There were only two fever sheds, to the south of Wellington Bridge, that were left over from a cholera epidemic in 1832. Those sick with typhus were directed there from the docks of Montreal.

Before long, these sheds were overcrowded centers of filth and misery, with stinking corpses littering the nearby fields. Many of the bodies were buried randomly on the banks of the canal until a plan was later hatched to dig burial trenches near the site.

The Grey Nuns, who were located nearby in their Motherhouse, sprang into action to care for the sick and dying emigrants.

Their first-person account can be found online at the digital archives at the National University of Ireland in Galway. Assembled by Dr. Jason King, the Annals describe the horrors that the nuns witnessed and experienced that summer.

According to the Annals: “Hundreds of people were laying there, most of them on bare planks, pell-mell, men, women and children. The moribund and cadavers are crowded in the same shelter, while there are those that lie on the quays or on pieces of wood thrown here and there along the river.”

Mother Superior McMullen assembled her sisters to point out the stark task ahead of them in caring for the unfortunate souls in the fever sheds. Visibly shaken, she told her underlings: “Sisters, the plague is contagious. In sending you there, I am signing your death warrant, but you are free to accept or refuse.” Having taken Catholic vows, the nuns all accepted the assignment and immediately went to the fever sheds to care for the sick and the dying.

In the horrifying stench of the ramshackle structures, they found dying patients moaning in pain and begging for water. The filthy quarters were shared by the living and the dead, with crying orphans still clinging to deceased parents.

The nuns did their best to care for the sick, but soon they too caught typhus and seven of them died. They were replaced by the Sisters of Providence, who were in turn replaced by the Sisters of the Hotel-Dieu. Priests also came to offer blessings, hear confessions and hold services, at great personal risk.

The newly-elected Mayor, a handsome and compassionate American named John Easton Mills, sprang into action. He ordered the construction of a dozen new fever sheds just across the canal in the vicinity of the Wellington Street Bridge. Coffins were piled up near the sheds and the dead were “trenched” at night, with up to 2 dozen being interred in burial trenches every 24 hours.

Citizens began to worry after spotting an emaciated girl, clad only in a nightgown, with a tin cup on the corner of McGill and Notre-Dame Streets.

They called the police to remove her to the fever sheds. Montreal’s citizens were terrified that the typhus would spread. When the disease began to appear throughout the city, an angry mob assembled on the Champ-de-Mars and threatened to throw the fever sheds and their victims into the Saint Lawrence River.

The Mayor urged restraint and tried to calm the citizens with new measures. A fence went up around the landing site and policemen stood guard at the gate to prevent infected emigrants from roaming into the city. The canal itself formed another barrier and guards were posted on all the bridges to further isolate new arrivals.

The Mayor also ordered the sheds to be moved further away from the city – to a place about a mile down-shore in Point Saint Charles called Windmill Point. Twenty-two more fever sheds were constructed to serve the victims and another grim burial ground was prepared on the west side.

As the death toll mounted, more trenches were dug and typhus victims were buried unceremoniously in the middle of the night.

Finally, Mayor Mills personally volunteered to care for the sick and dying emigrants and could often be seen at the midnight hour, going from shed to shed, offering water and hope to patients, allowing doctors and nurses some much needed rest.

With the cold of the autumn, the typhus began to retreat from Montreal and the survivors either moved westward down the canal, or for those with no means, moved into Griffintown.

The death toll was staggering: in addition to the 6,000 Irish victims, almost 1000 Montreal residents, at least 8 Catholic priests, thirteen nuns, and seven Anglican clergymen also perished from typhus.

The Mayor dropped out of sight and citizens began to wonder what had happened to him. It turns out that Mayor Mills contracted typhus himself during his duties. According to his doctor, he never issued a word of complaint about the pain or his misfortune. He died on November 12, at the young age of 54. An elaborate funeral was held and he was declared “Montreal’s Martyr Mayor” for his heroic efforts.

Black ’47 would be remembered as a major injustice against Irish people in Montreal. As the years began to pass, the cemetery became overgrown and weed-choked, with only a small mound and a cross to mark the spot.

In 1854, the old fever sheds were converted into housing by Peto, Brassey and Betts, the British firm responsible for building the Victoria Bridge. The site was soon bustling again when up to 500 English and Irish bridge workers moved in. The adjacent cemetery was seen as a sacred spot, no doubt since many of the laborers were Irish Famine survivors and had relatives buried there.

In the autumn of 1859, the Victoria Bridge was nearing completion. When human remains were accidentally unearthed, workers became so concerned that the remains of their poor countrymen would be forgotten that they decided to erect a monument upon the spot. According to legend, the Irish Catholic workers refused to continue working until the victims of Black ‘47 were commemorated.

