The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 6

'r rV. Comment KBTCH BOOK A. -Wit -19 3Ka Montreol, July 25, 1970 mm Right to police liquor outlets hit Uii nxw A- a 'J ft. mm the city's reputation that suffers whenever there is any breakdown of order and decency. At the very least, the Quebec government ought to untie the hands of the city police to allow them to deal with liquor infractions such as doctoring drinks and storing and selling hijacked liquor.

The city police can enter licensed premises to enforce municipal bylaws and the Criminal Code but not the regulations of the liquor board. That can only be done by special agents of the provincial police designated for the job by the justice minister. This divided police jurisdiction makes no sense. There is no reason why the authority to enforce liquor board regulations cannot be vested in the city police. It is less clear how the licensing problem can be solved.

What matters is that the licensing authority, whatever it is, scrupulously investigate all applications for permits and for transfers of ownership, and be able to resist pressures and retraints of any kind. The shadow of the mob seeins to lie a little deeper upon Montreal this summer because the City has ended a long silence on the subject of gangster ownership and operation of liquor outlets. It has taken the issue to the province. The executive committee's recent brief to the 1 A Jr? JT 3 XT MI i-i a 1 1 i 1 1 ti li a Most citizens are inclined ta think that if somebody takes a doped drink and is robbed in a b2r, or buys a few glasses of colored water for a companion of the moment, that is his misfortune and he ought to have known better. True enough, in most cases; but the problem goes further than that.

The proceeds from deceits of this kind often go into the coffers of organized crime. There is, therefore, a pressing public interest in seeing that liquor laws are enforced as efficiently as possible. The City of Montreal wants the provincial cabinet to assume a more direct responsibility for the licensing of liquor outlets, putting the matter in the hands of a specific minister instead of the Quebec Liquor Board. It is difficult to see why the city would put more confidence in that sort of system than in a government agency such as the QLB. Perhaps it would make far more sense if Montreal itself were given full licensing and policing powers over liquor outlets in the city.

That possibility ought to be considered politically unrealistic as it appears. The civic administration is the level of government that cares most intensely about public order and decency in the city's nightclubs and bars. It is No one would ever accuse Premier Bennett and his government of lack of courage. It takes courage to assert the public interest against the passions generated by the extended dispute between construction workers and contractor-employers. Courage is meaningless, however, when the vehicle for its expression is a law which, as events demonstrated, could not be enforced.

The British Columbia economy was being dangerously harmed by the combination of lockout and strike. When all other attempts at reconciliation failed, the government moved to implement the Mediation Commission Act which had been passed two years ago. The Act authorizes the cabinet to intervene in a labor dispute which, in its judgment, is against the public interest. It provides the legal cover for imposing compulsory arbitration by the province's mediation commission. The unions representing the 25,000 workers caught up in the dispute were divided in their response to the provincial action.

The majority not only refused to return to- work pending arbitration but supported their representatives in Good intent, bad law in umwnwik AT THE APPROACH TO VICTORIA BRIDGE, with traffic moving on both sides, stands a large black boulder, the Irish Stone. It is in memory of the immigrants who died of ship fever in 1847-48 and was erected by the men who worked on Victoria Bridge. Founded unt 171 THE: GAZETTE, Southern newspaper, is printed end published by the GAZETTE PRINTING COMPANY (LIMITED), of which J. Peter Kohl is General Manager at the Office, 1000 St. Anloint Street, Montreal 101, All rights of publication of special dispatches herein are also reserved.

Second class mail registration number 0619. Member Audit Bureau of Circulations. Of Many Things by Edgar Andrew Collard Thinel Commission, investigating liquor sales, complained that the regulations of the Quebec Liquor Board, and the manner in which they are applied, hamper the police and make it easier for the underworld to earn illicit profits. "Over the years, the permit policy and the application of liquor board laws have permitted the underworld to put down roots in certain sectors of the liquor business in Montreal," the brief stated. "City police have constantly asked for authority to maintain order in a great number of drinking establishments in Montreal, particularly bars, dining rooms and cabarets.

Some of ihe latter are vertiable hovels which, although they cannot hold a city permit, have their liquor permits maintained and reissued." The city is not asking here for full control over the issuance of liquor permits, although it complains about a situation in which it cannot prevent permit -holders from abusing the privilege. It is asking for the right to endorse QLB permits, however, and this is a proposal that appears to be in the public interest along with the ending of the divided police jurisdiction. Liquor permits should go only to applicants who had already obtained a municipal permit. B.C. Mr.

