A GROUP of Irish Canadians are seeking to erect a memorial stone cross to 1,400 victims of the Irish Famine who died at Kingston port on Lake Ontario between 1846 and 1847.
The dead, most of whose bodies were carried from the coffin ships, were buried in a mass grave near the city's port, close to the Kingston General Hospital.
The remains and an angel of mercy monument were removed to a suburban graveyard in the 1960s to make way for an extension to the hospital.
Now a group of Canadians, mostly with Irish origins, are intent on raising a celtic cross on the site of the original grave.
Mr Tony O'Loughlin, of the Irish Famine Commemoration Project in Kingston, said the immigrants travelled to Canada in large numbers, reaching 2,500 a week in 1847, on lumber ships returning from the British Isles.
At least 1,000 died, mostly from typhus on board the ships, and at least 400 others, including inhabitants of Kingston who contracted the disease from the immigrants, also died and were buried in the mass grave.
Mr O'Loughlin, who is visiting Belfast, said as many as 90,000 Irish immigrants arrived in Canada on the ships, passing through Grosse Isle at Kingston, before travelling further into the country or south into the US.