The monument took the form of a gigantic, 30-ton granite boulder that was pulled up from the riverbed. On December 1, 1859, chief engineer James Hodges oversaw the Herculean business of installing the enormous, rough monument in the cemetery. He arranged a derrick to hoist the boulder onto a six-foot stone pedestal, where it was affixed.

On the same day, the Anglican clergy oversaw a dedication ceremony. The fact that Catholic authorities were not invited to consecrate this important cemetery, containing mostly Irish Catholic Famine victims, rankled the Irish community. During the ceremony, Anglican Bishop Fulford promised that the bodies of the faithful would “rest undisturbed until the day of resurrection.”

In 1870, the memorial grave site was transferred from Messrs. Peto, Brassey and Betts to the Anglican Bishop of Montreal, in perpetuity.  Redemptorist priests began organizing annual visits to the gravesite in the mid-1880s to perform requiems “for the repose of the souls of the thousands of Irish Catholics whose bones are there interred.” In 1892, the Montreal chapter of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) was founded and took over organizing the annual march with a mandate “to protect the welfare of fellow Irish Catholics.”

The cemetery began to fall into a state of neglect and The True Witness and Catholic Chronicle complained that “the tall, tangled grass and the sturdy weed riot luxuriantly over the neglected plot where man’s feet seldom stray.’

The following year, the Anglican Bishop was approached by the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR) because the company wanted to purchase the Famine cemetery to expand railway operations.

Upon hearing the news, the Irish community became incensed and stakeholders vowed “to prevent by every means in their power the carrying out of such a project.”

With tensions mounting, in the early morning on December 21, 1900, the GTR did the unthinkable: its workers removed the Irish Stone from the Famine cemetery and transported it on a railway track to Saint Patrick’s Square, beside the canal, where it was installed. The Irish community was outraged and demanded the return the monument to its proper location.

By now, industrial work carried out by GTR was beginning to compromise the cemetery. The company had laid down three railway tracks and was using part of the cemetery as a dumping ground. GTR refused to replace the monument, and began to publicly refute the fact that the site was indeed a cemetery. The case was referred to the Railway Board of Commissioners in Ottawa, which ruled in January of 1911 that GTR could expropriate the entire site of the burial ground apart from a small, thirty foot plot of land. The Irish Stone was returned to its proper location, albeit on a much smaller cemetery footprint.

While Montreal’s Irish community continued to host commemorative events and annual marches, the forces of industrialization would relentlessly encroach upon the hallowed Famine cemetery, again and again.

In August, 1942, workers engaged by the Kennedy Construction company made a ghastly discovery while digging a passenger tunnel under the city approach to the Victoria Bridge. They unearthed twelve “coffins of rotting pine wood, blackened by time, in a long trenchlike grave at the foot of Bridge Street. The Irish community reburied the deceased at the site of the monument, in plain grey caskets, during an All Saints Day ceremony on November 1, 1942. The discovery put to rest any denial that the site was, in fact, a cemetery.

A new threat to the cemetery was perceived during construction work for Expo ’67. By now, the Irish Stone had been blackened by a century of traffic and was often referred to as the “Black Stone”. In the spring of 1966, Montreal urban planners decided that the Stone needed to be moved from its existing position to allow the construction of a new approach road to the Expo site. The Irish community insisted that the Irish Stone remain in its place. An unhappy compromise was reached when both parties reluctantly agreed on a “split-solution”: Bridge Street would be expanded around the Irish Stone, leaving the monument on a traffic island. The Irish community had prevented the monument’s removal for a second time, but the fact that a busy highway now surrounded the memorial site was seen as far from ideal.

During the 1990s, to mark the Famine’s 150th anniversary, commemorative monuments were erected around the world. In an effort to improve the site of the Irish Stone, the United Irish Societies launched a successful campaign to decorate the fence surrounding the memorial site with 128 now-rusting shamrocks. A nearby road, which passes by the site where 22 fever sheds once stood, was baptized Rue des Irlandais.

In 1994, the City offered to create a fenced in viewing area on the east side of Bridge Street, which the Irish community gladly accepted. A plaque was installed with the following words:

“In 1847, six thousand Irish people, seeking refuge in a new land, died here of typhus and other ailments, and were buried in mass graves. The stone marks approximately the centre of the cemetery. Immediately to the east of here, twenty two hospital sheds had been constructed. Many Grey Nuns, several priests, and also John Easton Mills, Mayor of the City of Montreal, who selflessly came to care for the sick, themselves contracted typhus and died. May they rest in peace.”

Despite these improvements, there were concerns that more could be done to improve the site. In 2014, the Montreal Irish Monument Park Foundation was established to propose a world-class cultural and memorial park. The Foundation proposes honouring the key players during Black ’47, including the 6,000+ victims, the Montrealers who went to the aid of the emigrants, including Mayor John Easton Mills, and the French Canadians who adopted Famine orphans. Indeed, today an estimated 40% of Quebeckers have Irish roots.

