Port of Quebec, Grosse Île

The Batkes entered the Port of Québec on July 28, 1912.  The receiving station for the Port of Québec was Grosse Île at the time.  An excerpt about Grosse Île follows:

"The quarantine station on Grosse Île, an island located in the middle of the St. Lawrence river, 48 km downstream from Québec, was established by colonial authorities in 1832, in response to reports that new immigrants had various contagious diseases. With cholera outbreaks in 1832 and 1834, and a deadly typhus epidemic in 1847-1848, thousands of new immigrants were quarantined on the island, with thousands eventually perishing. The victims of the latter epidemic were mainly Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine. This period of virulent epidemics came to an end only after another outbreak of cholera in 1854.

"At the time of Confederation in 1867, the Canadian government formulated a comprehensive policy on immigration and settlement, requiring the establishment of a reliable, efficient quarantine station. Dr. Frederick Montizambert was in charge of establishing modern facilities at the Grosse Île quarantine station, where he acted as medical superintendent from 1869 to 1899.  As fewer people immigrated to Canada as a result of the First World War (1914-1918) and the Great Depression (1930s), and knowledge of microbiology and the treatment of contagious diseases was advanced, the hospital on Grosse Île was reduced to treating minor childhood infections such as diphtheria, chicken pox and measles. New international health agreements stated that people infected with these diseases no longer had to be quarantined and serious infections such as cholera, typhus and smallpox could be successfully treated at the Parc Savard Hospital in Quebec, founded in 1907. The quarantine station on Grosse Île was closed in 1937."

Quarantine And Public Health: The Changing Role of Grosse Île, by André Sévigny, Historian, September 1995.