AN IRISH HEART
How a small Irish Community Shaped Canada.
Sharon Doyle Driedger
Harper Collins, 404 pp, $34.99
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. “We all have our own private Griffintown’s,” Driedger wrote in her 2003 Macleans article. This book, she says, is her tribute to its people . She bravely plumbs the depths of waters already explored, but for other chapters, instead of diving into the pool where need be, she merely skins the surface of the deep.
The book grew out of an article that Driedger wrote for Macleans seven years ago. An Irish Heart is, without a doubt a welcome reference, the research is certainly exhaustive. But there is no chronological order to the narrative. It takes 60 pages before you actually arrive at Griffintown . The first chapter, Leaving Ireland, is a rehash of Edward Laxton’s The Famine Ships, and the account of the sorrowful summer of 1847 relies heavily on Marianna O’Gallagher’s histories of Grosse Isle. Not much of it relates directly to Montreal. For example, while Driedger writes about the famine ship, Avon, that was quarantined at Grosse Isle, she doesn’t even mention the Queen, Rowland Hill and Quebec, the three ships that brought Typhus to Montreal and played a much more pertinent role in Griffintown’s history. She refers to the Irish who “lived on the fine homes on the slopes of Mont Royal;” those fine homes actually were in Little Dublin, not on the slopes of the mountain, but in the area immediately around St. Patrick’s church. Irish Catholics were not welcome within the confines of the Square Mile.
She tells us that Montreal foundress Jeanne Mance was the first person to hold the title to what became Griffintown, but doesn’t tell us why. (The land was collateral for a loan she made to Montreal’s founder, Paul Chomedey, sieur de Maisonneuve.) Driedger states that Mary Griffin sketched out the first street plan of Griffintown; in fact it was British magistrate Thomas McCord who laid out the first streets and named them after himself and members of his family, William and Eleanor. The author claims that violent crime in Griffintown was rare, ignoring the evidence of the often brutal mayhem caused by 19th century street gangs The Irish Catholic Union and the Orange Young Brothers. There is nothing, for example about the gang wars that ended in the murder of James Coligan in 1878. The book Includes the notorious story of Mary Gallagher, the prostitute who had her head chopped off by Susan Kennedy in 1879. Curiously, the author doesn’t mention the fate of Kennedy’s accomplice, Michael Flanagan, and how the bizarre circumstances of his death gave rise to the legend of the Ghost of Griffintown. (Incidentally, Susan Kennedy died in 1890, not 1916 as the book states) There are other sloppy errors; The Shamrock did not appear on the city flag in the 1830s - Montreal did not have a flag until 1939; Jean Le Ber is not a saint. Driedger’s account of “Banjo” Frank Hanley is fanciful in the extreme; anyone who knew Frank knew that he tailored his stories to suit the person he was telling them too; Driedger obviously takes his tales at face value without checking their authenticity. Readers will be better served by Hanley’s profile in the Shamrock and The Shield by Patricia Burns, which offers a much more flavourful account of life in Griffintown.
One wishes Dreidger had been as expansive about other equally colourful ward-heeling politicians such as ‘The people’s’ Jimmy McShane and Dr. James Guerin, equally noisy show-offs who are as pertinent to Griffintown’s history .. Irritatingly, she often equates Griffintown with Point St Charles, ignoring the rivalry between the two districts. Obviously, no book can cover everything, but to ignore the Old Brewery Mission’s beginnings on Dalhousie St., or not mention St. Ann’s dispensary on Eleanor St., as the forerunner of St. Mary’s Hospital is an unfortunate oversight. Nor is the book topical. It ends in the 1970s, about the time Driedger left Montreal, with a rather mythical account of how Griffintown disappeared. She buys into the notion that Jean Drapeau put an end to the community. In fact, the Irish abandoned the area after the war, moving up in the world to more affluent neighbourhoods long before Drapeau was elected mayor.
By the time St. Ann’s church was demolished in 1970, only about 10 per cent of Griffintown’s meager population was of Irish origin. There is nothing in the book about the grandiose plans to revive the area, the fight to preserve it from developers, and no mention at all of Rev. Thomas McEntree, who almost single handedly, kept the spirit of the community alive until his death two years ago. Driedger writes well, the book is a welcome addition to the study of Irish history, but her private Griffintown should not be considered the definitive word on the subject.
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