The Foundation has since worked tirelessly lobbying different levels of government and other stakeholders to assist in this process. For a while, it appeared as though progress was being made, but in May, 2017, the land was suddenly sold to Hydro-Québec to build a new electricity distribution station. The Irish community was once again outraged, prompting Hydro-Québec to agree to use part of the land to establish the desired memorial park.

Since then, Hydro-Québec has been busy conducting an archaeological study. On Tuesday, October 10, 2017, Hydro started digging a series of test holes at the site, a legal requirement to check for soil contamination.

Victor Boyle, in his capacity as Canadian President of the AOH, organized to have a local Irish Catholic priest present as this work started. Father McCrory, assigned to St. Gabriel’s Parish in Point St. Charles, took charge of the ceremony. As the majority of the 6000 victims buried in the area in 1847 were both Irish and Catholic, the Good Father blessed the site, the workers, the soil, the machinery and the task at hand so as not to disturb the Irish dead. The workers, moved, turned off the machines and one of them removed his hard hat, solemnly declaring: “My grandmother was Irish.”

Irish Monument Park Foundation Director Fergus Keyes said at the time:

“We certainly have to take a moment to mention that the company doing these tests seems to be called GHD – likely a contractor for Hydro – and the guys working were absolutely terrific. Couldn’t have possibly asked for more co-operation. They shut down their machinery so Father could give his blessing and mentioned that in all the years that they have done this work, they had never been blessed before and seemed pleased with the small ceremony. So thanks to Father McCrory, Victor Boyle and the workers on the site – it just seemed like the right thing to do as they drill into the ground. We don’t really suspect that any sign of the victims will be uncovered, but with 6000 buried there; and the haphazard fashion that the burials were conducted – particularly in the late fall of 1847 – one never knows.”

While nobody knows what the future holds for the site yet, the community is hopeful that Famine cemetery marked by the Black Rock will finally be commemorated in a fitting and respectful manner.

To this day, every year on the last Sunday in May, the Irish community marches to the Black Rock under the leadership of the AOH. Speeches are delivered and the community takes a moment to solemnly remember the Famine dead. The experience can only be described as haunting.

According to AOH President Victor Boyle, “When you touch the Black Rock, it is always warm. It has a texture unlike any other stone I’ve ever touched. It doesn’t feel like a rock. It almost feels like something is coming through it.”

He then added: “When I was touching it once, I remember leaning against it and getting a feeling of life. It was a spooky feeling, almost like underground roots were holding up the Irish Stone. The people buried there don’t want to be forgotten. They can’t talk. It bothers me that the Black Rock was cut off when the road was built around it. Those buried here are crying out because they can’t participate. They don’t like it because they are cut off. It’s a curse.”

A painting by Karen Bridgenaw of the Group of Sven Painting Ladies captures the haunted mood that exists at the Black Rock very nicely.

For those wishing to experience the commemoration, the 2018 Walk to the Stone is scheduled on May 27, beginning at noon at St. Gabriel’s Church in Point St. Charles.

It is an incredibly moving event, a dark reminder for Montrealers of just how much the tragic episode of Back ’47 continues to haunt the city to this very day.

COMPANY NEWS

Haunted Montreal is currently in winter mode, meaning there will be no more public ghost tours until May, 2018. Private tours are still available for groups of 10 or more people, subject to the availability of our actors and weather conditions.

Haunted Montreal has been contacted by a media production company because they wish to do an episode about ghosts and hauntings in Griffintown. Based in the United Kingdom, the company has requested Haunted Montreal’s assistance in finding people to appear on the television program to share their personal ghost story from the Griff. Shooting will take place from May 16-18, 2018.

If you have a Griffintown ghost story or paranormal experience to share and are willing to appear on television, please contact us at info@hauntedmontreal.com

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk during the 2017 season! If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours. Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on April 13: The Victorian Ghost of Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue

Sometime around 2010, two women were visiting the quaint little town of Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, at the western tip of Montreal Island. After visiting a secondhand book shop, they both spotted an adolescent girl dressed completely in white, complete with an old Victorian-style dress, white hair ribbons, white stockings and white shoes. Nobody else seemed to notice the strange girl on the street, who was walking very quickly towards the bridge that connects to Ile Perrot. When the women drove away, leaving the weird scene behind, they were shocked to see exact the same girl some distance up the road, ready to start her walk all over again. With other verified sightings, people are starting to wonder just who the Victorian ghostly girl is and why she is haunting Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue.

Donovan King is a historian, teacher, tour guide and professional actor. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, he combines his skills to create the best possible Montreal ghost stories, in both writing and theatrical performance. King holds a DEC (Professional Theatre Acting, John Abbot College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill), MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary) and ACS (Montreal Tourist Guide, Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec).