McCord show traces heritage from Auld Sod to new world


By MIKE BOONE, The GazetteMarch 20, 2009

From: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Life/McCord+show+traces+heritage+from+Auld+world/1408144/story.html

The parade will be over in a few hours on Sunday, but as befits a community that traces its roots to Nouvelle France, the celebration of the Irish lasts a bit longer.

Being Irish O'Quebec opens today at the McCord Museum. The exhibit runs to April 4.

You've got two weeks to take in 350 years of history, beginning with one Tec Aubry, a coureur des bois who married a fille du roi and became a farmer.

"Historians always hesitate to say 'the first,' " historian Lorraine

O'Donnell said. "But he is the first identifiably Irish person we've found in our research."

Aubry was a Nouvelle France version of O'Brennan. His original given names were Tadhg Cornelius. The spellings evolved, O'Donnell said, from French settlers trying to pronounce Gaelic renderings

O'Donnell is the guest curator of the exhibit. She is a researcher and coordinator of the new Quebec English-speaking communities network at Concordia University's school of extended learning. It is affiliated with the Canadian Institute for Research on Linguistic Minorities, based in Moncton.

O'Donnell, a McGill Ph.D, has spent 10 years studying Quebec's English-speaking communities, with a focus on history and heritage. She was hired in mid-2007 by the

McCord Museum, which is mounting the exhibit in co-operation with the St. Patrick Society, celebrating its 175th anniversary this year, and the Irish Protestant Benevolent Society, which is 150 years old.

In curating the exhibit, O'Donnell worked closely with Pierre Wilson, who runs the Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec in St. Laurent. Wilson helped O'Donnell's ideas about the history of the Irish community become "more museological."

That means layman-friendly. You don't have to be a historian - or, indeed, a son or daughter of the auld sod - to find artifacts of interest in Being Irish O'Quebec.

The emphasis is on accessibility. The exhibit presents information to which visitors will be able to relate.

The challenge, O'Donnell says, was to tell a "huge story" about immigrants who became involved in every aspect and level of society in a vast province. Quebec has had rural and urban Irish - farmers, tradesmen, professionals.

Components of the exhibit include biographies, ranging from such well-known Irish Quebecers as Thomas D'Arcy McGee and songstress La Bolduc (née Mary Rose-Anna Travers) to Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, who was Louis-Joseph Papineau's speechwriter and all-around fixer.

There are also "story stations," which will look at the Irish presence in various regions, from the quarantine sheds of Grosse Île to Griffintown to Gaspé to St. Colomban, the village 100 kilometres northwest of Montreal, which had a large influx of Irish immigrants during the 1820s.

Several hundred objects on display range from what O'Donnell describes as "homely, simple, typical things" to a monstrance, an ornate vessel used to display consecrated hosts, from St. Patrick's Basilica.

O'Donnell is a Montrealer whose paternal family tree includes great-grandparents who immigrated from Ireland in the 19th century. Her mother is Québécoise de souche. "I spend half my time in Quebec City, and they have les francophones verts, people with red hair and freckles who don't speak a word of English."

The Irish influence is detectable in Quebec fiddle music, the oral tradition of great storytelling, the evolution of the trade union movement ... even food.

Potato famine to poutine?

Being Irish O'Quebec runs to April 4 at the McCord Museum, 690 Sherbrooke St. W. Admission is $13, with discount rates for seniors, students and children. On the web: www.mccord-museum.qc.ca

mboone@thegazette.canwest.com