proudly serving celts in north america since...

ISSUE 24 VOLUME 9 NOVEMBER 2015Proudly Serving Celts in North America Since 1991

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PHOTO: Melissa KnightMICHAEL D. HIGGINS the President of Ireland and his wife Sabina were warmly welcomed by about 400 guests at McCaw Hallin Seattle on Thursday, October 22. The couple were escorted into the reception by the Seattle Police Pipes and Drums.Pictured above with the president and his wife (L-R) Michael Shiosaki, Ed Murray, the Mayor of Seattle, President Higgins andSabina, Kathleen O’Toole, the Seattle Chief of Police, and (far right) Dan O’Toole. [Read more on pages 12, 13, 22]

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

JUSTIN TRUDEAU sworn into office as Canada’s new Liberal prime minister. He is picturedhere along with his wife Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau and their children Xavier, Ella-Grace andHadrien and Trudeau’s mother Margaret Trudeau as they walk to Rideau Hall with his futurecabinet to take part in a swearing-in ceremony in Ottawa on Wednesday, November 4,2015. The 43-year-old son of late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, became the second-youngest prime minister in Canadian history and he has Scottish roots on both sides of hisfamily tree. [Read more inside on page 10]

PHOTO: Chad HipolitoTRAGEDY IN TOFINO, B.C. – PREMIER Christy Clark greetsBritish consul general Rupert Potter following the sinking of awhale-watching cruise that claimed the lives of five Britonsand one Australian who remains missing. [More on page 2]

WIN FREE TICKETSWin a pair (2) of tickets to WinterHarp concert at St. Andrew’sWesley United Church, Vancou-ver on December 19th. (Seepage 5 for details). Entry by No-vember 28. Mark your entry: Win-ter Harp. Entries by e-mail only.Mark the name of the event onyour entry, including your nameand daytime telephone number.(Only one entry per person.)Send to: [email protected]

BRITISH PM SAYS BOMBLIKELY CAUSED RUSSIAN

AIRLINER CRASHPAGE 9

•NEW IRISH CONSULAR

APPOINTMENTS INCALGARY

PAGE 16•

EDMONTONWOLFE TONES GAA40TH ANNIVERSARY

CELEBRATIONPAGES 14 & 15

NOVEMBER 2015PAGE 2 www.celtic-connection.com

THE CELTIC CONNECTIONISSUE 24 VOLUME 9 - Established in 1991

#452 - 4111 Hastings Street, Burnaby, B.C. V5C 6T7Tel: (604) 434-3747 • www.celtic-connection.comMaura De Freitas - Publisher - • E-Mail: [email protected]

Catholine Butler - Advertising - • E-Mail: [email protected] Carpenter - Copy Editor • Ainsley Baldwin - Ad Production

Distribution: Arlyn Lingat • Allison Moore • Linda Robb • Frank Dudfield inSurrey • Neville Thomas in Burnaby & Coquitlam • Eifion Williams in Burnaby& Coquitlam • Laurie Lang in Coquitlam & Port Moody • Joanne Long in Mission• Bill Duncan in Maple Ridge • Nanci Spieker and Heather Murphy in Seattle• Oliver Grealish in Edmonton.Published 10 times per year. Unsolicited submissions welcome but will not bereturned. Please retain a copy for your files. Contents copyright 2015 The CelticConnection. Opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of the publisher butrather a reflection of voices within the community. All correspondence must include aname, address and telephone number.

Canada Post Canadian Publications Agreement 40009398

FRANK AND BRENDA Dudfield hold a copy of The Celtic Connection on a tower of an unrestoredarea of the Great Wall, in Gubeikou, near Beijing, China. During their three week visit to Chinain September, they took walks in Shanghai, Beijing, Xi’an visiting the Terracotta Warriors; amorning cruise on the River Li from Guilin; a four-day cruise on the Yangtze River and endingin Chengdu home of the Panda Research Centre, where there was a large InternationalVolkssport Olympiad. They said China is an amazing country with some great scenery, butvery crowded in the cities where no one has any regard to traffic regulations.

Five Britons dead after whale-watching boat sinksTOFINO, BC – Five Britons were killed when awhale-watching boat sank off the coast of BritishColumbia on Sunday, October 25.The boat carrying 27 people sanknear Tofino, a popular tourist areaon Vancouver Island, killing onewoman and four men. Officialssaid 21 people had been rescuedand one was still missing.The shocked survivors told rescuersthey could not believe how fast theirboat turned over and plunged them intothe frigid waters. So quickly, in fact, thatthe stunned owner of the Leviathan IIsaid the skipper did not even get off adistress call.But someone did manage to fire a flare,setting in motion a remarkable rescueeffort by fishermen and pleasure boatsthat prevented an even greater tragedy.The B.C. Coroners Service said thatthree victims were UK tourists, whiletwo others were Canadian residents whoretained British citizenship.They included David Thomas (50), andhis son, Stephen (18), from Swindon.

Stephen had Down’s syndrome.Jack Slater (76) lived in Toronto, On-tario, and Katie Taylor (29) lived inWhistler, B.C.The fifth victim was Nigel FrancisHooker (63) from Southampton.RCMP dive teams continued to searchfor a 27-year-old Australian man.The Canadian Transport Safety Boardbegan an investigation into what sankthe 20-metre vessel but the full inves-tigation is expected to take months.Leviathan II’s owner, Jamie Bray, saidhe could not believe the boat capsized.“Traumatised would be an appropriateword. Disbelief,” he said. “I think thewhole community has experienced thesame emotions.”Bray said the vessel had made the sametrip every day for 20 years without in-cident and that the skipper had 18years of experience.“We just don’t understand, and we

won’t know the answers until the Trans-portation Safety Board finishes their in-vestigation,” he said.Fishermen said the area is known foroccasional freak waves. Most of thetourists who were watching the sea li-ons did not have time to put on life jack-ets, although plenty were available.Some survivors grabbed them floatingin the sea.The rescuers said one of the crew fireda flare she found in the water. It wasspotted by fishermen from the indig-enous Ahousaht First Nation a few milesto the north, who set the radio wavesalight with a call for support. Boats im-mediately joined the rescue.The radio call was also picked up inTofino, and boats already at sea headedfor the rescue area. Those at the docksoon followed.B.C. Premier Christy Clark said shewas horrified and heartbroken when sheheard about the capsized boat but she’sproud of the way British Columbianscame together to help.“The Ahousaht First Nation, the peopleof Tofino, the people who know thiscoast so well, when there was a crisis,when there were lives at risk, people

stepped up and stepped in and savedlives,” Clark said, as she thanked thecommunity.The British consul general in Vancou-ver, Rupert Potter, was in Tofino to as-sist survivors who lost relatives.He shook hands with Clark and ex-pressed his thanks for the support heand the victims’ families have been re-ceiving.

PHOTO: Ken BrownSURVIVORS were in shock after being pulled from the waterby members of the Ahousaht First Nation and other boaters inthe area. A total of 21 people were saved, but five died whenthe whale-watching boat sank. One person remains missing.

RCMP officers on the dock at Tofino as they prepare to con-tinue searching for the remaining victim of the sinking of theLeviathan II.

“What always strikes me in these situa-tions is the bravery that people show,and that’s definitely been the case here,how they manage to continue copingwhen they’ve had such loss,” he said.Potter, who also visited survivors in hos-pital, said that several families of thevictims were travelling to the town fromthe UK. He described the response ofthe community in Tofino as “really re-markable.”

NOVEMBER 2015 PAGE 3www.celtic-connection.com

Beautiful Yuletide concertsfeature Celtic and Medieval music

VANCOUVER – This Christ-mas season form a new holi-day tradition and joinCaelestra for an evening ofbeautiful Yuletide music bothold and new.Featuring the heavenly voice oflyric soprano Lambroula MariaPappas, the Celtic flute ofMichelle Carlisle, and the songsof fantasy-folk songwriter BrittaCurkovic, Caelestra will take youon a journey back in time andaround the globe.With the five talented musicians per-forming in full medieval costume, richvocal harmonies, and music played onflute, harp, guitars, hand drums andcello, this concert will keep you capti-vated from beginning to end.Caelestra is a Canadian Medieval-Celtic folk band, founded by well knownCeltic flautist and singer Michelle Car-lisle; Vancouver songwriter, Celtic harp-ist, songwriter and composer BrittaCurkovic; and classically trained so-prano Lambroula Pappas.Joining them are the passionaterhythms of percussionist Sacha Levin,and the gorgeous cello lines of Spanishinspired cellist, Cyrena Huang.Caelestra will entertain you with jigs andreels, heart-wrenching airs and ballads,

sprightly renaissance tunes, and tradi-tional Celtic and Christmas music.With three concert dates to choose from– Friday, November 27 in Port Moody,Saturday, November 28 in Langley, andSunday, December 13 in New West-minster – and 50 percent of ticket salesgoing to charity, you’ll want to makesure not to miss this musical holidayexperience.Get full concert details, and purchaseyour tickets online now, atwww.Caelestra.com.

CAELESTRA features the heavenly voice of lyric sopranoLambroula Maria Pappas, the Celtic flute of Michelle Carlisle,and the songs of fantasy-folk songwriter Britta Curkovic. Join-ing them are the passionate rhythms of percussionist SachaLevin, and the gorgeous cello lines of Spanish inspired cellist,Cyrena Huang.

QUOTE OF THE MONTH

GUILT of course is not an emotionin the Celtic countries, it is simply away of life — a kind of gleefully pain-ful social anesthetic.

— A.L. Kennedy [1965- ]Alison Louise "A. L." Kennedy isa Scottish writer and stand-upcomedian. She is known for hercharacteristically dark tone, ablending of realism and fantasy.


BySTEVEEDGE

L

A wild month on the roadand some breathtakingly brilliant music

AST monthMargaret and Iflew east to Hali-fax and drove up

to Cape Breton for the 19th

annual Celtic ColoursFestival.This is an amazing event, staged indozens of venues all around NovaScotia’s famed island. Celtic mu-sicians and fans from all aroundthe world gather at the Gaelic Col-lege in St. Anne’s every night forthe Festival Club.Concerts take place each evening in avariety of community halls and theatres– and there are plenty of events duringthe day as well, including workshops oneverything from beginning fiddle toquilting, ceilidh dancing to photography,and Gaelic lessons to tree planting!Throw in some community meals, mu-seum visits, sailing excursions, tripsdown a mine, live CBC broadcasts, andopen mic jam sessions and you have astunning diversity of events.We were only there for 7 days out ofthe 10, but even then it was very hardto choose which concerts to see.Given that most of the venues are atleast an hour’s drive from St. Anne’s(near Baddeck) and there are so manytourist sites to visit (Cabot Trail,Louisbourg Fortress, Rita MacNeil’sTea House, Alexander Graham BellMuseum, Iona Highland Village, and theAcadian fishing village of Cheticamp,for example) this festival requires a lotof driving!We met up with my cousin Elaine andher husband Greg in Port Hastings fora fish cake supper in the firehall beforeheading over to Port Hawkesbury forthe opening night concert. What an ex-travaganza that was!Loreena McKennitt started thingsoff, playing harp, accordion and pianoand accompanied by Caroline Lavelleon cello and Brian Hughes on guitar.She usually has a bigger band, but thiswas just right. Spellbinding vocals andgorgeous arrangements; what a treatto hear her again.Bonny Swans, The Lady Of Shallot,Yeats’ Stolen Child, Bonny Portmore,Annachie Gordon...all very beautifuland atmospheric.The second half featured the StringSisters (Sweden’s Emma Hardelin,Scotland’s Catriona MacDonald, Nor-way’s Annbjorg Lien, Donegal’s LizDoherty, Chicago’s Liz Carroll, andKentucky’s Liz Knowles, backed byShooglenifty’s James MacIntosh ondrums and Conrad Ivitzky on bass,plus piano and guitar).They were joined by Lucy MacNeil –a seventh fiddler! – and dancer SabraMacGillivray. What a show they puton!!The next morning we had a meet andgreet breakfast at our motel in Baddeck,for a chance to chat with other mediaand presenters from Germany, Den-mark, USA, and across Canada.Then, we took the ferry over to Christ-mas Island to hear some fine Gaelic sing-ing from Cape Breton’s JoanneMacIntyre and her four teenage sons,

