• Journal, September 1847
    Another potato harvest gone to waste. This is the third bad harvest in a row. At first we didn’t understand why our crops were failing, but soon Papa came home from the market and told us about a disease called Blight, transferred here on imported potatoes.
    The first time Blight hit our small plot of land, Mama noticed some dark, shrivelled areas on the leaves. She said when she touched them they felt cold, wet, slimy, and they smelled rotten. She told Papa about it and Papa said they would be fine. On harvest day we dug up the potatoes and they looked perfectly healthy, so we put them in storage. We kept a few out for dinner, but when Mama cut them open, she gasped. All of them ,every single one, was rotten from the inside out, the white insides covered in spreading spots and tendrils of dark brown, squishy, smelly rotten stuff. Out of the whole crop, scarcely a dozen escaped the wrath of the Blight. We went hungry that year, Mama, Papa, my two younger sisters and I. Our landlord was kind and said we could stay despite the fact we couldn’t pay our rent, this time. When our second crop failed, he gave us one last chance.
    Last year the British Government had corn imported from the United States to keep the price of wheat down, so we at least a small chance of getting food. But this year there was a change in government. This new government quit interfering, saying we were “just lazy”, and government interference would “only encourage the situation.” It makes me so angry. Just because we are of a different religion, they think they can walk all over us, treat us like dirt. They make us pay a tithe to a church we don’t even believe in. I even heard that some Irish servants have to use underground tunnels beneath the property so the ladies and gentlemen mustn’t see their “unclean, catholic faces.” I don’t understand how they can be so discriminative. We are all human, are we not?

    Journal, Late September 1847
    My youngest sister, Cadence, has passed away. I cannot explain the extent of the grief I am feeling right now. It is as though my heart has been crudely ripped from my chest. I feel there is a part of me missing, never to be reclaimed, not ever. I cannot even write without trembling. What if Claire is next? Or Mama, or Papa, or me? We are all looking gaunter than usual, and we can feel our energy slipping away bit by bit every day.
    We have been unable to pay our rent for some time, without our potato crops, and our landlord has sadly informed us that we must leave. No potatoes, no food, no money, no home. I overheard Mama speaking to Papa, asking him how they would ever support Claire and me; I hadn’t heard Papa’s response, then the next day Papa went to town for the whole day. He returned in the evening bearing four tickets for a ship bound for Quebec in less than a week. If Cadence were here, there would be five.




    Journal, October 1847
    We are on the trip to Canada. When people started calling them “”Coffin Ships”, well, it wasn’t very encouraging. As we were boarding our “”Coffin Ship”, my twelve year old sister Claire shakily took mine and mother’s hand and looked up at me with big, scared eyes. All I could do was smile down at her, hoping it would console a little. I don’t it did, much.
    Our quarters are terrible, cramped, filthy, smelly. Too many people are crammed into the small bowels of the ship, and more grow sicker by the day, all dying within a day after their symptoms start. And the rats. There are so many rats down in our little room. I hear them scampering around above us, and running along the walls, their little clawed paws clicking on the wood. They don’t seem scared of us, and I’m no longer afraid of them, though I woke up once to see a huge rat gnawing on the fingers of a little boy who had died in the night. That image has stayed with me for weeks, permanently burned into my darkest memories.

    Journal, Mid-October 1847
    I often wonder why God has to take our loved ones us, especially when they have the rest of their lives to live and families and children to care for. Don’t we need our parents more than He does?
    In the last few weeks we have lost both Mama and Papa to that terrible disease that torments everyone around us, torturing them for long, long hours before they finally succumb and breathe their last. As soon as Papa began displaying the symptoms I’d seen so many times in the people around me – powerful, gut-wrenching stomach cramps, explosive diarrhea, vomiting, and dehydration – I knew he was on his way. Mama, Claire and I stayed by his side every second of his last moments. We only left to fetch water and food to make his excruciating pain a little more bearable, or to wash his soiled clothing. We all cried without shame when he let out his hoarse, rattling breath in a last sigh, almost seeming to sound contented. We three had stood on the deck, Mama hugging me close to her side and I holding Claire close to me, and watched Papa’s linen-wrapped body slide into the ocean.
    Barely a week had gone by than Mama too fell ill with the same symptoms. Claire and me tried our best to be strong by Mama’s side, and comfort her along the way, and when she, too, passed on, we again cried shamelessly. This time it was just me and Claire standing on the deck, watching the sailors lift her wrapped-up body on the board over the rail. We watched her slide out of our sight forever. I flinched when the sound of the splash of Mama’s body hitting the water reached my ears. Neither Mama nor Papa would ever see a true, honourable burial. Neither me nor Claire were to see their faces again. Tears ran down our cheeks as we hugged each other close. It was just us two now. Mama and Papa were gone.
    I prayed to God I wouldn’t lose Claire, too.



    Journal, Late November 1847
    We have finally reached Canada. Perhaps not the Canada I had in mind, but we are here, together.
    It was early morning when the ship was stopped off the coast of a small island called Grosse-Ille. Claire and I were barely awake when we realized the fierce back and forth, side to side motion of the waves had almost dissipated. I opened my eyes to see almost everyone else was up top, except us. I shook Claire awake and we both climbed up to the deck and ran to the railing. W stared out at the land. It was Canada. We were finally in Canada. But I didn’t understand why we were stopped so far from land. I looked up; the ship was flying a yellow flag. I didn’t understand what that meant either. I was to find out later that it meant there were sick people aboard.
    We both stared jovially out at the land, the lushness of it, the greenness of it. Green was such a beautiful change from the brown of our cramped quarters and the blue of the rolling sea. We stood and stared until we were pulled away and told to join the line. We reluctantly did as we were told, and the line seemed to move all too slowly. I wanted to go back and gaze out at the land. I watched the proceedings at the front of the line. A man, or woman, would step up to a big desk, and the man behind the desk would bark out, “Tongue!” and the person would show him their tongue and he would either say “Fur!” or “Clean!” and the person was waved to one side of the ship to head off the side into a waiting boat, or waved over to the other side to stand and wait. The waiting ones seemed completely relieved, but the ones leaving seemed devastated and afraid. I asked the man ahead of me what was going on and he answered, “Ye got the fur, ye got the Cholera and ye gotta go live on that wee island there. It’s quarantine it is.”
    Suddenly the line seemed to be moving all too quickly. The man stepped forward, the one behind the desk said, “Tongue!” and the man showed him his tongue. “Fur!” was called out and the man went over the side into the boat. Then it was my turn. I gulped and when he shouted, “Tongue!” I opened my mouth and he inspected it. The seconds seemed to slow down. Then he shouted, “Clean!” and I was waved over to the right. I was relieved. Then came Claire’s turn. She glanced at me anxiously and opened her mouth. I stared, praying, praying she would be clean. "Fur!" came the terrible shout, and Claire stared over at me with tears in her eyes. Then she turned and made her way to the other side and the boat, shoulders trembling with small sobs.
    I stared at her, then out past Grosse-Ille to Quebec. I could go to Quebec, live a fullfilling life. But... Claire had already dissapeared over the side when I looked back across the deck. I gazed back at the land, then, call me foolish, raced across the ship to the other side, threw myself over, and climbed down the ladder as quickly as I could. I found Claire and sat in the vacant spot beside her. She looked up at me with those big, shining eyes of hers. "But... You're clean..." and I answered, "What's being clean when you're not there with me?" and I hugged her tighter than I ever had.
    I write this by candlelight on Grosse-Ille. Claire has already shown the symptoms of Cholera. I will lose her soon.
    Yes, I could be in Quebec right now, but right now we are together, and that is all I care about.