Bennett instead personally intervened. The meetings from which the agreement on a return to work emerged were called by him. He can still argue that his principal bargaining counter was the legislation. No doubt it did give him some leverage but it is also clear that when confronted by a massive disobedience of the law, the government put off enforcement. A law that can't be enforced is bad law.

The British Columbian experience has a lesson for every provincial legislature which attempts to move too far ahead of public support. It is equally a lesson in the weight unions now swing in the economy. That power needs to be curbed but not, as with the Mediation Commission Act, by too ambitious legislation. The process must be taken a step at a time, each step clearly to be seen to be in the public interest. It needs to be directed into the areas where the unions have achieved power without the responsibility that should go with it, where unions are unaccountable for their acts, and where collective bargaining unfavorably or unfairly works to the advantage of one party at the expense of the other.

there in its most appalling aspect. Those who thus cry aloud in their agony are strangers, but their hands are outstretched for relief. Sisters, the plague is contagious." At this point it is said that she burst into tears and could not go on speaking. When she had recovered her voice, she simply added: "In sending you there I am signing your death warrant, but you are free to accept or refuse." There were a few minutes silence, while the nuns could reflect on the vow they had taken at the altar steps, when they entered the order. Their vow was now being put to the ultimate test.

The nuns all arose and stood before the Superior. Together they said, as if in chorus, "I am ready." Sister McMullen chose eight of her nuns. The following morning they went to Pointe St. Charles. "I Nearly Fainted" One of the Grey Nuns who went in June, 1847 to nurse the typhus-stricken Irish immigrants in the "fever-sheds" at Pointe St.

Charles described what she saw and felt: "I nearly fainted when I approached the entrance to this sepulchre. The stench suffocated me. I saw a number of beings with distorted features and discolored bodies lying heaped together- on the ground looking like so many corpses. "I knew not what to do. I could not advance without treading on one or another of the helpless creatures in my way.

While in this perplexity, I was recalled to action by seeing the frantic efforts of a poor man trying to extricate himself from among the prostrate crowd, his features expressing at the same time an intensity of horror. Stepping with precaution, placing first one foot and then the other where a space. could be found, I managed to get near the patient "We set to work quickly. Clearing a small passage, we first carried out the dead bodies, and then, after strewing the floor with straw, we replaced thereon the living who soon had to be removed in their turn." When more immigrants arrived and more fever-sheds were built, Sister McMullen called for more sisters to serve. Until the 24th of Jun no sickness was reported among the sisters of the Grey Nunnery.

The long incubation period of typhus was hiding the symptoms. But on the 24th two of the sisters did not respond to the matin beil. Day by day more fell ill, until 30 of the convent's 40 professed nuns were at the point of death. When the Grey Nuns could no longer carry on the work at the sheds, their place was taken by the Sisters of Providence. Soon after, Bishop Bourget gave the sisters of the Hotel Dieu permission to leave their cloister and to join the work among the immigrants But the Grey Nuns had withdrawn only long enough to restore the sistes'3 who were sick and to bury the seven sisters who had died.

By iA corner of the square near St. Patrick Street, and at 9.30 o'clock the big steam lifting derrick of the Grand Trunk Railway and a flat car, on which was the famous monument, were run down the track on St. Patrick Street, and it took only a few minutes to hoist the great stone off the car on to the platform, which had been erected to receive it." If the Grand Trunk had thought that by moving the stone quietly and quickly it would avoid controversy, it soon realized its mistake. The Irish community arose in indignation. It demanded that the stone be restored to its first and rightful place.

The issue was not easily settled. Years went by in inconclusive controversy. In 1910 the case went before the Board of Railway Commissioners. The Irish case was legally strengthened when documents were found at Christ Church Cathedral. They revealed that in 1873 the land where the monument stood had been deeded to the Anglican Bishop of Montreal and to his successors forever.

The Grand Trunk, then, had been trespassers. The Board cf Railroad Commissioners reached their decision in 1914. The ground was to be "dedicated as a site for all time as the Ship Fever Monument." A measure of compromise was reached. The ground originally set aside as a cemetery was to be reduced and the stone was to be replaced 15 feet from its original position. For these considerations the railway would undertake perpetual maintenance of the monument The issue remained settled until half a century later, when Montreal began to make plans for Expo.

