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Singing Father and Son Duo Honour Irish Immigrants Who Landed on Partridge Island

Randy and Peter Vail pay tribute to Partridge Island, New Brunswick and its role as a quarantine station that opened in 1785. The song portrays an Irishman whose last days were spent on the Island just offshore St. John, New Brunswick and who was buried there.

 

Brief History of Partridge Island

Opened as a quarantine station in 1785, 100 years before Ellis Island, an estimated three million people passed through the Partridge Island checkpoint on their way to a new life in the New World. The first quarantine hospital on the island opened in 1830.

When the quarantine station closed in 1941, thirteen hospitals and six graveyards had been established.

Gloomy Partridge Island, New Brunswick © Barbara Dickson

Partridge Island Today

Today, the only way to visit the 24-acre parcel of land is by boat. A breakwater connecting the island to the mainland controls the power of the Bay of Fundy currents and tides but is not accessible to pedestrians.  In fact, access to the federally owned island — via the breakwater or by sea — is forbidden, with trespassers subject to penalty.

Equally as sad, the only way to get a glimpse of the isle is through a pair of binoculars from the mainland – ironically, from a new Irish Memorial erected at the foot of Water Street.

It would make sense to visit the Memorial where the Irish landed, where they were quarantined, where they died. The Quarantine Station at Grosse Ile in the St. Lawrence northeast of Quebec City has dedicated the entire island to remembering the dead Miramichi, New Brunswick also has dedicated its historic Middle Island to Irish immigration. 

 

Why not Partridge Island, too?