By Timothy Sargeant  Posted October 18, 2023 5:04 pm Updated October 18, 2023 5:05 pm

Montreal’s Irish community is celebrating what amounts to them like a seismic transfer of land, historically speaking.

The Anglican Diocese of Montreal is ceding the territory surrounding “Black Rock,” the site of a mass Irish grave on Bridge Street, to the Montreal Irish Monument Park Foundation.

The change in ownership allows the non-profit foundation to start raising funds to eventually build a memorial park dedicated to the 6,000 Irish immigrants who were buried in 1847 at Black Rock, a large engraved stone.

“This piece of land of on which the Black Rock sits was always very crucial to the development of our memorial space,” Fergus Keyes, president of the Montreal Irish Monument Park Foundation, told Global News.

The mass grave site, marked by the Black Rock monument is in the area below Bridge Street, the Réseau express métropolitain (REM ) line and property owned by Hydro-Quebec.