President Mary McAleese has described the story of Toronto's reception of more than 38,000 Irish immigrants in 1847 as an important glimpse into the forgotten story of Protestants who suffered in the Famine and a challenge to prosperous countries today.
The President yesterday opened Ireland Park, a memorial to the 1,100 people who died during the arrival of Irish immigrants at a time when Toronto's population was only 20,000.
"You had a tiny city, a small city, overwhelmed in a very short period of time, utterly and absolutely overwhelmed and their response was the most remarkable, loving Christian response you could have imagined. They opened their hearts, they sacrificed themselves, they helped many of those 38,000 to recover from illness, to go on to live good lives," she said.
Earlier, Mrs McAleese attended an open-air concert at St Paul's Catholic School, in a disadvantaged district once dominated by Irish immigrants and now home to children from more than 40 countries. The children, few of whom had any Irish roots, played the tin whistle and fiddle and a steel band played Amhrán na bFhiann.
The President went on to St James' Cemetery, where more than 300 Irish Protestant Famine victims are buried in a common grave. The register records their names and ages, including Ann Smith (20), Elizabeth Ward (16), William Graham (4) and Jane Henry (5 months).
"We're very familiar with the Famine as a story of the deaths of a million Irish Catholics and the emigration of many more. But the story of the Protestant victims of the Famine is a smaller story and it's not so well known but it's uniquely captured here in Toronto," Mrs McAleese said.
"They travelled on the same ships, they arrived in the same conditions, they met the same deaths and they went on to the same future, those who survived. But they met here a place where Catholics and Protestants worked together respectfully, worked in their service, helped them to live if they could and helped them to die as best they could."
After a reception on board the Naval Service flagship LE Eithne, Mrs McAleese opened Ireland Park in a ceremony watched by thousands on video screens in a nearby park.
She said that the monument carries an important contemporary message: "It's very important to remind ourselves, those of us who are comfortable, those of us who are cosy, those of us who are prosperous, that we still have the same kind of moral responsibility that the people here faced in May of 1847 when they were confronted with the downstream consequences of cataclysmic famine. And they responded instantly, without questioning, with complete moral responsibility for the problem. We are faced with that same issue on our planet in our day and the question then has to be raised as to whether we face it with the same immediate sense of moral responsibility. And that, I think, is a very important question," she said.