and Scotland’s Rachel Newton Trio,plus Cape Breton fiddle / piano fromKinnon & Betty Lou Beaton.We stopped at the pub next to Iona Vil-lage, and heard some wonderful fiddlingfrom Kenneth MacKenzie.At the end of his set he picked up theHighland bagpipes and proceeded todemonstrate that this is his preferredinstrument. What a player!We enjoyed a fine bowl of chowderthere too, and then set off toWagmatcook for Duelling Banjos fea-turing Old Man Luedecke and Ire-land’s We Banjo 3.Sunday began with a Pipers Ceilidh,starring Paddy Keenan on uilleannpipes and Scotland’s Fred Morrisonon Highland and Lowland pipes as wellas uilleann pipes. This man is a legend!Such a great piper and a marvellousentertainer too. Turns out he is a fre-quent visitor to Mount Vernon, so wereally must bring him to Vancouver oneof these days.Young Cape Bretonners TroyMacMaster (Natalie’s nephew) andKenneth MacKenzie (again) werealso in stellar form.After that we drove out to the far east:Louisbourg, to be precise, for a candle-lit concert in the fortress chapel, pre-ceded by a sumptuous salmon supperin the Hotel de la Marine, down by thefortress gate.It’s an incredible national monument,and it’s great to see it growing everyyear. They now produce their own spe-cial brand of rum in the fortress – re-ally enjoyed the rum cake dessert!!Just before the concert we gatheredoutside and were treated to an unex-pected and deafening firing of the for-tress cannon.Inside, and away from the cordite, themusic was sublime – a little hard tohear at times. No electricity and no am-plification, but lovely music from New-foundland’s Matthew Byrne,Cheticamp trio Les Zorvenants, andRachel Newton Trio – so songs inEnglish, French and Gaelic. And then along drive home.On Monday we attended a showcaseof Cape Breton performers over lunchin the Great Hall of The Clans at theGaelic College. Singer songwriterBuddy MacDonald, lowland piperBen Miller and fiddler AnitaMacDonald, and Nuallan – a trio ofpipers, including that man KennethMacKenzie again!We took some time off to exploreBaddeck on the sunny afternoon beforezooming off to Sydney suburbMembertou for Craic’n’Cabaretwith Paddy Keenan, PEI trio TheEast Pointers, Annbjorg Lien withVasen’s guitarist Roger Tallroth, andHalifax-based Irish duo Evans &Doherty.It’s an enormous venue inside a FirstNations community centre. I wish we’d

known about the restaurant on sitebeforehand...then we had another longdrive home in the dark.There was one final lunch and show-case for the media and presenters thenext morning – with Cape Breton gui-tarist /songwriter Decota MacNamarain particularly impressive form.Then, we set off to circumnavigate Brasd’Or Lake in a clockwise direction, des-tination Lower River Inhabitants, waydown in the SE corner of the island.We had to wait for the square dance tofinish aboard the Christmas Island ferrybefore crossing the water, and thendrove into the heaviest rain storm I’veever seen.It was like driving inside a car wash for80 kilometres! There was no shoulderon the road, and few places to pull over;they were past before I could see them.Anyhow, we made it all the way to BigPond and had a welcome cup of tea atRita MacNeil’s before continuing ourjourney.Another glorious seafood meal in St.Peter’s was followed by A Touch OfIrish, with Gino Lupari, Liz Dohertyand Fintan Vallely joined by Irish harp-ist Laoise Kelly, Cape Breton guitarwizard J.P. Cormier, Liz Knowles’fine trio Open The Door For Three,and Evans & Doherty.Plus three excellent young fiddlers fromIreland who have been studying withLiz Doherty. All the musicians got to-gether on the small stage for a rousing

finale, and then we drove back homealong the main highway. Thankfully, therain had stopped by then!The next day – our last one at the fes-tival – dawned bright and sunny, so wehit the Cabot Trail. The fall colours wereonly just starting to reach their peak,but it was a glorious drive.We stopped for a picnic on the beachnear Cheticamp (very windy, but sunny)and took heaps of photos along the trail.It’s a long road.We managed to find a restaurant at theend of the park and wolfed down somemore chowder before roaring off toSydney for our last concert. And whata finale for us!Open The Door For Three, Kim-berley Fraser, April Verch,Annbjorg Lien and Roger Tallroth,Denmark’s Harald Haugaard &Helene Blum, and American dancerNic Gareiss.They were all breathtakingly brilliant,and at the end all 14 musicians got to-gether for a few tunes. After anotherlong drive home we grabbed a few hourssleep, and drove back to Halifax in timefor our flight home.Celtic Colours broadcasts one showper day on video simulcast but wemissed Thursday’s as we were in tran-sit, and on Friday we were hosting theBeatles Night concert at The Rogue(another incredible concert, I hasten toadd) but we did manage to catch thefestival finale with The BarraMacNeils, J.P. Cormier, and Ricky

Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder onSaturday.It was all a bit of a blur, but what aweek! Filled with amazing scenery,stunning music, great food, and goodcompany.Many thanks to the organizers for in-viting us; we’d love to come back forthe 20th next October.I’ve put 100 or so photos up on theRogue website photo gallery and I’ll bespinning lots of tunes from the newly-acquired CDs on The Edge On Folkover the next few weeks.

•I’m writing this in our hotel room at Fish-erman’s Wharf in San Francisco.We flew down to catch Wake TheDead’s Day of the Dead concert atBerkeley’s Freight & Salvage venue.It’s an amazing place, in the theatre dis-trict, built and financed by communitydonations ($13 million!!) and a lot of loveand care.They have concerts every night, plusworkshops and music classes and jamnights featuring a wide range of rootsmusic stylesWTD is a seven-piece Celtic jam bandfocusing on the songs of the GratefulDead and other 60s rockers combinedwith trad. tunes from Ireland, Scotland,Quebec, and Galicia!It was a lot of fun, and I doubt anyonehas ever heard The Dead’s Dark Starsegueing into The Beatles’ And YourBird Can Sing, or heard uilleann pipesand mandolin and Celtic harp scorch-ing through such classics as WhiteRoom, China Cat Sunflower, WhiteRabbit, and the psychedelic romp ofThe Other One.Yes, it certainly has been a long andstrange trip this last few days / weeks!

•Tomorrow we sail beneath the GoldenGate Bridge and then fly home in timeto prepare for Friday’s concert withNewfoundland singer Sean McCann(of Great Big Sea) at St. James Hall.The following weekend we celebratethe release of Jocelyn Pettit’s sec-ond CD, Caravan, when she brings herextended band to The Rogue House onSaturday, November 14. (They are alsoplaying Brackendale Art Gallery on Fri-day, November 13, by the way).Jocelyn is a wonderful fiddler and com-poser who has come up through theranks of the North Shore Celtic En-semble, and who was a big hit at TheChieftains’ concert in Richmond a cou-ple of years ago.It’s so good to see her blossoming intoone of the country’s finest fiddlers andshe always plays with an infectioussmile on her face.We hope you’ll all come along and jointhe fun – and buy the CD!

•Later in the month we present GaryComeau, Tim Hearsey and ChrisNordquist, aka Cannery Row, withtheir powerful blend of Cajun and Blues-infused Roots Music (Friday, Novem-ber 20) and former Spirit of the Westsinger / bassist / accordionist LindaMcRae on November 27.Linda now lives in Nashville, and hernew CD, Shadow Trails, was produced

WAKE THE DEAD played an amazing concert of the Day ofthe Dead at Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage venue in San Fran-cisco, CA.

JOCELYN PETTIT celebratesthe release her latest CD Cara-van with her extended band atthe Rogue Folk Club on Satur-day, November 14. They alsoplay Brackendale Art Galleryon Friday, November 13.

[Continued next page]

SCOTS PIPER Fred Morrisonis a legend. At this year’s CelticColours Festival he played onHighland and Lowland pipes aswell as uilleann pipes. RogueFolk Club hopes to bring himto Vancouver soon.


LOREENA MCKENNITT was a highlight of the annual Celtic Colours Festival with spellbindingvocals and gorgeous arrangements.

[Continued from page 4]by Vancouver guitarist Steve Dawson(another Nashville resident these days).It’s a great collection of songs celebrat-ing her roots and her compellingsongwriting.Opening for Linda is Tom Russell’sguitarist, Portland’s Thad Beckman,whose Blues-infused songwriting and

Macbeth makes an appearanceat the Cambrian Hall this November

hot picking is showcased on his newCD, Streets Of Disaster.Thad will also host an advanced guitarworkshop on November 26 for anyonewanting to learn some tips and tricks ofthe trade from one of the best in thebusiness. Space is limited, so call (604)732-1305 if you wish to register.

•For all Rogue concert details, tickets

etc., visit www.roguefolk.bc.ca. Whileyou’re there, check out Steve’s PhotoGallery to see some of my photos fromthe past few weeks / months, includinga whack of shots from Celtic Colours.To hear music by these and other won-derful Celtic / Folk and Roots perform-ers, tune in to The Edge On Folk everySaturday from 8 AM to noon on CiTRfm 101.9 and www.citr.ca.

VANCOUVER – In Novem-ber, the Cambrian Hall inVancouver will play host toWilliam Shakespeare’s TheTragedy of Macbeth.Standing Room Only Theatre, alocal non-profit theatre society,presents the Scottish play in all itsglory, complete with choreo-graphed fights, special effects andsome very explicit bewitcheryfrom November 6 to 15.The play, considered by many to be oneof the Bard’s darkest and most power-ful works, is now over 400 years old,yet director Joe Hinks maintains it re-mains eerily relevant.“For all intents and purposes, Macbethbecomes a dictator. Whatever vestigesof duty and honour he has from being asoldier are quashed by his own ambi-tion until all that remains is a spiral ofmurder and madness.“This is something we have seen timeand time again recently in countries allover the world.”However the play also offers a com-mentary on issues much closer to homethrough its most supernatural charac-ters – the witches.“Not many people realize this,” saysHinks, “But witches had huge politicalconnotations in the middle ages.“If they could influence someonethrough their thoughts and actions, thenpotentially they could lead a wholecountry astray through the right person.That’s why politicians and the monar-chy saw them as such a threat.”Through shows such as ‘Scandal’ and‘House of Cards’, society as a whole

MACBETH in all its glory, complete with choreographed fights,special effects and some very explicit bewitchery runs fromNovember 6 to 15.

is beginning to realise that the peoplearound a leader can have just as muchinfluence over a country’s outcome, andwith the recent Canadian election andupcoming U.S. election, the decision tohail in new leadership becomes increas-ingly important.Christine Reinfort (Witch I), notes thatin this adaptation of Macbeth thewitches are much more implicit inMacbeth’s, and indeed a nation’s des-

tiny, pulling the strings from behind thescenes.“It has been twistedly fun being soovertly manipulative over Macbeth andhaving so much sway over the coun-try’s misfortunes. These witches areacutely aware of the effect their ac-tions will have.”Producer Tracy-Lynn sums up the com-panies own dark ambitions by noting thatthe show is going to be “a passionatelyperformed production both moving andmemorable; an intimate but intenseMacbeth that really pulls the audiencein from the start.”The show runs November 6,7,8 and13,14,15 at 8 PM at the Cambrian Hall,215 East 17th Avenue in Vancouver. Fortickets or more information see:www.standingroomonlytheatre.org.

“...witches hadhuge political

connotations inthe middle ages.”

‘Robert BurnsAround the

World’The Tam O’Shanter Dancers’ 22nd

annual Burns Dinner ‘RobertBurns Around The World’ will beheld on Saturday, January 23 at6:30 PM at the Star of the SeaHall, 15263 Pacific Avenue inWhite Rock. For tickets andmore information, call (604)535-8949 or (604) 385-0392.


