01-26-2007, 07:49 PM
History of an Irish village to be engraved in stone
MIKE BOONE, The Gazette
Published: Friday, January 26, 2007
The whine of fiddles and the thump of bodhran will echo around Oscar Peterson Hall in a fundraiser tomorrow night, but the beneficiaries won't hear the Celtic cacophony.
They're dead and buried in St. Columban. The village, near St. Jerome, was home to one of Canada's first rural Irish communities.
Among the early 19th-century St. Columbans was Patrick Keyes. His great-great-grandson is the primary mover behind the St. Columban Cemetery Restoration Project.
"He was one of the original settlers there and seems to have been part of the Rebellion of 1837," says Fergus Keyes, 58, a Montreal security consultant, adding, with a chuckle, "but on the side of the Patriotes."
I had some familiarity with the history of the Irish in Quebec: Grosse Ile, Griffintown, the Black Rock. But the story of this rural community was a new one on me.
Led by Father Patrick Phelan, a group of families who traced their roots to country counties in Ireland left Montreal in 1835 and settled on a tract of Sulpician land at the foothills of the Laurentians. In addition to Keyes, there were Caseys, Ryans, Phelans, Brophys, Monaghans, O'Mearas, Mooneys, McGarrs, Walshes, O'Rourkes ... and apologies to any St. Columban descendants whose ancestors' names I've omitted.
At peak population, there were 900 families in St. Columban. By the turn of the 20th century, that number had dwindled to 325 and continued to drop as those who had wearied of trying to wring subsistence out of the hard soil moved on to Montreal, Kingston, Ottawa or New England.
When Keyes became interested in genealogy, he and his Internet-savvy son created a website - www.stcolumban-Irish.com - and began to correspond with other descendants.
"All these people started coming out of the woodwork," Keyes says, "from as far away as Texas."
In tracing their family histories, St. Columban descendants have been helped by a unilingual francophone historian and celtophile. Claude Bourguignon (who will be co-host of the fundraiser, with Keyes) lives in St. Columban and has written Saint-Colomban: Une epopee irlandaise, a history of the village's antecedents.
"He's been at it 30 years," Keyes says, "and he's saved everything: land records, baptismal certificates, pictures."
In October 2005, Keyes led a group of descendants on a visit to the village, which is now a francophone bedroom community of 8,000, rechristened St. Colomban. They discovered that tombstones had been removed from their ancestors' cemetery.
"We saw them broken and thrown in the bushes behind the church," Keyes recalls. "We got a little angry, and that's how this started."
The cemetery restoration project has a fundraising goal of $25,000. The total was almost $8,000 when Keyes and I spoke this week, and the concert - with tickets priced at $30 in a venue that holds 520 - will move the St. Columban group closer to a proper memorial for their ancestors.
Keyes describes the concert tomorrow as a celebration of the Irish and all the people who came to Canada - and continue to come.
"Immigration sometimes gets a bad rap," he says, "but our country was built on it. Our story is no different than anyone else's. People come, they work hard and they hope their children will have a better life."
Remembering St. Columban: An Irish Journey takes place tomorrow at 8 p.m. at the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall, 7141 Sherbrooke St. W. Tickets, available at the door, are $30.
mboone@thegazette.canwest.com
MIKE BOONE, The Gazette
Published: Friday, January 26, 2007
The whine of fiddles and the thump of bodhran will echo around Oscar Peterson Hall in a fundraiser tomorrow night, but the beneficiaries won't hear the Celtic cacophony.
They're dead and buried in St. Columban. The village, near St. Jerome, was home to one of Canada's first rural Irish communities.
Among the early 19th-century St. Columbans was Patrick Keyes. His great-great-grandson is the primary mover behind the St. Columban Cemetery Restoration Project.
"He was one of the original settlers there and seems to have been part of the Rebellion of 1837," says Fergus Keyes, 58, a Montreal security consultant, adding, with a chuckle, "but on the side of the Patriotes."
I had some familiarity with the history of the Irish in Quebec: Grosse Ile, Griffintown, the Black Rock. But the story of this rural community was a new one on me.
Led by Father Patrick Phelan, a group of families who traced their roots to country counties in Ireland left Montreal in 1835 and settled on a tract of Sulpician land at the foothills of the Laurentians. In addition to Keyes, there were Caseys, Ryans, Phelans, Brophys, Monaghans, O'Mearas, Mooneys, McGarrs, Walshes, O'Rourkes ... and apologies to any St. Columban descendants whose ancestors' names I've omitted.
At peak population, there were 900 families in St. Columban. By the turn of the 20th century, that number had dwindled to 325 and continued to drop as those who had wearied of trying to wring subsistence out of the hard soil moved on to Montreal, Kingston, Ottawa or New England.
When Keyes became interested in genealogy, he and his Internet-savvy son created a website - www.stcolumban-Irish.com - and began to correspond with other descendants.
"All these people started coming out of the woodwork," Keyes says, "from as far away as Texas."
In tracing their family histories, St. Columban descendants have been helped by a unilingual francophone historian and celtophile. Claude Bourguignon (who will be co-host of the fundraiser, with Keyes) lives in St. Columban and has written Saint-Colomban: Une epopee irlandaise, a history of the village's antecedents.
"He's been at it 30 years," Keyes says, "and he's saved everything: land records, baptismal certificates, pictures."
In October 2005, Keyes led a group of descendants on a visit to the village, which is now a francophone bedroom community of 8,000, rechristened St. Colomban. They discovered that tombstones had been removed from their ancestors' cemetery.
"We saw them broken and thrown in the bushes behind the church," Keyes recalls. "We got a little angry, and that's how this started."
The cemetery restoration project has a fundraising goal of $25,000. The total was almost $8,000 when Keyes and I spoke this week, and the concert - with tickets priced at $30 in a venue that holds 520 - will move the St. Columban group closer to a proper memorial for their ancestors.
Keyes describes the concert tomorrow as a celebration of the Irish and all the people who came to Canada - and continue to come.
"Immigration sometimes gets a bad rap," he says, "but our country was built on it. Our story is no different than anyone else's. People come, they work hard and they hope their children will have a better life."
Remembering St. Columban: An Irish Journey takes place tomorrow at 8 p.m. at the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall, 7141 Sherbrooke St. W. Tickets, available at the door, are $30.
mboone@thegazette.canwest.com