A recent issue of The St. Ignace News mentioned a planned pumpkin roll down Goudreau Hill. Frowning and scratching my head, I tried in vain to recall where this hill was located. Finally, after some phone calls, I learned this: St. Ignace is the victim of revisionist history. Or more to the point: Maloney Hill is. For Maloney is the former name of the site for the pumpkin roll.

How could this come about? The mighty Maloney with its three strong syllables so much a part of folklore. Maloney! the subject of stories, amusing or harrowing, that always began with the words, “There I was going up Maloney and...” or “There I was going down Maloney and ...” There was no need to mention the word “hill;” Maloney was a synonym for hill.

The Maloney name is not listed in the St. Ignace directory, but at one time there were Maloneys, well regarded and respected Maloneys, for a city does not name its premier hill by drawing a name from a hat. Maloneys lived and worked in St. Ignace, walked its paths and streets. They breathed the lilac-scented air of late May (or, sometimes, mid- July). Outdoors in winter, Maloneys saw their breaths. They lived, loved, laughed, and cried. They burped, hiccupped; may have suffered catarrh. Or even gout. In short, they actually existed; they were human. But it appears they did the unforgivable. With unthinkable audacity, they died out!

Having grown up on Church Street, atop Convent Hill, this revisionist history concerns me. Will Convent Hill become Church Hill? Not only would this be an affront to the dedicated nuns who for generations taught our young, but the name, Church Hill, would also elicit unintended thoughts of Winston, the war rooms, and World War II.

So, Maloney is gone. What’s next? I don’t want to alarm those living on Ellsworth Street, but there are no Ellsworths listed in the directory.

We must remember that old proverb: “The town that fudges its past, curdles its future.” Okay! that’s made up. But this is of the utmost truth: A historic St. Ignace name is now cast into the Pit of Oblivion, and the simple question is, “Why?”
Margaret Merriman
Marquette