‘There are no strangers at Johnnie Fox’s,only friends that you haven’t met’

ANCOUVER– The iconicred door atJ o h n n i e

bers of people to call for a job.“Especially a lot of the trades, such ascarpenters, electricians, and plumbers.They get talking to someone here andthey can let them know what compa-nies are hiring.“Irish people are notoriously great work-ers and the Canadian companies cannever get enough Irish workers.”Johnnie Fox’s recently introduced a newmenu featuring many Irish specialityitems supplied by The Celtic TreasureChest, the British/Irish supplier.“Owner Steve McVittie is supplying uswith all the items we need for our fullIrish breakfast and ‘A Taste of Home’is a new feature listed on our menu,”said Jordan.“We’re serving a full Irish breakfastwith black and white pudding, Irish sau-sage, Heinz baked beans, Irish baconand eggs.“We’re going to feature a whole ‘ATaste of Home’ section with Irishbreakfast rolls, cabbage and bacon, withall the sauces such as HP, curry cheesechips, homemade pot pies, chickencurry.“All the stuff that Irish people love athome, and we want to bring it over hereand introduce it to Canadian people.”He said the food at Johnnie Fox’s isfantastic and they’re hoping with theirnew menu more people will try it.“We have a wide selection such as fishand chips and The Celtic Treasure Chestsupply us with a gorgeous steak and

The Celtic Treasure Chest: A time of changewhile business continues to flourish

VANCOUVER – After 15years in business, Steveand Lil McVittie, ownersof The Celtic TreasureChest, have made the de-cision to finally sell theirbusiness and retire.They’re looking forward to retirement,doing some travelling and finally takingthe time to take care of their own health.The McVitties often discussed retire-ment but it was always something downthe road and in the future.Last year, while on a cruise, Steve suf-fered what was first suspected to be aheart attack, but luckily turned out tobe a stress attack.It was this frightening scare withSteve’s health that was the final strawin helping the couple make the decisionto sell their business and retire.The Delta store will be closed on Janu-

ary 1 and the property sold. At the mo-ment, the Delta store remains open onweekends and customers are advisedto call ahead for opening times.The Dunbar store will have an optionof selling the store only or selling thestore with the property or selling theproperty only and moving the store. Ei-ther way, it will also be closed comeJanuary 1, 2016.I recently dropped in to the Dunbar storeto talk to Steve about their upcomingplans and, of course, their Christmasstock in for the holidays.Speaking about their plans to sell, Stevesaid, “Ideally, I would like someone tomake an offer on the store.“Barring that, I’m willing to look at ayoung family who would like to run theirown business and who like Celtic prod-ucts.“They must be willing to work hard tosucceed and we will move the store toa new location with better traffic. Ba-sically, I will set-them-up and over 10years they can pay me off.”He said, “The store has been like a babyto us. Lil does 95 percent and I do fivepercent. But, if it wasn’t for me doingfive percent, she would have to do 100percent.“I do all the buying and pricing for thestores. We have both worked hard tokeep the store going and Andrea, whohas been with us for many years, at theDunbar store has just been a gem. We

never need to worry if we have to goaway.”In preparation for the Christmas holi-days, Steve said they are stocked withmany new Irish product lines at theDunbar store which he’s really excitedabout.“We have a lot of new Irish lines suchas the sauces, the dairy milk bars, andsome of the marmalades that havebeen winning awards in Ireland.“We’re also getting a lot more productfrom Scotland. We have a lot moreMarks and Spencer products coming inand a wider selection of Christmas prod-ucts from Marks and Spencer.”Regarding Christmas cakes and pud-dings Steve said not only do they havethe traditional Marks and Spencer butsome Irish Cakes and puddings.“We also brought in an Irish shortbreadthat was 37 percent butter and we soldout four cases in threedays...phenomenal! And the same withan Irish Barm Brack, it sold out in aboutfour days.”They also have tea, Irish whiskey cakeand porter cakes for Christmas whichare also selling very well for them.Many new customers coming in to TheCeltic Treasure Chest are new arrivalsin Canada hungry for the familiar prod-ucts of home according to Steve.“We have a lot of the new Irish cus-tomers, and they’re delighted to find all

the Irish products they’re looking forsuch as Club Orange, Barry’s Tea, andthe Odlum’s soda bread mix and oat-meal, to name a few.“On a weekend, I’m willing to bet that60 percent of our customers are thenew Irish kids just into Canada, and theywant all the products from home.“We’re also getting a lot more Scottishcustomers because we’re now able toget some Scottish products that wewere unable to access before.”When Steve talks about the products at

Vfriends. He worked in marketing in Ire-land and helped out in the family-ownedand operated pub in Dublin.While looking for work in Vancouver,Jordan decided to just do a pick-up ajob in a bar and he got a job at JohnnieFox’s.He wasn’t working at Fox’s very longbefore he was asked to take on the roleof general manager.Now he’s working at putting his ownstamp on the bar and he’s done that inspades with sales increased by 60 per-cent.The Celtic Connection recentlydropped in to talk with Jordan aboutwhat makes Johnnie Fox’s so unique.“The owners of Johnnie Fox’s are greatto work for and the customers are fan-tastic.“Johnnie Fox’s is in the main entertain-ment centre on Granville Street andthere are two hostels right beside us,so we get all these travellers coming inand, of course, we get lots of Irish com-ing in.“For the past two weeks, almost everyday, there are at least 10 new Irish com-ing into the pub.“A lot of them have heard that their firststop should be Johnnie Fox’s becauseit’s the best place to meet other Irish,and maybe even meet someone whocan help them get a job.“I’ve seen loads of them get a job hereand even myself I’ve had a hand in giv-ing them contact names and phone num-

Guinness pot pie which is one of ourbiggest sellers.”All the traditional beverages are avail-able at the bar such as Magner’s IrishCider, Guinness, Kilkenny, Smithwick’s.Jordan said, “we have six taps and fiveof them are all Irish. Actually, we sellthe most Guinness in Vancouver, andwe only have 54 seats. Every Irishperson has told us that Johnnie Fox’sserves the best Guinness.”Speaking about the entertainment atFox’s, Flynn said, “We have increasedour entertainment with music four nightsa week.“On Monday we have a sing-song withAri, he’s a Canadian musician.

Fox’s Irish Snug onGranville Street inVancouver....is no more.

“On Wednesday and Sunday, we haveour house band Sloe Gin.“On Thursday, we have another bandcalled Two Fine Irishmen. It’s a guyfrom Dublin and a guy from Donegal,they sing together and they’re just fan-tastic.”In closing, Jordan said, “There was asaying on that red door that I think de-scribes Johnnie Fox’s perfectly –‘There are no strangers at JohnnieFox’s, only friends that you haven’tmet’.

•Johnnie Fox’s Irish Snug is locatedat: 1033 Granville Street, Vancouver.For more information, call (604) 685-4946, or visit: www.johnniefox.ca.

DUBLIN-BORN Jordan Flynn is the general manager at JohnnieFox’s Irish Snug.

By CATHOLINE BUTLER

This was the door so many re-cently arrived Irish lads and las-sies were told to look for uponlanding in this city. Now, theylook for the new glass door withthe big Irish flag in the window.But it’s not doors that make the pub atJohnnie Fox’s. It’s the atmosphere andthe warm Irish welcome as soon as youset foot over the threshold that bringsthem in.You know you’re in the right place whenyou hear accents from every county inIreland.It’s a lot like a pub at home in Ireland,where you can sit at the bar and talk tothe bartender or join in the conversa-tion. The whole bar is in on theconversation....very Irish.Dublin-born Jordan Flynn is the generalmanager at Johnnie Fox’s Irish Snug.Flynn arrived in Vancouver a year anda half ago along with some of his

ByCATHOLINE

BUTLER

The Celtic Treasure Chest and all thenew stock coming in for the Christmasmarket, you can see the excitement itbrings to him.I think it will be difficult for him to leaveit all behind but, like the concerned wifethat she is, Lil says they must both moveforward because they need to take careof their health and just spend some timetogether relaxing and enjoying life.We will miss The Celtic Treasure Chestand our contact with Steve and Lil, butwe wish them all the best for 2016 –onward in their new and bright future.

OVER the past 15 years Steve and Lil McVittie have workedhard to build the business, now they’re looking forward to sometime to slow down and relax.


Is the UK and Ireland headingfor the longest winter in 50 years?

THE arrival of winter, traditionally heraldedby the migration of Siberian swans, hascome early as 300 birds flock to Britain.

European countries has encouragedBewick’s swans to flock westwardsearlier than usual. The first of the birdsbegan arriving on October 11, a full 25days ahead of this time last year.Slimbridge swan expert Julia Newthsaid, “Apparently there’s a Russian say-ing that ‘the swan brings snow on itsbill’, because they tend to move justahead of the cold weather.”Bewick swans are red-listed in Irelanddue to a severe decline in the numberof the birds wintering in Ireland.El Niño is also underway in the tropicalPacific, which has further fuelled specu-lation that Europe is in for a longer andcolder winter than usual.

The Bewick swans migrate 2,500 milesfrom Arctic Russia to the Wildfowl andWetlands Trust reserve at Slimbridge,Gloucestershire and their arrival is usedas a sign to say that winter has arrived.

This year is the earliest arrival of thebirds since 1963 and their presence hasled many to believe that western Eu-rope is in store for a long, harsh winter.The premature arrival of winter in many THE Bewick swans migrate

2,500 miles from Arctic Rus-sia to the Wildfowl andWetlands Trust reserve inGloucestershire, UK.

Tell Them You Saw it Here!Our advertisers are very important to us. In fact, they arethe lifeblood of this newspaper. They have enabled us tocontinue bringing you, our dear readers, your Celtic Con-nection each month for almost 25 years. For this reason,we urge you to support our advertisers, and when you do....tell them you saw them here.


A Weekend to rememberin Clonakilty, Co. Cork

WOULD like to know why Guinnesstastes so much better in Ireland thananywhere else in the world. Please sendyour answers in a bottle.

POSTCARD FROMBOURNEMOUTH

ByELFANJONES

II remember my friends and my enemies too.

We all did our duty for our countries.We all obeyed our orders.

Then we murdered each other.Isn’t war stupid?

Last week my friend Neil O’Donovaninvited me over to the Emerald Isle toattend the Cork Music Festival.I knew it was just a ruse to fill me fullof Guinness and then take me to thecleaners on the golf course, but beingweak willed I happily agreed.Predictably, the only part of Cork I sawwas the airport and the road leading outto Clonakilty.This was my fourth visit to this smallcorner of heaven, but it was the firsttime that by the end of it I actually re-member being there. Is this a sign ofageing?As a Welshman, I have the permanentfeeling of guilt for having enjoyed my-self, perhaps historically a result of thestrict Welsh chapel influence.But the Irish are not cursed with this,and I quote a text sent by an Irishmanto his wife: “Mary, I’m in the pub hav-ing a pint with the lads. If I’m not homein 20 minutes read this message again.”If you ever go across the sea toClonakilty then, apart from admiring thesheer beauty of the coastline, discov-ering the history and the tragedies ofthe birth of the nation, enjoying smoked

salmon, perfectly cooked steaks andClonakilty black and white pudding, andrevelling in the humour and hospitalityof the people, you would realise thatthere is no need to pay a large sum ofmoney to attend a music festival.A festival may be packed with fine art-ists, but they would struggle to beat thequality of the music played in Shanley’s,a wonderful Clonakilty pub owned andrun by the elegant Mrs. Shanley. Forthe price of a pint you can enjoy anevening of sheer musical genius.First up last week was Dan Mahar whohails from Chicago, but now lives in

South Dakota. I am not sure why thatmatters, but Dan informed me that hewas lead guitarist with a country bandcalled Billy Dean from Nashville.Between 1990 and 1995 they had fiveNumber One hits and 11 records in theTop 10 country charts.A wonderful guitarist with a great richvoice, he first came to visit Ireland in2004 to see his great-grandfather’shome, discovered Clonakilty, and hasbeen a frequent visitor ever since.He was joined by Mattie Gordon, anamazing fiddler from New York Statewho plays all over the world.Next to accompany them was StephenHousden who is well-known for his as-sociation with the Little River Band andhas recorded with Glen Frey (The Ea-gles), John Entwhistle (The Who), andmany more.Mix in Margaret Deegan, flautist, DerekNoonan on drums, Derek Draper onkeyboard and, the final ingredient wasMrs. Shanley’s son Bill.He is an internationally renowned gui-tarist who works and tours with RayDavies of the Kinks, Mary Black,Sinead O Connor, Paul Brady and Gil-bert O Sullivan, and you have the recipefor a night of very special entertainment.I may sound like an employee of theClonakilty Tourist Board but I just lovethe place.Back in presently alcohol-free Bourne-mouth, the weather is unpredictable.Rain one day, sunny the next, but mer-cifully very mild for the time of year –14 to 16 centigrade.There is a mild political storm at themoment because the decadent Houseof Lords temporarily blocked a govern-ment bill which would reduce theamount of benefits given to our mostvulnerable citizens.This surprised me as I assumed that solong as they were picking up their £300per day attendance fee, most of themwould not give a damn.As Remembrance Day approaches, 92-year-old George Evans has been in thenews.Evans served with the Warwickshireregiment during the Normandy cam-paign in the Second World War.For 25 years he has recited poetry atthe annual ceremony service in the vil-lage of Wellington near Telford in Shrop-shire.Apparently he has been sacked be-cause last year instead of reading fromthe usual script he recited his own workentitled Lessons.

