Designing memory: Montreal Irish Monument Park in Sketching Stories

In a new episode of Sketching Stories, landscape architect Marie-Ève Parent shares the vision behind the Montreal Irish Monument Park—an ambitious project that transforms a historically charged but overlooked site into a living landscape of remembrance, resilience, and welcome.

At the centre of the design is the Black Rock, a 30-tonne stone marking the mass grave of nearly 6,000 Irish immigrants who died of typhus in 1847. For over 160 years, the rock stood alone—surrounded by traffic, industry, and infrastructure.

Today, it becomes the heart of a commemorative agora, encircled by terraced steps, a sky-reflecting pool, and a corten steel wall perforated with 6,000 Celtic crosses.

This is not a static monument, but an active space: a belvedere shaped like a ship’s prow looks toward Ireland; fragments of landscape evoke the barracks where survivors once stayed; and a museum pavilion anchors the site within a wider network of memory that extends across the Atlantic.

Designed in close collaboration with the Montreal Irish Monument Foundation, the project is part of the international Great Famine Way and repositions a site of loss as a civic threshold—visible from the REM, from the bridge, and from the future.

Watch the full episode of Sketching Stories to see how design becomes dialogue across generations.