Article written by Dr Eamonn McKee

The first Bronze Shoes of the Global Irish Famine Way were unveiled in Ottawa on Saturday. It was a ceremony of emotions: pride, poignancy, and joy under the blue skies of Canada’s capital city.

The Irish had done so much to build Ottawa from its earliest days when it was known as Bytown. Since the 1820s, an Irish community had taken root and prospered to this day. The Irish community had rallied around the project to establish the Bronze Shoes. They had raised funds and mobilized to ensure that the City Council approved the project. The Irish Seniors of Ottawa were our frontline troops.  We are so proud of them. We are proud too of Michael McBane who had kept the story alive of the common grave that was the fate of over 300 Irish famine refugees who arrived distressed in the summer of 1847 from an Ireland ravaged by hunger and disease. The city’s development in the 20th century had erased any visible trace of the graveyard. But Michael knew it was there.

We began the day with Mass at the chapel of the Sisters of Charity, the Grey Nuns, whose heroism had saved countless victims of disease and hunger. The chapel is a magnificent space, vaulting white walls of cathedral scale. The Grey Nuns shared in this pride because it was their forebears, led by Sister Bruyère and her small band of young nuns, who had come to the aid of the Irish, braving an unknown and potentially fatal disease to care for them. When their efforts failed, they buried them with dignity in the cemetery that is now known as Macdonald Gardens Park. The Oblate Fathers, doctors, nurses, officials and lay people had also volunteered and risked their lives to help. Overall, eighty Canadians died that summer helping the Irish up and down its coast, from Miramichi to Niagara.

There was poignancy is our remembrance of those lying in the soil beneath our feet. Men, women, children, families taken by typhus, a disease of unknown cause, spread by the awful conditions in which they had been forced to flee. Converted lumber ships without enough food, water, or sanitation taking them across the North Atlantic. Upwards of 7000 Irish packed standing room only on barges taking them to the Ottawa and Gatineau Valleys to find their people, find hope and a future. Poignancy too in the fate of all emigrants forced to leave their homes by necessity.

And there was joy too. That we had succeeded in only two years to turn an idea into a reality, a monument to our dead. That that monument was the first of the Global Irish Famine Way that will trace the journey of all famine refugees around the world, a journey of 40,000km to Canada, the US, South Africa, Australia, and Tasmania. Joy that they had created a diaspora of 70 million who had wielded great influence wherever they had gone. Joy at the thought that while many had died, most had survived and prospered, their descendants part of a great global community.

At Macdonald Gardens Park, speakers addressed the large crowd, all with different things to say about the significance of the day. Mayor Sutcliffe and half the City Council. Anishinaabe Elder Claudette Commanda offered a welcome of wisdom, love, and warmth. She could sense the presence of the dead alert to the living memorial above them.

Michael McBane was Master of Ceremonies, those speaking also included the Irish Ambassador John Concannon, James Maloney MP, Nicolas McCarthy of Beechwood National Cemetery, Theresa Kavanagh (who spear-headed approval on the City Council), Kay Hegarty of the Senior, Caroilin Callery of the National Famine Museum of Ireland and founder of the National Famine Way Ireland, our historian Professor Mark McGowan, and finally I spoke just before we unveiled the Bronze Shoes. There was music and poetry. Caroilin and I hugged at the sight of this solid, emphatic, empathetic monument of granite and bronze. The Global Irish Famine Way had its first marker in Canada.

We closed with prayers from Sister Rachel Watier, Oblate Father Robert Laroche, and Rev. Dr Karen Dimock.

People came to touch the shoes. The Bronze Shoes invite this response, fingertips feeling out the history here, the reality of the dead beneath us, the awareness of how and why they died. Everyone who touches them is part of our community of memory.

The Bronze Shoes are a memorial to the dead. They are a symbol too of the journey onward of the living who had passed that way. The Bronze Shoes are themselves on the move, with unveilings due in St John’s, Grosse Île, Quebec, Montreal, Saint John, Toronto, Hamilton, and Niagara. Along this central trail, other sites will be added over time. We will collect more stories, find more dead, honour them with our recall and ceremonies, celebrate their resilience and their achievements. Grow our community of memory.