I remember my friendsand my enemies too.We all did our dutyfor our countries.

We all obeyed our orders.Then we murdered each other.

Isn’t war stupid?Evans said that the pivotal moment forshaping his views was a battle in Caenin 1944 which resulted in 70 percentcasualties “That was the point that Irealised that war was just so stupid andI wished I had no more to do with it.”According to Catherine Wyld of the lo-cal Royal British Legion, Evans’s po-etry offended many people and thatmost people were horrified.Obviously, we have not learnt the les-son.SOME of the best known musicians in Ireland and abroad make

a point of dropping in to Shanley’s.

IT would be hard to find better hospitality or music anywhereother than Shanley’s Bar in Clonakilty, Co. Cork.

BRITAIN’S unelected House of Lords dealt a strong defeat toPrime Minister David Cameron’s government – and provoked aconstitutional squabble – by voting to delay a cut in tax credits.It is estimated that three million low-income people will be af-fected by the cuts, with many losing up to £1,300 a year.

Peers in BritishHouse of Lords

block £4.4 billion cutsto UK tax credits

LONDON – Prime Minister DavidCameron has announced a consti-tutional review of the House ofLords following the humiliatingdefeat of his government’s contro-versial cuts to tax credits lastmonth.Conservatives were furious after La-bour and Liberal Democrat peers votedon October 26 to halt Chancellor of theExchequer George Osborne’s proposedtax changes.The vote will delay £4.4 billion in cutsto working tax credits and child taxcredits. It was the first time the Lordshas voted down a financial bill in 100years.Opponents say the cuts will hurt thepoorest and will see 3.3 million familieslose an average of £1,300 next year. Areport by the BBC suggested most ofthe pain will be felt by working moth-ers.Cameron announced a “rapid review”to ensure in future MPs are given the“decisive role” over key financial deci-sions. The prime minister and his allieshave accused peers of prompting a“constitutional crisis” by voting downthe legislation.Lord Strathclyde, who led a review intothe Conservatives’ devolution plans be-fore the Scottish independence refer-endum, will chair the “rapid review.”Just 24 hours later, the UK Governmentnarrowly avoided yet another damag-ing defeat as the House of Lords at-tempted to torpedo legal changes to thesystem of voter registration that wouldhave damaged Cameron’s upcomingreview of constituency boundaries.Labour and the Lib Dems saw the moveas an attempt to knock out many vot-ers, with the Electoral Commissionwarning 1.9 million less people wouldbe registered to vote. The Tories saidmany of those people are duplicates orincorrectly listed.Although the government won the votewith a majority, Downing Street madeclear that the “rapid review” will stilltake place to ensure peers are in futurenot allowed to veto government financepackages.Emboldened by the tax credits vote theHouse of Lords has now set sights onthe government’s draft online surveil-lance bill.

Peers could derail plans to give policepowers to potentially access the internetbrowsing history of any computer userin Britain in the latest show of defianceby the House of Lords.The draft Investigatory Powers Bill isexpected to give police the authority toaccess the browsing history of any com-puter user in Britain and require tel-ecommunications companies to retaininformation about customers’ websitevisits.The government is also understood tohave rejected calls for final responsi-bility for signing warrants to be shiftedfrom the Home Secretary and the For-eign Secretary to senior judges.The provisions contained would be simi-lar to the shelved communications databill – dubbed a “snooper’s charter” bycritics – that would have required com-panies to retain phone and e-mail dataas well as use of social media.That bill was blocked by the LiberalDemocrats because of privacy con-cerns when the party was part of thecoalition government.Lib Dems could use their 112-strongpeers in the Lords to block the proposedchanges. Conservative peers accountfor only about a third of the total.One peer said many lords from acrossthe political spectrum felt strongly aboutcivil liberties issues, resulting in unusualalliances.

AS OF November 4, a new UKInvestigatory Powers Parlia-mentary Bill was being draftedproviding new surveillancepowers, requiring records tobe kept by internet service pro-viders tracking use of theinternet from Britain, accessi-ble by the police and securityservices without judicial over-sight.


British PM says bomb likelycaused Russian airliner crashLONDON – British Prime Min-ister David Cameron has said itwas increasingly likely that abomb brought down a Russianairliner over Egypt with the lossof 224 lives, setting him at oddswith Russian President VladimirPutin.Britain, Ireland, Germany and the Neth-erlands have suspended flights to andfrom Sharm al-Sheikh, leaving thou-sands of European tourists stranded inthe Red Sea resort where the plane tookoff from on October 31.Egypt, which depends on tourism as acrucial source of revenue, said the de-cision to suspend flights was unjustifiedand should be reversed at once. It saidthere was no evidence a bomb was toblame.A Sinai-based group affiliated to IslamicState, the militant group that has seizedswathes of Iraq and Syria, has claimedresponsibility for the crash, which ifconfirmed would make it the first at-tack on civil aviation by the world’smost violent jihadist organisation.Moscow, which launched air strikesagainst Islamist fighters including Is-lamic State in Syria more than a monthago, says it is premature to reach con-clusions that the flight was attacked.In a telephone call, Putin told Cameronit was important that assessments of thecause of the crash be based on infor-mation from the official investigation,Interfax news agency reported.

METROJET Flight 7K9268 crashed in the Sinai peninsula overEgypt in the early hours of October 31, killing all 224 peopleon board.

Cameron, who hosted Egyptian Presi-dent Abdul Fattah al-Sisi the same weekfor a previously scheduled visit, said,“We cannot be certain that the Russianairliner was brought down by a terror-ist bomb, but it looks increasingly likelythat that was the case.”His foreign secretary, Philip Hammond,said it was “a significant possibility”Islamic State was responsible, given arange of information, including the claimof responsibility.Britain said it was working with airlinesand Egyptian authorities to put in placeadditional security and screening meas-ures at the airport to allow Britons toget home. It hoped flights bound forBritain could leave on November 6.

A senior Russian lawmaker said Brit-ain’s decision to stop flights from Sharmwas motivated by London’s oppositionto Russia’s actions in Syria.“There is geopolitical opposition to theactions of Russia in Syria,” saidKonstantin Kosachev, a senior mem-ber of Russia’s upper house of parlia-ment, when asked about Britain’s deci-sion, in comments reported by RIA newsagency.At Sharm airport, security appeared tohave been tightened with security forcespatrolling the terminals and not allow-ing drivers, tour agents or others to loi-ter while awaiting tourist arrivals, a wit-ness said.

Tony Blair apologisesfor Iraq War mistakes

LONDON – Tony Blair hasapologised for aspects of the IraqWar, sparking claims of at-tempted “spin” ahead of theChilcot Inquiry findings.The former British prime minister useda U.S. television interview to expressregret over the failure to plan properlyfor the aftermath of the 2003 topplingof Saddam Hussein and the false intel-ligence used to justify it.“I apologise for the fact that the intelli-gence we received was wrong,” he toldCNN.“I also apologise for some of the mis-takes in planning and, certainly, our mis-take in our understanding of what wouldhappen once you removed the regime.”Asked by host Fareed Zakaria if theIraq War was “the principal cause” ofthe rise of Islamic State, he was reportedto have conceded: “I think there areelements of truth in that.”He added, “Of course you can’t saythose of us who removed Saddam in2003 bear no responsibility for the situ-ation in 2015.”Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeonaccused the ex-prime minister of start-ing to prepare the ground for expectedcriticisms when the long-delayed reportof the Chilcot Inquiry is finally pub-lished.“The Blair spin operation begins but thecountry still awaits the truth,” the Scot-tish National Party leader posted on

Twitter. “The delay to Chilcot report isa scandal.”No date has yet been given for the re-lease of the final conclusions – morethan six years after the inquiry was setup by then prime minister GordonBrown with an assurance it would takea year.The process was severely delayed bya process known as “Maxwellisation,”under which those who may face criti-cism – believed to include Blair – aregiven the opportunity to respond beforepublication.Relatives of soldiers killed in the con-flict have threatened legal action if adate is not fixed soon.It was also recently revealed that Blaircommitted the UK to the Iraq war abouta year before the British Parliamentapproved such action.This information was contained in amemo written by then U.S. Secretaryof State Colin Powell. The once-clas-sified document was released by theU.S. State Department after a 2012Freedom of Information request.A spokeswoman for the former PMsaid, “Tony Blair has always apologisedfor the intelligence being wrong and formistakes in planning.“He has always also said, and saysagain here, that he does not howeverthink it was wrong to remove Saddam.”Lord Blunkett – who was home secre-tary at the time of the decision to jointhe military action – said he had sought

assurances in vain from Blair over theplanning for the aftermath.“Tony was not able to say what wasgoing to happen when combat opera-tions were over. He just decided to trustCheney and Rumsfeld,” he told the Mailon Sunday – referring to the then U.S.vice president and defence secretary.“With the benefit of hindsight, we nowknow that they had decided to embarkon the complete de-Ba’athification ofSaddam’s Iraq by dismantling the en-tire government infrastructure.“This led to the disintegration of anyform of functioning government, creat-ing a complete power vacuum. Terror-ists infiltrated Iraq and stirred discon-tent.“I am not seeking to scapegoat TonyBlair; we were all collectively to blamefor deluding ourselves into believingthat we had much greater sway overWashington,” he said.Former Liberal Democrat leader SirMenzies Campbell – due shortly to takeup a seat in the House of Lords – said,“No matter what Tony Blair says or anycriticisms there will be of him in theChilcot Inquiry report, people have longsince made up their minds.“His partial acknowledgment that themilitary action against Saddam Husseinhas made some contribution to instabil-ity in the Middle East will do nothing tochange public opinion that his was amajor error of judgment.“The inevitable truth is that Iraq is hislegacy and it will be his epitaph.”


ByHARRY

McGRATH

Canadian Election GetsScant Attention in Scotland

Justin Trudeau’s Scottishconnections on both

sides of his family treeANCOUVER – New Canadian Prime Min-ister Justin Trudeau – son of Pierre andMargaret Trudeau – has Scottish connec-tions on both sides of his family tree.V

JAMES SINCLAIR, a former Liberal cabinet minister from NorthVancouver, was a huge influence on his grandson. He is pic-tured here with his children and Justin’s mother Margaret ison the lower left.

His maternal grandfather James(Jimmy) Sinclair, a former Liberal cabi-net minister from North Vancouver, wasa huge influence on his grandson.The western home for Justin and hisbrothers was the Rockridge Road housein West Vancouver that belonged toJimmy and Kathleen Sinclair.Jimmy was born in 1908 in The Grange,Banffshire, Scotland, immigrated toCanada as a boy from Scotland.He studied engineering at the Univer-sity of British Columbia and wasawarded a Rhodes scholarship in 1928to study mathematics at the Universityof Oxford.Sinclair also studied mathematical phys-ics at Princeton University. During theSecond World War, he served with theRoyal Canadian Air Force in North Af-rica, Malta, and Sicily.He was part of Canadian politics from1940 to 1957 and served as Canadian

Minister of Fisheries in the cabinet ofPrime Minister Louis St. Laurent.Justin paid tribute to his grandfatherJimmy in his first question period asLiberal leader when he wore hisSinclair tartan tie.On his father’s side, his grandfatherMontreal businessman Charles-ÉmileTrudeau married Grace Elliott, thedaughter of a United Empire Loyalistof Scottish extraction.This marriage changed the family’s cul-tural makeup with Grace having stud-ied at Dunham Ladies’ College, an An-glican women’s finishing school in theEastern Townships.Although she spoke and wrote French,she preferred English, which would bethe language of the Trudeau home.The 43-year-old Justin Trudeau – a fullybilingual former school teacher andmember of Parliament since 2008 –became the second youngest prime min-

ister in Canadian history after a land-slide victory in October 2015.Following a campaign built on optimismand “sunny ways,” Trudeau has pledgeda more inclusive and open government.He was sworn into office at RideauHall in Ottawa on Wednesday, Novem-ber 4 in a very carefully choreographedceremony.In a tip to his Scottish roots, the photo-genic Trudeau ambled down the longdriveway accompanied by his youngfamily and new cabinet members to thesound of bagpipers playing The BonnieBanks o’ Loch Lomond.

PIERRE TRUDEAU with his parents Charles-Émile Trudeauand Grace Elliott, his two siblings and their grandfather Josephon their way to Europe in June 1933.

