Irish Montreal

Homes, Goose Village

Jerusalem is built as a city

Strongly compact.

It is there that the tribes go up

The tribes of The Lord.

We left ship for land at Bonsecours
The little city shimmering with fever
A hundred suns reflected on tin roofs.
Yet angels welcomed us
And far and up away we saw a cross.

Spring flood in Griffintown.

Where we began, the land was so bog low
It flooded with the snow melt every spring.
Yet generation by generation, we have climbed toward the cross, always in our sight.
Block by block, sometimes with full barrow, against snow, sometimes on our knees.
Past better shops, universities, art museums, widening areas of green.

Until finally last fall we made the summit.
The city looked lovely below us,
More beautiful than we remember.
But around us,
We discovered only graves, as far as eye could see.  

- Stephen K. Roney

Children, Goose Village, 1910.