As Professor McGowan recounts: I am here at Queenston Heights on the Niagara peninsula. Behind me the Niagara River meanders its way now past the cataracts and flows gently into Lake Ontario. It was a significant spot in the 1840s for Irish Famine migrants, because many from the Strokestown estate of Major Denis Mahon made their home here after their treacherous and sometimes horrendous journey from Ireland in Black 47. A number of Roscommon migrants came here to work on the Welland canal systems, and made their homes here in Queenston, including Mary and Patrick O’Connor, and Thomas Brennan. It was from close to this spot that Thomas Brennan probably committed a dastardly deed: the murder of Patrick O’Connor and Mary O’Connor in 1848. He bludgeoned Patrick O’Connor with a hammer; strangled and then disrobed Mary O’Connor; and threw them over the escarpment. And, in fact, he did the same thing with their son John, but he survived to tell the tale. Later, in the court of assizes, it was many Roscommon Famine refugees who made their testimony against Thomas Brennan. He was convicted, and hanged not very far from here in St. Catharines in the fall of 1848. So Queenston Heights is a very historic place, not just in terms of Canadian history but also Irish history, and that great diaspora that took place in 1847 and 1848.