JUSTIN TRUDEAU is Canada’s23rd prime minister and sec-ond youngest.

LIBERAL LEADER Justin Trudeau kicks up his heels for aHighland dance in the Scottish Pavilion while attending theSaskatoon Folkfest, August 14, 2014.

EDINBURGH –The Scottishmedia’s almostcomplete lack

Scotland’s self-described “favourite”newspaper ran a piece headlined “IsJustin Trudeau the sexiest politician inthe world?”Not to be outdone, the BBC conductedits own investigation into whether Cana-da’s new PM was the only world leaderwith a tattoo.To be fair, there were layers of sym-bolic interest in the tattoo which showsplanet earth inside a Haida raven.The Trudeau family were made honor-ary members of the Haida in 1976 whenJustin Trudeau was just six years old.It came as a something of a relief tosee the Trudeau family link referencedhere even if it took the media’s obses-sion with sexiness and tattoos to do it.Pierre Trudeau was prime minister whenI made my first sojourn to Canada and,again, when I emigrated from Scotlandin the early 1980s.Trudeau senior was a politician whoelicited strong emotion from all sides,but his vision of Canada was one that Iwas strongly attracted to.Today a casual stroll down any majorthoroughfare in any Canadian city dem-

onstrates that Trudeau’s Canada hascome to pass.During the Scottish referendum, I ar-gued that Trudeau’s vision of a multi-cultural, immigrant-friendly, nuclearfree, peace-keeping Canada was onethat Scotland should adopt.These were the broad principles of the‘Yes’ side’s vision of Scotland’s futurebefore thorny practical issues like cur-rency and pensions sucked all the oxy-gen out of the debate.Canadian and Scottish politics have atleast one other thing in common. Un-like the United States, neither has anytradition of political dynasties.Some Canadians will have reservationsabout building their first political dynastyaround the name Trudeau, but perhapsJustin can channel the spirit of Pierrewho had an international profile thatsubsequent Canadian prime ministerswere unable to match.If so, his son’s first order of businesswill be to restore Canada’s internationalreputation. It has taken a bit of a bat-tering in the last 10 years.The other Scottish connection to Cana-da’s new prime minister is a family one.The Canadian census allows you to pickup to four ethnic origins. Assuming hecompleted the ethnicity section, thatmakes Justin Trudeau one of the afore-mentioned five million self-identifiedScots in Canada.Pierre Trudeau’s mother was an Elliottas evidenced by fact that the name isburied deep in Joseph Philipp PierreYves Elliott Trudeau.

Elliott (or Eliot) derives from the townof Eliot in the Angus area of Scotlandand is one of the most common namesin the Scottish Borders.I still remember being vaguely irritatedwhen Trudeau Sr. was accused of hav-ing split loyalties over Quebec becausehe had an “English” name.On Justin Trudeau’s mother’s side, theScottish connection is even closer.His grandfather James Sinclair, whorepresented the ridings of North Van-couver and Coast-Capilano for the fed-eral Liberals, was born in Banffshire,Scotland.Trudeau the Younger has repeatedlyreferenced Sinclair’s personal and po-litical influence and reportedly wore aSinclair tartan tie in his honour duringhis first question time as Liberal leader.A final thing that might have raised aneyebrow over here, if anyone had beenpaying attention, is that Justin Trudeauwas formerly a teacher.

Some in the Canadian media seemedto consider that an unusual backgroundfor a politician.In fact, teaching into politics is an ex-tremely common career trajectory inScotland as evidenced by the dispro-portionate number of former teacherswho served in the Scottish Parliamentwhen it reconvened in 2009.Usually it’s considered good training forhandling the rowdy, the immature andthe oppositional.In short, Canada’s new prime ministercould be approached from a number ofangles beyond tattoos or ranking himon a largely uncontested politicians’ at-tract-o-meter.Now that the Scottish media has dis-covered Justin Trudeau’s existence intrivia, it might pay closer attention toserious political developments inCanada in the same way as it does for,say, Australia.Sadly, I have ma doots.

of interest in Canada haslong been a mystery tome.The Canadian census lists overfive million self-identified Scotsin Canada and yet Canadiannews in Scotland is scarcer thanhen’s teeth.The mystery deepens when it comes topolitics. Scots have a long history ofinvolvement in Canadian politics.Canada’s first prime minister was bornin Glasgow but for 200 years there wasprecious little recognition of that in hishome city.It is hard to imagine that a GlaswegianGeorge Washington would have suf-fered similar neglect.I can’t say it came as much of a sur-prise, then, that the most interestingCanadian election in the last 20 yearsgot the rubber ear, as they say overhere.One Scottish newspaper ran a generalbackground piece before October 19,but otherwise there was virtual mediasilence.That changed the day after the elec-tion when the media discovered an an-gle.


Great old-world atmosphere filledwith UK Christmas favourites

By CATHOLINE BUTLERRICHMOND, B.C. – It’s begin-ning to look a lot like Christmasat Mary’s British Home inSteveston. Shelves are beingstocked with delicious specialtyChristmas goodies from cratesarriving weekly from overseas.The Celtic Connection recentlydropped in to check-out some of the newarrivals and help get into the holidayspirit... and I didn’t come out of the shopempty-handed either!Birmingham-born Mary Carter, ownerof Mary’s British Home, is a legend inthe historic village of Steveston.For the past 33 years, Mary has beenserving the community and beyond withhard-to-find UK specialty products.Her store specializes in delicious deli-cacies such as bacons, haggis, biscuitsand marmalades...and more.Prior to moving to Steveston, Mary andher late husband Ray ran the BritishHome Store in Richmond for three anda half years.All-in-all, Mary has been in business fora total of 36 and a half years, and she’sstill going strong and enjoying her cus-tomers.After all these years, Carter knows justabout all her customers on a first-namebasis. Many come in to buy their fa-vourite items but end up sharing familynews such as holidays and other occa-sions.Mary’s British Home has a friendly old-world atmosphere with big jars of Brit-ish candy and newspapers, even an old-

MARY CARTER has been an integral part of the seaside com-munity of Steveston, B.C. for over 33 years with her Britishimport store.

fashioned cash register – no computerversion here.Speaking about some of the Christmasstock, Mary said, “As usual, we haveCadbury’s selection boxes; Marks &Spencer Christmas cakes, iced andplain; Christmas puddings; Mr. KiplingBattenburg cakes; apple pies andBakewell tarts; Walker’s shortbread;McVittie’s and Crawford’s tinned bis-cuits; and lots of chocolates andspecialty cheeses from England.“We’ll be getting a lot more jams andmincemeat and, of course, haggis whichis also used for stuffing the poultry atChristmas and New Year, along withRobbie Burns celebrations.”Mary’s British Home always hasspecialty bacons, gammon ham, black

and white pudding, free run eggs, andHeinz baked beans for your specialBritish breakfasts over the holidays.Throughout the year there is always agood selection of British groceries in-cluding jams, marmalade, HP and othersauces, Bewley’s and Yorkshire teas.These are only some of the items avail-able with lots more expected weekly.Mary has a reminder for holiday shop-pers, “please bear in mind that we onlyget in a limited quantity of specialtyholiday products and once they’re gone,that’s it until we order again nextyear...so shop early!”Mary’s British is located at Unit #4,3740 Chatham Street (in ChathamPlace Mall), Steveston, B.C. For moreinformation, call (604) 274-2261.

St. Andrew’s Day:Patron Saint of Scotland

SAINT Andrewis the PatronSaint of Scot-land and St.Andrew’s Day

In Scotland the day is also seen as thestart of a season of Scottish winter fes-tivals encompassing St. Andrew’s Day,Hogmanay and Burns Night.In Edinburgh, there is a week of cel-ebrations, concentrating on musical en-tertainment and traditional ceilidh danc-ing. A ceilidh is a social event with cou-ples dancing in circles or sets.In Glasgow city center, a large shindig,or party, with traditional music and aceilidh are held. In Dumfries, songs areperformed in the Burn’s night tradition.The flag of Scotland is the Cross of St.Andrew which is widely displayed as asymbol of national identity.The Order of Saint Andrew, or the MostAncient Order of the Thistle, is an or-der of knighthood restricted to the kingor queen and a select few. It was es-tablished by James VII of Scotland in1687.Very little is really known about St.Andrew himself. He is thought to havebeen a fisherman in Galilee, now partof Israel, along with his brother SimonPeter (Saint Peter). Both became fol-lowers (apostles) of Jesus Christ,founder of the Christian religion.St. Andrew is said to have been respon-sible for spreading the tenets of theChristian religion throughout Asia Mi-nor and Greece. Tradition suggests thatSt. Andrew was put to death by theRomans in Patras, Southern Greece, bybeing pinned to a cross.

is celebrated by Scots aroundthe world on November 30.The flag of Scotland is theCross of St. Andrew which iswidely displayed as a sym-bol of national identity.In 2006, the Scottish Parliament passedthe St. Andrew’s Day Bank HolidayAct, which designated the Day as anofficial bank holiday. If November 30falls on a weekend, the next Monday isa bank holiday instead.Although it is a bank holiday, banks arenot required to close and employers arenot required to give their employees theday off as a holiday.In Scotland, and many countries withScottish connections, St. Andrew’s Dayis marked with a celebration of Scot-tish culture with traditional Scottishfood, music and dance.Schools across Scotland hold special St.Andrew’s Day events and activities in-cluding art shows, Scottish countrydancing, lunchtime ceilidhs, dance fes-tivals, storytelling, reciting and writingpoems, writing tall tales, cooking tradi-tional Scottish meals, and bagpipe-play-ing.

The diagonal shape of this cross is saidto be the basis for the Cross of St.Andrew which appears on the Scottishflag.

A MAGNIFICENT stained glasswindow depict ing thecrucifiction of St. Andrew.


PHOTO: Fennel PhotographyPRESIDENT HIGGINS and his wife Sabina Higgins with someof the students who exhibited their Gaelic football skills at Sky-line High School.

PHOTO: Fennel PhotographySEATTLE GAELS officers Paul McGarry (left) and Brian White(right) present Sabina and President Higgins with a SeattleGaels scarf and jersey.

PHOTO: Fennel PhotographyPRESIDENT HIGGINS meeting with Irish employees atMicrosoft. (L-R) Eoghan McHugh, Kathryn O’Hora, Julie Ginesiand Dan Corry. [Rear Left] Matthew O’Toole.

PHOTO: Fennel PhotographySEATTLE GAELS Youth Coordinator Terry Lynch is interviewedby Irish broadcaster RTE and other local media at SkylineHigh School.

SEATTLE – Irish PresidentMichael D. Higgins visitedSeattle in late October on aneight day whirlwind visit tothe U.S. west coast.He spent four days in Seattlearriving directly from Ireland lateon Tuesday, October 20, andleaving for San Francisco onSaturday afternoon, October 24.The president’s first full day in Seattleon Wednesday was relatively quiet,providing the 74-year-old presidentand his wife Sabina an opportunity torecover from a commercial airline flightfrom Ireland which took over 16 hourswith delays.He did pay a courtesy visit to SeattleCity Hall to meet with Mayor EdMurray followed by a press conferencewith local and Irish media. This wasfollowed by a casual private visit toSeattle’s iconic Pike Place Market.

The main purpose of the president’s visitto Seattle was to connect with the localIrish community and his first officialactivity in that regard was on Thursdaymorning when he visited Skyline HighSchool in Sammamish, about 30 min-utes west of Seattle.President Higgins watched about 30young people playing Gaelic football atthe school as part of their physical edu-cation program.The school is one of seven high schoolsin the Seattle area where GAA sportshave been taught as part of the PE cur-riculum for the past five years sup-ported by members of the SeattleGaels.At Skyline the president also visitedmusic and jazz classes and spoke toabout 300 students in the auditoriumbefore exiting through the school’s caf-eteria to the cheers and claps of about1,000 kids.Next, the president visited Microsoftwhere he was given a tour of the ‘Homeof the Future’ before meeting withabout 150 Irish-born employees.He told them that because of moderncommunications they should expect thatcurrent Irish migration will be an in-creasingly circular migration to andfrom Ireland.That evening he was honored at an Irishcommunity reception at McCaw Hallattended by about 400 members ofSeattle’s Irish community. The eventalso included some who had traveledfrom Spokane, Portland, Kennewick,and Vancouver, B.C.On Friday, the president gave a key-note address in a packed auditorium atthe University of Washington (UW) onthe topic of climate change and sustain-able development challenges.The talk was hosted by, among others,the Jackson School of InternationalStudies, the Center for West EuropeanStudies and the UW Law School. Be-fore the talk, he met with 15 UW fac-ulty members who were born in Ire-land.Afterwards the president was guest ofhonor at an Irish seniors reception at-tended by about 120 people.There he spoke about feeling more at

By JOHN KEANE

home with the seniors because he wasfinally meeting with people his own age!The president’s last official function inSeattle was as guest of honor at a for-mal dinner organized by Irish NetworkSeattle at the Chihuly Boathouse.The dinner was hosted by the mayor ofSeattle and glass artist Dale Chihuly.Chihuly is an American glass sculptorand entrepreneur whose works are con-

sidered unique to the field of blownglass.His works have been exhibited numer-ous times in Ireland and his art appearsin permanent collections all over theworld.Links to photos and videos from thepresident’s Seattle visit can be foundon the Irish Heritage Club’s website atwww.irishclub.org.

