Partridge Island (Saint John County) | view more tourist attractions

Partridge Island (Saint John County) Remnants of a building and a Celtic cross commemorating Irish immigrants dead of typhus Partridge Island is a Canadian island located in the Bay of Fundy off the coast of New Brunswick on the west side of the mouth of the Saint John River and Saint John Harbour. The island was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1974. It is also a provincial historic site. It lies within the city of Saint John's Inner Harbour. Partridge Island is the site of the first pest house and quarantine station in Canada, established for this purpose as early as 1785 [the Quarantine Station was established by the Saint John Royal Charter of 1785, (which also set aside the island for use as a navigational aids station and a military post) and its first use as a Quarantine Station was not until as early as 1816. The first hospital was not built until 1830.] It received its largest influx of immigrants in the 1840s during the Great Famine, known as the "Irish Potato Famine", when a shortage of potatoes occurred because of potato blight striking Ireland's staple crop, causing millions to starve to death or otherwise emigrate, mainly to North America. During the famine, some 30,000 immigrants were processed by the island's visiting and resident physicians, with 1196 dying at Partridge Island and the adjacent city of Saint John during the Typhus epidemic of 1847. During the 1890s there were over 78,000 immigrants a season being examined or treated by the resident physician, but there were few deaths. A memorial to the Irish immigrants of the mid-1840s was set up on the island in the 1890s but by World War One it had deteriorated. In 1926 the Saint John City Cornet Band approached Saint John contractor George McArthur who agreed to lead a campaign to build a suitable monument. The Celtic Cross memorial to the Irish dead of 1847 was dedicated in 1927. This was restored and rededicated in 1985. In the early and mid-1980s the Saint John Jewish Community, the Loyal Orange Lodge, the Partridge Island Research Project (Harod E. Wright), and the Partridge Island & Harbour Heritage Inc., a company that was registered in 1988 and dissolved in 2004 http://www.charityfocus.ca/en/pages/charitysummary.aspx?charityid=107820706RR0001 erected memorials to the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish immigrants buried in one of the six island graveyards, as well as a monument to all of the Irish dead from 1830 to the 1920s.