Some monuments—notably, those honoring Confederate
heroes—are built in a relatively short period of time. Others—including this
one, which I photographed on a trip to Boston and its surrounding area in 2008—are
erected far later.
The Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s resulted
in an estimated 1 million deaths and another million who emigrated to escape
starvation, disease and grinding poverty. But those statistics don’t even begin
to convey the trauma suffered by those who endured it. It affected the destinies
of two countries—Ireland, which could never forget that a blight affected their
potatoes but their British overlords produced the starvation; and the United
States, where the Irish became the prototypical immigrant group.
For more than a century, the memory of that
catastrophe was an open wound, best left to be forgotten by those who lived
through it and their descendants. But in time, as the Irish carved out their
niche in the United States, they not only began to probe the causes and effects
of the famine, but also sought to commemorate it in tangible form, as in
statuary.
Canbridge's Irish Famine Monument, located on Cambridge Common
and cast by Maurice Carron, shows a family torn apart by the Great Hunger. It
was dedicated in 1997, on the 150th anniversary of the deadliest
year of the famine, by Irish President Mary Robinson.
Carved on the memorial’s base is the central lesson
learned about this massive tragedy: “"Never again should a people starve
in a world of plenty."
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