A Warm Welcome in Seattle for Irish President M

PHOTO: Fennel PhotographySABINA HIGGINS, Dale Chihuly, President Higgins, Washing-ton State’s First Lady Trudy Inslee (wife of Governor Inslee),Seattle’s First Gentleman Michael Shiosaki, and Seattle MayorEd Murray before dinner at the Chihuly Boathouse.

PHOTO: Fennel PhotographyDALE CHIHULY, President Higgins and Sabina, Maureen andJohn Keane before dinner at the Chihuly Boathouse.

PHOTO: Fennel PhotographyDALE CHIHULY, President Higgins and Sabina, Aly and BillShelby-Gardner before dinner at the Chihuly Boathouse.

More Seattle Irish News on pages 22 & 23With a photo round-up of the president’s visit

to the Irish seniors reception.


PHOTO: Fennel PhotographyPRESIDENT HIGGINS speaks during dinner at the ChihulyBoathouse. (L-R) John Keane, Sabina Higgins, PresidentHiggins, Dale Chihuly, Paula Stokes, John Sullivan, Mike andBarbara Malone.

PHOTO: Fennel PhotographyPRESIDENT HIGGINS and Anne Anderson the Irish Ambassa-dor to the United States at the University of Washington withAdrian Raftery, a Dublin-born Professor of Statistics and So-ciology at the UW.

PHOTO: Fennel PhotographyPRESIDENT HIGGINS and Sabina with Irish musicians of theCeol Cascadia Irish Session group at the McCaw Hall Irishcommunity reception.

PHOTO:Melissa KnightJOHN KEANE the Honorary Irish Consul in Seattle with MauraDe Freitas and Catholine Butler of The Celtic Connection.

‘One of the great advantagesof the Irish spirit and characteris the ability to re-invent itself’

EATTLE – ThePresident of Ire-land Michael D.Higgins and his

PHOTO: Maura De FreitasMICHAEL D. HIGGINS the President of Ireland at the podiumat McCaw Hall in Seattle on his recent visit to the U.S. westcoast.

cessfully so that within 50 years fourIrish people have won the Nobel Prizefor Literature. Actually, you could al-most make it five if you wanted to nameEugene O’Neill.”His comments were met with laughterand cheers of approval from the audi-ence.President Higgins went on to speakabout the great influence of Irish-Americans at home in Ireland and theinvaluable support they have providedboth financially and politically.It is emigrants who are anxious to stayin touch, who come home and trans-form Ireland with their experiences hesaid. They have helped to build the kindof republic that they want.Unfortunately, at times, this has not al-ways been fully appreciated in Ireland.Higgins shared the story of a letter re-ceived by a father from his son inAmerica.“He opens the letter and takes themoney out and says ‘there’s the priceof a horse in that’. But he doesn’t goon to read the letter from his son.He spoke about the deep sacrificesmade by parents and the great effortsmade by people who have travelledthousands of miles to a new country.And then, instead of taking from it, theyhave gone on to serve in all of the greatoffices.The inter-connection between Irelandand the United States has now becomea two-way street with American com-panies in Ireland employing 100,000people.

But Irish companies in the U.S. are nowemploying 82,000 people, so the trafficis moving in both directions.“We’re also at a time when 60 millionpeople are moving around our planet asdisplaced people,” he said, “and I wouldjust like to take this opportunity to thankthose who welcomed the Irish in everygeneration.”He said, “I want to particularly pay trib-ute to the Irish-American communitywho have been custodians of our cul-ture. Indeed in the period immediatelyafter the Famine – the period between1845 and 1900 – the fact that we knowso much about it is due to Americanhistorians.”The message from President Higginsresonated deeply with many guests atMcCaw Hall that evening. So many inthe room were either Irish-born or de-scendants of earlier Irish immigrants.Both Seattle Mayor Ed Murray andSeattle Chief of Police KathleenO’Toole are proud of their Irish con-nections and they each maintain strongcultural ties with Ireland.Closing remarks for the evening wereby Ed Murray who travelled to Irelandalong with a delegation of almost 80people from the Seattle area in Septem-ber 2014.During that visit he met with PresidentHiggins at Áras an Uachtaráin, thepresident’s official residence in Phoe-nix Park.Murray was delighted to reciprocatewith the warmest of hospitality in hiscity for President Higgins and his wifeSabina.

PHOTO: Maura De FreitasJOHN KEANE the Honorary Irish Consul in Seattle picturedwith Michael Shiosaki, Ed Murray, and Maureen Keane.

S

By MAURA DE FREITAS

wife Sabina were enthu-siastically welcomed bythe Irish community inSeattle on the first stop oftheir first official visit tothe west coast.Over 400 guests attended a receptionhosted by the Consulate General in SanFrancisco at the magnificent McCawHall on Thursday, October 22.In his opening address, Irish ConsulGeneral Philip Grant gave warm praiseto Seattle Honorary Consul John Keane,recognizing his tireless work through-out the Pacific Northwest and his im-mense consular support.His comments were met with cheersof approval from the audience when hesaid, “no other Irish consul serves hiscommunity so well or is held in suchhigh esteem.”He introduced Michel D. Higgins as apubic figure, an author, a poet and anacademic, who has twice served asmayor of Galway – Seattle’s sister city.The President of Ireland is also achronicler of an ever-changing, ever-challenged society, especially now asan international statesman whose workon issues such as sustainable develop-ment, human rights, the environment,disarmament, global peace is helping todraw the attention and spur the actionof global decision makers.Higgins touched many hearts thatevening with a passionate speech whichtouched on many topics, including theIrish Diaspora, the Irish language, theGaelic Athletic Association, ethics, andthe displacement of humanity.The president also paid tribute to thenumerous Irish organizations who keepthe culture alive in the United Statesand who help maintain their connectionswith Ireland.He opened in Irish which he said wasthe language spoken by so many of theearly Irish who came to the west coast.In preparation for his visit, Higgins saidhe looked at some of the early corre-spondence which people on the westcoast sent to people back home.He was struck by the great movementtaking place in this part of the world atthe end of the Nineteenth Century andthe early Twentieth Century. These newimmigrants were trying to re-establishtheir Irish identity and many of the let-ters were in the Irish language.But, as the president explained, the Irishdid not voluntarily give up their language,it was partly removed from the peoplewhen another language was imposedin its place.He said, “One of the great advantagesof the Irish spirit and character is theability to re-invent itself.“And, having in fact taken the Englishlanguage and used it, we changed it suc-

Michael D. Higgins


EdmontonWolfe Tonescelebrate 40th

anniversaryEDMONTON – On Septem-ber 26 the Edmonton WolfeTones GAA club celebratedtheir 40th anniversary at theCoast Hotel in downtownEdmonton.The Wolfe Tones were delighted towelcome GAA president Aogán ÓFearghail along with other dignitariessuch as president of the Canadiancounty board Brian Farmer.Commemorative booklets were pre-pared and distributed at the event de-tailing the history of the club from itsformative years through to the modernera.Many of the founding members werepresent on the night, some of which hadtravelled from outside Canada, and suf-fice to say a great time was had remi-niscing over old times.Some special awards were presentedon the night to Danny McCarthy andRachel Flynn for their contribution tothe establishment of hurling and CúlCamps within the western provincesand to Gerry Muldoon, Mick Mckennaand Christy Whelan all of whom fea-tured prominently in the club’s found-ing years.The GAA president offered a few kindand encouraging words to close out theformalities of the evening before themusic took over and the dancing con-tinued long into the early hours of themorning.The Wolfe Tones would like to onceagain thank all those who attended onthe night and, of course, a special thanksto all those who volunteered their timein helping to prepare for such a memo-rable and notable occasion in the club’shistory.

GROUP photo of guests and members of the Edmonton WolfeTones GAA club.

DENNIS O’SULLIVAN with Christy Whelan and Aogán ÓFearghail.

STEVE and Sarah Hanney with Aogán Ó Fearghail.LINDSAY BAUGH, Adrienne McCormack, Shara Smith, SteveFitzgerald

MICHAEL HERLAGHY, Aogán Ó Fearghail, Tom Morris. JEFF MORRIS, Sean Smith, Liam Kelly, Breena Smith, SteveFitzgerald.

Gavin Kerr, Paddy Fitzhenry and Woodie [last name unknown].GUESTS (L-R) [name unknown], Madison Chies, NiamhO’Carroll, Dawn Kunz and Kimberly Budd

PAUL DOONAN, Brian Farmer, Joe Kennedy, Aogán ÓFearghail.

GUESTS enjoying the evening at the Coast Hotel in downtownEdmonton.

DANCERS were out on thefloor until the early hours.

The band: Jukebox Leigh.


JOHANNA and Pat Pearse.

GUESTS enjoying the evening.

CELEBRATING the Edmonton Wolfe Tones anniversary – StevenHanney, Steve Fitzgerald, Aogán Ó Fearghail, EmmettMcCormack, Neil O’Connor, Paul Kennedy, Liam Kelly, EoinO’Connor, Patrick Kiernan, Robbie Murphy, Colin Baugh.

AMONG the honoured guests at the banquet were Michael Hur-ley, deputy head of mission at the Embassy of Ireland in Ot-tawa, Brian Farmer, president of the Canadian county board,and Irish Consul-General in Edmonton, Doodie Cahill.

EMMA HARNETT, Sheila Smith, Shara Smith, Rachel Flynn,Sarah Hanney, Anna Mullan.

EDMONTON WOLFE TONES - 40TH ANNIVERSARY PHOTOS

CHRISTY WHELAN, Sean Smith, Brian Farmer, Aogán ÓFearghail and Martin Doyle.

MARTIN DOYLE and his dancepartner on the dance floor.

TOM FLANAGAN and friend.


New Irish consular teamin Calgary, Alberta

CALGARY – The Irish Am-bassador to Canada, RayBassett, presented the newIrish Consular team in Calgarywith their seals of office onOctober 27.The new team is Deirdre Halferty, Hon-orary Consul (Community, Cultural andConsular) and Laureen Regan, ViceConsul (Trade and Investment).Deirdre is originally from Maghera,County Derry and is a prominent mem-ber of the Irish community in the city.She is the former chair of the Irish Cul-tural Society in Calgary. Deirdre is asuccessful business woman and herbusiness is part of the Royal LePageFoothills in Calgary.Laureen was born in county Waterfordand moved to Canada as a child.She is also a successful business womanwith her companies, Regan ProductionsLtd. and Boom Group Inc.Laureen is a member of the Global IrishNetwork and she is a founding mem-ber and current president of the IrelandCanada Centre for Commerce,Calgary.Speaking at the handover, the ambas-sador said, “I am very excited aboutthese appointments. Calgary is of grow-ing importance to the Irish Government.“With increased migration from Irelandto Alberta, the city has seen its Irish-born population rise significantly.“The government, through the embassyand the Enterprise Ireland Office in

DEIRDRE HALFERTY (L) has been appointed new Irish Hon-orary Consul (Community, Cultural and Consular) and LaureenRegan (R) has been appointed Irish Vice Consul (Trade andInvestment).

Toronto, have also designated the Prov-ince of Alberta as a priority area forthe development of Irish business andtrade links.“The appointment of a two person teamis a reflection of the importance thatthe government and the embassy placeson relations with Alberta.“The new consular officers join our dis-tinguished Consul-General in Edmonton,Doodie Cahill in what I regard as a verystrong Irish representation in Alberta.”The ambassador also paid tribute to theformer Irish Consul in Calgary,Cameron Milliken, who passed awayin 2013. Cameron was the first Irishconsul in the city.

