By Alan Hustak on March 25, 2010
Brave is the writer who tackles a history of Griffintown; braver still the writer who would weigh in on the storied Montreal slum neighbourhood from her vantage point in Toronto. There is much to admire in Sharon Doyle Driedger’s enthusiastic, if somewhat disjointed history of the Irish experience in Canada. But for a book with the subtitle: How a Small Immigrant Community Shaped Canada , often the story she tells doesn’t have all that much to do with “The Griff.” Driedger holds forth with authority in some chapters, especially her telling of the 1842 canal workers strike at Beauharnois, the floods and on the Christian brothers influence on the neighbourhood.