Bridge Street needed to be widened and straightened. Once more the old Iriivh Stone was said to stand in the way of progress. In September, 1965, City Council was asked to vote funds for the changes to Bridge Street. Councillors Kenneth McKenna and John Lynch-Staunton then spoke in defence of the stone. It was sacred in the eyes of the Irish community, they said, and should not be disturbed.

The Chairman of Montreal's Executive Committee, Lucien Saulnier, suggested that the Irish community form a committee and make recommendations. The committee was formed; consultations with the civic administration took place. At the meeting of the City Council on June 21, 1966, Lucien Saulnier announced that Montreal's planning and public wrorks department had worked out a plan to solve the problem. The Irish Stone would remain unmoved. Bridge Street would be moved instead.

It would pass on either side of a central dividing mall. On this mall the stone would stand, with its site extended at both ends. Over the years the Irish stone has" not only marked a grave site but has been the gathering place of bones unearthed nearby. The burials evidently took place over a wide area. Whenever bones have been dug up, they have been reinterred close to the old stone.

Every time these bones are found (ss the Irish Ambassador, John Hearne, said when some were found in 1942), they have been "a voice arising from the old mm a counter-attack against the government for what was described as interference with the basic right of the unions to bargain directly with the employers. Failure to observe the requirements of the Mediation Commission Act risked fines of $1,000 for individuals and $10,000 for unions and corporations as well as possible imprisonment. When confronted with such a massive disobedience of the law, however, the government withheld action. Instead, meetings were held on Premier Bennett's initiative which resulted in union agreement to a return to work and the submission of the dispute to arbitration by a third party acceptable to employers and employees. The Mediation Commission Act was bitterly opposed at the time it was presented to the legislature.

It is not inconceivable that as the construction dispute worsened, the unions recognized an opportunity to test it. The legislation can't be said to have passed the test. When the time came, the government clearly had more to lose than to gain by any attempt at direct enforcement. The threat of a general strike was not to be easily dismissed. already been reported among the passengers.

But even if a ship left Ireland with no known sick aboard, the disease might break out among those who already had it, though as yet without symptoms. On the voyage across the Atlantic the "ship fever" spread rapidly, for the ships provided the very overcrowding and ill-feeding that favored the disease. Nuns and Then' Vow In the spring of 1847 Dr. Michael McCulloch of McGill's Medical Faculty made an ominous report to Montreal's Board of Health. He said that "in passuig along the wharf at the upper end of the harbour in the afternoon he noticed several sick persons who had been there several days and among them one very dangerous case of fever." Ship after ship was arriving.

Thousands were coming ashore. More and more were arriving sick with typhus. Something had to be done quickly. The immigrants had to be given shelter, and they had to be kept near the waterfront to prevent them from coming into the city and spreading their infection. The Mayor of Montreal, John E.

Mills, was also President of the Immigration Commission. He gave instructions for the hasty building of temporary wooden sheds. These were to serve as hospitals. They were built at Pointe St. Charles.

Three sheds were built at first. More were added, as the need spread. In the end 22 sheds were set up. They covered a long distance, apparently from the beach to a line somewhere east of Bridge Street. On June 17, 1847 news reached the Grey Nunnery that hundreds of Irish immigrants were dying unaided in the sheds by the waterfront.

The Superior of the Grey Nuns was Sister McMullen. She asked Sister Sainte-Croix to go with her, and went out to see what the situation was. They went into the sheds and saw the horrors with their own eyes. The Superior acted quickly. She at once drew up a report and sent it to the Emigrant Agent.

She asked for permission to have her nuns care for the sick at the sheds. The Emigrant Agent consented gratefully. She was authorized to act as she thought best. Sister McMullen went into the room at the convent where the sisters, young and old, had gathered for, their hour of recreation. It was the customary free and happy hour of the day.

She heard the lively conversation; peals of laughter were coming from one group or another. When she entered the room the sisters, as usual, stood to receive her. She took her seat in the circle. After a pause, she is reported to have addressed them with these words: "Sisters, I have seen a sight to-day that I shall never forget. I went to Pointe St.

Charles and found hundreds' of sick and dying huddled together. The stench emanating from them is too great for even the strongest constitution. The atmosphere is impregnated with it, and the air filled with the groans of the sufferers. Death in The Irish Stone It is a huge, rugged, uneven boulder. It came out of the bed of the St.