The Irish honorary consulates outsideAlberta are located in Vancouver, Win-nipeg, Toronto (vacant), Montreal, Hali-fax, and St. John’s.The ambassador also indicated that thenetwork was under review with an ob-jective of strengthening the Irish Gov-ernment presence in a number of othercities.Contact Deirdre Halferty, HonoraryConsul (Community, Cultural and Con-sular), at (403) 813-5337, or e-mail:[email protected] Laureen Regan, Vice Consul(Trade and Investment) at (403) 615-7464, or e-mail:[email protected].

Irish Ambassador Ray Bassett:‘Alberta is our number one

priority in Canada’CALGARY – Ireland’s Am-bassador to Canada was inCalgary last month, where hetold a luncheon meeting of theIreland-Canada Centre forCommerce (ICCC) that hiscountry’s economy is on thecomeback after several diffi-cult years.“Part of the recovery strategy is in-creasing trade and tourism between Ire-land and Canada”, said Ray Bassett, atthe October 26 gathering at the WestinHotel.“Alberta is our number one priority inCanada,” said Bassett. He notedCanada helped young people from Ire-land weather the gloomy economy byopening up opportunities for employ-ment here.Over 500,000 Albertans claim they haveIrish heritage. “I think those young peo-ple who came to Canada revolutionizedthe Irish-Canadian relationship,” saidBassett.As part of his trip to Calgary, Bassettand Laureen Regan of the ICCC metwith Westjet officials, to discuss theneed for more direct flights to Irelandfrom Alberta.

The ICCC luncheon was sponsored byVermilion Energy, which expects pro-duction to begin soon on a deep-waternatural gas operation off the coast ofIreland providing up to 60 percent ofIreland’s gas needs and lessening Ire-land’s dependence on English and Rus-sian gas.Almost 300 Irish companies do businessin Canada, of which over 50 have a lo-cal presence of some kind.There are approximately 25 Canadiancompanies in Ireland and about 7,000Canadians are employed by Irish com-panies.With Ireland’s economic ties to Calgarystrong and growing, Bassett, announcedhe is looking to Regan to help maintainmomentum.

Regan, the head of the Boom Groupwhich administers programs for corpo-rations to optimize employee engage-ment, was appointed Ireland’s Vice-Consul Trade and Investment in Al-berta.Regan, who is Irish born, also foundedthe Calgary chapter of the Ireland-Canada Centre for Commerce (ICCC).Bassett said Regan was an obviouschoice. “She has a proven track recordhere,” said Bassett. “She’s a tremen-dous networker, she’s a great humanbeing and she’s very popular within thecommunity. So it was a no-brainer.”Regan will work with Deirdre Halferty,Ireland’s Honorary Consul responsiblefor boosting Irish community and cul-tural links.

RAY BASSETT the Irish Ambassador to Canada addressed abusiness luncheon in Calgary on October 26.

Long delays at CanadaImmigration frustrating

many Irish workersTORONTO – A report published in the Globe andMail outlines the frustration with Canada’s immi-gration system experienced by some of the mosthighly skilled and educated applicants seeking per-manent residence in Canada.Long delays to immigrationprocessing times are leading manyof them to question the fairnessof the country’s immigration sys-tem.The delays are affecting those whoapplied to the Canadian ExperienceClass (CEC) last year.When it began in 2008, the governmentpresented the CEC stream as a way tocompete for the world’s “best andbrightest” by providing a smooth andfast immigration pathway to those withCanadian work experience and post-secondary education.Former international students make upabout 40 percent of those who haveapplied to stay in Canada through CEC.Recently, however, frustration has beengrowing, with some applicants sayingthey have been waiting longer than theyever expected for their application tomove forward.“We want to have kids soon, we reallywant to buy a house here.“But you go to the bank and they saywe don’t have status in Canada – soeverything’s just been on hold for thelast two years,” said Karen Johnson, a29-year-old from Ireland who works inmarketing.“We have a wedding at Christmas inAdare. We can’t leave, or we lose ourwork permits.”Johnson and her partner came toCanada five years ago on a workingholiday visa and applied for permanentresidency in the summer of 2014. Theyhave yet to receive a decision.On its website, Citizenship and Immi-gration Canada (CIC) states that CECapplications are being processed in 14months.For young Irish people here, the delaysfeel like a particularly sharp reversalfrom the way Canada was courtingthem only a few years ago.Indeed, in the fall of 2012, JasonKenney, who was citizenship and im-migration minister at the time, appearedon a popular television show in Ireland.Canadian employers felt Irish workerswere “culturally compatible,” he said,and the government was making iteasier for Irish immigrants to makeCanada their permanent home.

“Just like the people who made a com-mitment to Canada, Canada made acommitment to these people,” saidCathy Murphy, executive director of theIrish Canadian Immigration Centre.Murphy said she is receiving many callsfrom anxious young workers and fami-lies whose CEC applications are takinga long time.What is particularly unfair, she said, isthat people who submitted an applica-tion through Express Entry, the newimmigration system that began in Janu-ary, 2015, are receiving decisions in sixmonths or less.“It seems to me that it’s obvious theyare prioritizing Express Entry. It’s a two-tiered system created by Citizenship andImmigration.”Express Entry, touted as a way to re-spond quickly to labour-market needs,awards applicants points based on theirdemographic and professional qualities.But it is operating alongside the process-ing of applications submitted before itwas introduced.“The new system is operating verywell,” said Brendan Madden, a 29-year-old from Ireland who works in civil en-gineering in Toronto. “But they didn’tincorporate a transition at all betweenthe new and old system.”Madden decided to come to Canadaafter he attended a recruitment fair puton by Canadian employers in Dublin afew years ago.Even though most companies therewere looking for skilled tradesmen, hewanted to have a Canadian adventureand applied for a working holiday visa.“When I left Ireland, I said if I comeback after a year, that’s great. But half-way through, I knew I wanted to stay.“You start to settle into a country andget used to its ways. There was no de-lay in my application for permanent resi-dence, I applied as soon as I could,” hesaid.Fourteen months after sending in hispaperwork, he’s received no updates.Murphy, of the Irish Canadian Immi-gration Centre, plans to lobby the in-coming Liberal MPs and is advisingthose who call the centre to do the same.“We tell people to hold their govern-ment to their promises,” she said. “Deal-ing with processing times was one ofthose promises.”


Kathleen Lynch: Working to bring healingand open discussion about mental health to Ireland

ATHLEEN Lynch, an Irish Labour Partypolitician, is the Teachta Dala (TD) for theCork North-Central constituency. She isalso the Minister of State for Primary Care,K

Mental Health and Disability.

By CATHOLINE BUTLERMinister Lynch was in Van-couver recently to attend aconference on mental healthand disability and she spoketo The Celtic Connectionabout the changing views andpolicies in Ireland regardingmental health and suicide.The stigma associated with mental ill-ness is still a challenge and the ministersaid this is something she is workingvery hard to overcome.In a recent survey 40 percent of Irishpeople said they did not want to livenext door to someone who has a men-tal health problem.Minister Lynch, who took office in 2011,said, “I have news for you...you mayjust not know it.”The issue is one that affects familiesand individuals at all levels of society.Overcoming fear and bringing the is-sues into the open is an important stepaccording to Lynch.“When we used to talk about cancer,we would put our hands over our mouthand say ‘the other thing’ or ‘the big C’,we said everything but the word can-cer.”This attitude has shifted now she saidand people are more willing to openlydiscuss the disease. “We now under-stand what it is,” she said, “and we knowif it’s diagnosed early enough there canbe very good outcomes. That’s wherewe are trying to get to with mentalhealth.”Ireland has exceptionally high rates of

IRISH Minister of State for Pri-mary Care, Mental Health andDisability Kathleen Lynch wasin Vancouver recently to attenda conference on mental healthand disability.

OVERCOMING the fear and stigma associated with mental ill-ness in Ireland has been one of the biggest hurdles. In a re-cent survey 40 percent of Irish people said they did not wantto live next door to someone who has a mental health problem.

suicide among young males and femalesand according to statistics has the fourthhighest rate of youth suicide in Europe.“Our last suicide strategy ran out oftime,” said Minister Lynch. “Our newmental health strategy in relation to sui-cide is called Connecting Lives andConnecting for Life.”She said attitudes are shifting. “Basi-cally what we are finding is that peoplewho die by suicide are no longer talkedabout in hushed tones. We now talkabout the possible reasons behind it.“I think there has been a misconcep-

tion that the age from 15-25 was thekey age when people commit suicide,but in fact we are finding that it’s any-thing up to 45.Lynch spoke about the importance ofputting into place the structures to sup-port those struggling and provide con-nections to help prevent suicide.“Sometimes, I’m not sure if young peo-ple understand that suicide is irrevers-ible.“It is about stopping the cause, puttinginto place nurses who can often see thefirst visible signs of someone who iscontemplating taking their own life.“The first sign is usually self-harm,whether it’s abusing alcohol, takingdrugs, or cutting themselves, any kindof risky behaviour.“We now have nurses who are trainedto watch for this kind of behaviour andmake sure the patient is stabilized andput in touch with the right services andfollowed up.”In 2006 a new mental health policydocument ‘A Vision for Change’ waslaunched.“This policy replaced the 1984 Irishmental health policy document ‘Plan-

ning for the Future’ and was to have alifespan of some seven to 10 years.“The plan was to basically ensure thedelivery of a different form of mentalhealth services,” said Lynch. “We hada system which had enormous institu-tions all over the country. We were verygood at locking people up with 22,500people in institutions.“To put that into context, at the sametime we had 10,000 people in jail. So itwas quite phenomenal.“We decided to close down the big in-stitutions and on average there wereapproximately 1,000 people living ineach institution. Once this program wasunderway, it required a different formof service.”She said, “In other words the servicehas to be in the community. You stillhave an acute unit but with muchsmaller numbers.“The average length of stay now interms of the acute unit is approximately11 days.“So we started to change the entireservice and in order to do that when Icame into office I knew that we neededmoney separate from the mental healthservice.

“The mental health budget was to runthe service but we still needed peopleto deliver the service. We needed tocreate and develop a different service.“Within primary care we now have acounselling service which was set-uplast year. Up to that point, when youwent to a GP and said that you weredepressed with either mild or moderatesymptoms, really all the doctor could dowas write you a prescription or sendyou to the acute care unit.”The minister said, “Now, they can re-fer you without going through the psy-chiatric services to counselling – di-rectly to counselling – and that’s work-ing extraordinarily well.“This year, we intend to actually extendthat funding to treat people under 18,not just adults.“Really, it’s about prevention. Gettingin there early to ensure that when peo-ple need it, they can get the type oftreatment that they require.”Lynch said often the biggest obstacle isusually attitude but there is a growingunderstanding about the complexity ofmental health issues. For example, somepeople need to be accompanied by theiranimal companion.“That is changing because people nowrecognize the benefit and value of suchsupport,” she continued. “A dog maybe a key element to autism, or some-one who is visually impaired or perhapssomeone just needs a dog as a com-panion.”Speaking about the conference in Van-couver, the minister said, “It is so verynice to be in the company of people whobelieve the same as yourself.“I suppose most of my work is aboutovercoming barriers. It is about tryingto convince others that we are doingthe right thing, and here at the confer-ence everyone is either ahead of us orbehind us, but we are all convinced thatwe are on the one road and we canhelp one another.”

