Famine and Commemoration, 1909–2017: Sites and Dynamics of Memory

In September 2006 I began a semester at Concordia University as Peter O’Brien Visiting Scholar, thanks to the warm hospitality of Michael Kenneally and Rhona Richman Kenneally. Soon after my arrival, Michael arranged for me to visit Grosse Île and with a very special tour guide, Marianna O’Gallagher. At the end of my visit she presented me with a copy of her publication Grosse Île: Gateway to Canada (1984) inscribed as follows: “souvenir d’une belle journée dans la presence de nos ancêtres.” And with characteristic thoughtfulness, she sent a copy to my mother, the late Jo Kelleher, in Mallow, County Cork, who shared Marianna’s love of history and commitment to the significance of histories of place. When I was invited to give this memorial lecture, I looked again at Marianna’s inscription and decided to respond to its invitation to consider the significance of ancestors, and, as a scholar of the Great Irish Famine since the early 1990s, to reflect in a more explicitly personal register than hitherto on the familial dynamics of Famine commemoration and social memory.