A Sad End Etched In Stone

Diginataries pay their respects to the Irish typhus victims who fled the potato famine in 1847 at the black rock. Photograph by: Graham Hughes, The Gazette

From The Montreal Gazette:

150 years ago, workers building the Victoria Bridge found a mass grave of Irish immigrants who died of ship fever. The Black Rock honours their memory

As a boy, Brendan Deegan thought of the Bridge St. boulder honouring 19th-century Irish typhus victims as a giant potato.

Now 75, Deegan has been making the annual pilgrimage to the Black Rock for more than 60 years. Yesterday, the retired high school teacher was among 200 people who trekked to the stone to mark the 150th anniversary of the memorial to 6,000 Irish immigrants who died of ship fever after landing in Montreal in 1847.

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