Grosse Ile, August 9th, 1847: One priest attending the fever-stricken emigrants has been on his feet for five days.
Father Bernard McGauran, a Sligo man ordained recently in Quebec, caught typhus but recovered and has returned to serve on the quarantine island.
Father McGauran reports to his archbishop that he has just spent five hours on one of the moored ships administering the sacraments to 100 people. While he and another priest were on the ships, people lay dying in the island hospital without the sacraments.
"I have not taken off my surplice today; they are dying on the rocks and on the beach, where they have been cast by the sailors who simply could not carry them to the hospitals. We buried 28 yesterday, 28 today, and now (two hours past midnight) there are 30 dead whom we will bury tomorrow. I have not gone to bed for five nights."
The spectacle, he continues, is heart-rending. "Once these hapless people are struck down by this strange malady, they lose all mental and physical powers and die in the most acute agony. We hardly give anyone Holy Communion because we do not have the time . . . I am not at all afraid of the fever. I have never felt happier than in my actual state. The Master Whom I serve holds me in His all-powerful Hand." But Father McGauran's legs are beginning to bother him.
A captain remarks to Father Taschereau that it would be more humane to send a battery of artillery from Quebec to sink the ships than to let those people die in such an agonising manner. Many who were healthy on reaching port have contracted disease while cooped up with the dying and the dead.
"How can we wish them health," asks Father Taschereau, "when all breathe the foul air of the between decks, walk on flooring covered with muck; consider the unwholesome food and dirty water they take for their meals. Most of them have for a bed the boards or a few filthy wisps of straw . . . How many more after a month and a half of the crossing are wearing the same clothes and the same shoes they had when they came on board, and which they have not taken off day or night?
"I have seen people whose feet were so stuck to their socks that I could not anoint them."
Among the helpers willing to enter the fever-ridden holds is Father Hubert Robson, who declares: "I will give my life if I must for those unfortunates". In the Canadian summer heat, he goes down into the holds where, walking ankle-deep in slime, he loads the diseased on his shoulders and carries them to the hospital.
Two Anglican and four Roman Catholic priests, including Father Robson, lose their lives ministering to the sick and the dying.