Lawrence River. Raised on its end, it stands ten feet high. Weather and the grime of more than a century have made it almost black. It looms up, massive and solemn, and broods mysteriously at night. It stands on a grassy island on Bridge Street, near the entrance to Victoria Bridge.

Heavy traffic rolls by on both sides. The spot is scarcely peaceful. Yet the boulder stands there to guard the bones of thousands of Irish immigrants who lie buried here and nearby. Anyone who crosses through the Bridge Street traffic, and comes close to the boulder, may look up at it and read the words carved there: TO PRESERVE FROM DESECRATION THE REMAINS OF 6000 IMMIGRANTS WHO DIED OF SHIP FEVER A.D. 1847-48 THIS STONE IS ERECTED BY THE WORKMEN OF MESSRS.

PETS, BRASSEY AND BETTS EMPLOYED IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE VICTORIA BRIDGE A.D. 1859. The question may be asked: why should" the workmen building Victoria Bridge have felt called upon to raise a monument to the Irish immigrants who had died more than 10 years earlier? What had really touched their hearts was the bones they had been unearthing as they dug the approaches to the new bridge. They had been disturbing the dead. And when they heard the story of how these poor people had died, they wished to do something to preserve their bones from further desecration.

This great boulder, which they had taken from the bed of the river in building one of the piers of the bridge, seemed a natural monument. In their own way they paid their tribute to the dead. The "Irish Stone," the simplest of Montreal's monuments, is in many ways the most impressive. The "ship fever" given as the cause of death was actually the typhus. It went under other common names, such as "hospital fever," or "jail fever." It was defined as "essentially a fever of the poor, ill-fed, and badly housed." The Irish immigrants were natural victims.

They were suffering from poverty; they were half-starved by the failure of the potato crop; and long ill-housed where they had lived, they were housed more miserably still as they crowded into Ireland's port towns to await a ship to North America. The typhus came to be known amung the Irish as the "ship fever" because so many fell ill on the vdyage over the Atlantic. Many of these immigrants must have had the typhus when they came aboard, for one of the insidious characteristics of the disease i3 a period of incubation, without symptoms, lasting as long as 12 days. Some rapacious shipowners ordered captains to set sail even though cases of typhus had September they had again taken their places in the sheds. A glimpse of the work is given by William Weir.

To him "the saddest sight" was "to see the nuns, at the risk of their own lives, carrying the sick women and children in their arms from the ships to the ambulances to be taken to the sheds." Every clergyman took his life in his hands in 1847, when he went to minister to the Irish immigrants in the fever-sheds at Point St. Charles. But for the Roman Catholic clergy the risks were greatest. For it was their duty to hear the confessions of the desperately ill and the dying. Hearing confessions in these crowded sheds, where two or three patients might be lying in one bed, meant that the ear of the priest had to be kept close to the mouth of the penitent, if the duty of receiving the confession in honorable confidence were to be carried out.

The priests did not shrink from a task so dangerous and revolting. Many caught the typhus from the gasping breath of the dying. The losses among the few English-speaking priests in Montreal was so heavy that a call for help was sent to New York to the Jesuits at Fordham. They responded at once. A band of Forcjham Jesuits came up to Montreal and went to work in the sheds.

Though most of the Irish immigrants were Roman Catholics, the Anglican clergy of the city were in the sheds, to give any help they could. One of them was Rev. Jacob Ellegood, later to be the founder and first rector of the Church of St. James the Apostle on St." Catherine Street. Rev.

Mark Willoughby, the first rector of Trinity Anglican Church (today Trinity Memorial Church) organised a group among his congregation. They went to work in the sheds until, one by one, they went down with typhus. Stone Threatened When the workmen constructing Victoria Bridge realized that the approach to the bridge was being made over the graves of the Irish dead, and when they set up the ten-foot boulder to mark their burial-place, they wished that stone to stand on that spot forever "while grass grows and water flows." But the boulder had been set up at an awkward spot. As Montreal grew and the use of the bridge increased the boulder seemed, to practical minds, to be standing in the way of progress. In 1900 the' Grand Trunk Railway decided to shift the stone several blocks away and set it up in St.

Patrick Park. The railway consulted nobody about what it planned to do. On December 21, 1900 people passing St. Patrick's Square in Pointe St. Charles were surprised to see that the big "Ship Fever Monument" had been placed there.

As The Gazette reported next day: "About eight o'clock yesterday morning six or seven carpenters started So work and creeled a platform en the.