Québec City and Grosse Île

[the_siobhan]

So now I know why they tell you not to fly when you have a cold. I can't say I recommend the experience.

Last weekend I went to Québec City with BC. Our hotel was right outside the fortifications for the old city. I was surprised by how small it is, maybe a mile across. Anyway, it's very pretty with lots of little shops and restaurants and parks and horse-drawn tours. And fortunately for me, caters to English-speakers pretty well because my French is non-existant.

		The view from our hotel. You can see the old city wall just down the street.
		Main street through the old city.

The actual purpose of the trip was to go to Grosse Île. For those of you not up on your Canadian history, it's an island situated in the St Lawrence River about an hour east of Québec City, and it was the port of entry into Canada for over 100 years. The story of the place is really fascinating if you're into the history of medicine because it was intially built during the time when "humours" and "miasmas" were the popular disease theories. They didn't understand how contagion worked, so they weren't seperating the sick from the quarantined and many people who arrived healthy often carried diseases into the cities after their quarantine was over.

		View from the dock. That's the "second-class" hotel you can see on the shore.
		This used to be the housing for nurses.

By the time the facility closed in the 1930s, they understood how germs worked. Healthy people were housed in hotels well away from the hospitals. They had developed a sophisticated screening process complete with a decontamination centre for people heading into quarantine. Everybody was vaccinated before leaving the island.

		Luggage waiting for decontamination.
		The decon tanks. Essentially giant autoclaves.
		Galvanized showers for decontaminating people. Their clothes were collected and deconned while they were in the shower.
		The "red room" for smallpox suffers. (Apparently protection from UV light reduces the severity of smallpox lesions.)

A major part of the tour is the Irish Memorial. Something like 500,000 Irish arrived during the great famine, many of them suffering from typhus communicated by lice on the cramped overcrowded ships. (We got a horrific description of typhus courtesy of one of the tour guides. Holy shit, and I thought smallpox was terrifying.) The facilities on the island were completely overwhelmed and many died.

		The memorial
		Andrew Holmes, BC's great-great-great grandfather and the reason for our visit.
		Celtic cross overlooking the St Lawrence

I'm really glad to got to go, it was fascinating stuff if a little depressing. We found a number of memorials in town from the Irish immigrants thanking Québec for taking them in in their hour of need. There is also a sizable population of Québécois with Irish names because their ancestors were orphans taken in by local families. (Our former PM Brian Mulroney as an example.)

And as our tour guide pointed out, it really puts into persepective the measly 25,000 Syrians refugees Canada is taking in.