Disappointment as Web Summitmoving from Dublin to Lisbon

DUBLIN – The decision tomove the world’s largestgathering of startups to Lis-bon next year is a blow toDublin’s efforts to portray it-self as Europe’s Silicon Val-ley and cast a pall over theevent’s kickoff on November3.Both the Web Summit and Irish Gov-ernment defended their positions andthe back-and-forth escalated with eventfounder Paddy Cosgrave releasing acache of e-mail correspondence.The government’s “uncoordinated anddisorganized approach” hampered thesummit, which draws about 30,000attendees, event founder Cosgravewrote in e-mails to the taoiseach’s of-fice. In turn, the government pointed tofinancial support given to the summit.Twitter posts showed public sympathyfor Cosgrave ebbing after he released

the event’s wish-list, which includedpolice escorts for VIPs, free rental oficonic venues and the closure of somecity center streets for a “night summit.”Cosgrave renewed his attack on thegovernment saying Kenny’s administra-tion was using the controversy as a“helpful distraction” from other prob-lems.“Publicly, we always lavished praise onthe government,” Cosgrave said in aninterview with state-broadcaster RTE. “Privately, we were constantly tryingto get politicians to do what other gov-ernments were doing at the summit,focusing not on photo opportunities butopportunities to do business.”The idea that the government hadn’tdone enough to meet executives at thesummit is “simply not the case,” Enter-prise Minister Richard Bruton told RTEafter Cosgrave.The summit, which started five yearsago with 400 technology entrepreneurs,will draw more than 2,000 startups,

1,000 investors and 650 speakers to thethree-day conference this year, organ-izers say.The sprawling event now encompassespub crawls and food and sports sum-mits and represents an estimatedUS$120 million in revenue for Dublin.Last year, U2’s Bono and supermodelLily Cole were among the star turns.Portugal’s capital, which will host thesummit for at least three years, is pro-viding 1.3 million euros ($1.4 million) ofsupport a year to the event. Ireland hasprovided just under 1 million euros overthe lifetime of the event.The trouble may have started a yearago after the 2014 event was mired inlogistical difficulties such as Wi-Fi out-ages and a lack of public transport ortaxis around the event, promptingCosgrave to send the government aseries of e-mails requesting extra sup-port.“Leaving international attendeesstranded with no hope of public trans-port or taxis caused incredible frustra-

WEB SUMMIT founder Paddy Cosgrave. The company, whichemploys 130 people at its headquarters in Dublin, will con-tinue to be based in Ireland.

tion, ” Cosgrave said in a September e-mail. The entrepreneur didn’t “want apenny,” he said.“We just want a plan for public trans-port, traffic flow management, Wi-Fiand hotels. Without even a basic plan,Web Summit will be too big, too unman-ageable, too risky for Dublin.”On September 23, a frustratedCosgrave told the world that the eventwas leaving Dublin next year for Lis-bon.

As for this year, one person who won’tattend is Kenny although he was aspeaker last year.His office claimed the invitation to at-tend had been received at the lastminute and due to the hectic nature ofhis schedule he was unable to re-or-ganize.Cosgrave replied the taoiseach was in-vited in May. The government declinedto comment.


“We are the onlyEnglish-speaking

country in theeurozone and

an important linkfor Britain

with Europe”

Sinn Féin TD criticisesTraveller criminality

DUBLIN – Sinn Féin TDPádraig Mac Lochlainn, whois half-Traveller, has saidsome Travellers involved incriminality are a disgracewho have shamed their owncommunity and shown disre-spect to settled people.Some of the “mistrust” felt by the set-tled community has been justified by“very poor behaviour and worse” bysome Travellers, said the Donegal TD,who has urged the State to recogniseTravellers as an ethnic group.The first TD from a Traveller back-ground, Mac Lochlainn was born inLeeds in 1973 and brought up in Bir-mingham by “two strong Travellerwomen,” his grandmother Lizzy Gavinand mother Mary Mac Lochlainn.His father, Réamonn Mac Lochlainn,was in the Provisional IRA and wasjailed in England for nine years. Thefamily moved back to Donegal in 1983.His father died in a swimming accidenttwo years later.Mac Lochlainn has spearheaded thecampaign for the State to recogniseTraveller ethnicity, with the debate heinitiated in the Dáil provoking a passion-ate speech from Minister of State forEquality Aodhán Ó Ríordáin.Ó Ríordáin did not read his official scriptbut suggested the government was slowto grant ethnicity because of the re-sponse from focus groups.“Aodhán’s speech was very coura-geous because he set aside the civilservice script and spoke from his heart,and it was a great speech.“And he meant it, I know he means it.On this issue we’re colleagues andwe’re allies and we’re friends,” MacLochlainn said in an interview with TheIrish Times.The Sinn Féin TD said he had been ter-rified by some “vile commentary”voiced on social media about the trag-

PÁDRAIG Mac Lochlainn, whois half-Traveller, has spear-headed a campaign for theState to recognise Travellerethnicity.edy of the 10 people who died in thefire at the halting site in Carrickmines,Dublin, last month.The next step for society should be tohave an honest conversation to addressthe “quiet prejudice” against Travellersthat had grown up among some other-wise tolerant settled people. “That is theslippery slope to bigotry and to racism.”He stressed those who advocated forTravellers’ rights had no difficulty insaying antisocial behaviour andcriminality must be tackled head-on. “Itis not Travelling culture to be involvedin criminality,” he said.Mac Lochlainn said all citizens had re-sponsibilities as well as rights. “It’s nota right-wing thing to say . . . Peoplethink it’s Thatcherite to say that. It’snot. It’s Republican to say that,” hesaid.“This is one of the last great civil rightschallenges in Ireland, the Travellers’issue. We’ve buried it under the car-pet, we’ve papered over the cracks fortoo long. And we need to now have anhonest conversation, warts and all.“And everybody needs to accept theirresponsibility on both sides of the de-bate for what needs to be done.”

Enda Kenny says Irelandwill back ‘reasonable’ EU reform

LONDON – Ireland is pre-pared to support some ofBritain’s demands for re-form of the European Un-ion, Taoiseach Enda Kennyhas said.He was speaking following ameeting with British Prime Min-ister David Cameron in London onNovember 9 as negotiations tosave power-sharing in NorthernIreland enter their final phase.In an address to business leaders inLondon, Kenny catalogued a list of eco-nomic and political reasons the UKshould stay in Europe and offered tolook carefully and constructively atDavid Cameron’s proposals.“I have always been clear that Irelandwill be open and pragmatic when itcomes to sensible proposals to improvethe EU,” the taoiseach said.“In general, where the UK seeks rea-sonable and achievable adjustments, wewill be sympathetic and supportive.”Kenny’s speech follows a report froman influential think-tank in Ireland whichwarned British withdrawal from the EUwould see Irish exports fall by threebillion euro a year.The Economic and Social ResearchInstitute (ESRI), which informs policy-making in Dublin, warned energy costswould spike and business in NorthernIreland and along the border would beworst hit by a so-called Brexit.The taoiseach’s invitation to the CBIalso comes on the eve of the Britishprime minister setting out his case forEU reform.On the close ties between Britain andIreland, Kenny pointed to the one bil-lion euro of trade between the two coun-tries every week, with the UK export-ing more to Ireland than it does to China,India and Brazil combined.Ireland is the UK’s fifth largest marketwith an estimated 200,000 jobs linkedto the exports.The British market is now the biggestfor Irish tourism accounting for almost50 percent of all overseas visitors andaround one-third of all overseas tour-ism revenue in the Republic.Offering a qualified support for the UKposition on Europe, Kenny said, “ Giventhe breadth and depth of these over-lapping interests, it is perhaps not sur-prising that Ireland regards the prospectof the UK leaving the EU as a majorstrategic risk.”He said Brexit is not something the IrishGovernment wants to “see materialiseat all.”“The Irish Government’s strong view,backed up by independent economic re-search published last week, is that aBrexit is not in Ireland’s economic in-terest.“The research showed adverse impactsacross a range of headings includingTrade, Energy and the Labour Market.“It also debunked the myth that therewould be some FDI bonanza for Ire-land if Britain left the Union.”On Northern Ireland issues thetaoiseach said it was extremely worry-ing that it could be worst hit by Brexit.“I believe that Northern Ireland canleave the past behind and become a dy-

TAOISEACH Enda Kenny metwith UK Prime Minister DavidCameron at Downing Street onNovember 9 to discuss thestate of the political process inBelfast.

namic economy that will benefit not onlythe UK but the island of Ireland,” hesaid.“There must also be cooperation to buildthe island economy through overseasinvestment, trade, tourism, and utilisinga competitive, common corporation taxrate.“Now is not the time to weaken thecohesive, stabilising influence and out-ward focus that shared EU member-ship brings to Northern Ireland.”Kenny noted 2.4 billion euro of fundingfrom the EU in the six years to 2013 tohelp the region as it recovered fromconflict.And on the prospect of a deal beingreached to revive power-sharing in theStormont Assembly, the taoiseach saidhe was optimistic.During a question and answer sessionafter his speech, Kenny declined to saywhich countries would be most likelyto object to any reforms being soughtby Cameron.But he maintained that most Europeancountries would support a reformagenda which led to the EU workingmore effectively.Everyone supported the elimination ofred tape, a single market and moves toboost jobs, growth and prosperity saidKenny, but there were other issues suchas closer union, welfare reform andmigrants, which he assumed Cameron

will cover in his letter on November 10.Kenny also spoke out in support of thetrade deal being negotiated between theEU and the United States, saying itcould create new jobs and boost busi-ness.Paul Drechsler, CBI president, said,“The links that bind Ireland and theUnited Kingdom are stronger than everbefore. The booming trade partnershipthat our two islands enjoy drives growth,creates jobs and increases prosperityand competitiveness across our coun-tries.“To further our global ambitions, weneed to be signing more trade deals likeTTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Invest-ment Partnership), boosting investmentin innovation and turbo-charging theEU’s Single Market in services and dig-ital.“The taoiseach’s willingness to consideropen and pragmatic EU reform propos-als from the UK is welcome. When theprime minister comes back with his EUreform package, the CBI will consultits members again.“We agree with the taoiseach that thevoice of business needs to be heard.”Speaking outside Number 10 after thetalks with Cameron, the taoiseach saidIreland “cannot support everything” butwould play a “constructive and support-ive role.”“I said that in respect of this matter thatIreland would be as constructive andsupportive as we can, and I think thePrime Minister appreciates that verymuch,” he said.“We will participate constructively andappropriately in the discussion of theissues that he will set out in his lettertomorrow which are based on the mani-festo he set out some time ago.”Asked if his warnings that Brexit poseda serious strategic risk meant that hisonly course could be to back Cameron’snegotiating stance 100 percent, he toldreporters, “Every country has got itsnational interests, of course. I laid outthe overlapping interests that we havebetween ourselves and Britain.“Obviously, this relationship haschanged radically since the visit of HerMajesty Queen Elizabeth II and the re-ciprocal visit by our president here toGreat Britain.“So, in terms of employment, trade, en-ergy, hospitality, all of these areas wehave a great deal in common.“I would remind you that the Irish peo-ple voted in the midst of a recession forthe fiscal stability treaty – 60/40 in fa-vour, linking our future to the euro andthe eurozone.“But we are the only English-speakingcountry in the eurozone and thereforean important link for Britain with Eu-rope.“So, we cannot support everything but,in so far as we can, we will be con-structive and supportive in respect ofwhat the prime minister has been ask-ing for.“What has he been asking for? The sin-gle market, the single digital market,greater efficiency, elimination of redtape and useless administration. Eve-rybody can support this.“What is the European Union about?It’s big countries helping small countrieshave continued peace, continued pros-perity, opportunities for the 500 millionpeople are the inhabitants of the EU.“That’s where we need to be.”

AT a meeting with businessleaders in London, EndaKenny catalogued a list of eco-nomic and political reasons forthe UK to stay in Europe.

Irish general electionto be held next

spring, says KennyDUBLIN – Taoiseach Enda Kenny caused surprise amonghis colleagues after stating it is his intention to hold an elec-tion in spring 2016.After significant pressure to clarify his position, Kenny told broadcaster RTE hisopinion on the timing of the election had not changed.“I have been consistently very clear on this. It is my intention to hold the electionin the spring of 2016.”The leader of Fine Gael, the largest party in a coalition government which haslasted since a landslide victory in 2011, has been under mounting pressure to seta date amid speculation a poll could have been ordered as early as November.Kenny leads the government with the support of minority partner Labour.He said it was important for Fine Gael and Labour to go into the election on ajoint electoral platform.The taoiseach said, “I see no reason to change my mind (about the date). Theimportant thing is both parties - Fine Gael and Labour - go into this electoral on ajoint electoral pact platform. Yes we will have different programmes.“This is not about me as taoiseach or me as a public representative. This is aboutthe future and people have to have the choice of continued stability and invest-ment.”


Single biggest loss of lifein a fire in almost 35 yearsDUBLIN – Ten people,including five childrenand a pregnant woman,died on the night of Oc-tober 10 after fire torethrough a Traveller site inCarrickmines, south ofDublin.Thomas Connors (27) and his wifeSylvia (25), died alongside three of theiryoung children – Jim (5), Christy (2),and six-month-old Mary.Sylvia’s brother Willy Lynch (25), hispregnant partner Tara Gilbert (27), andtheir children Jodie (8), and Kelsey (4)also died in the fire. Willy’s brotherJimmy (39) was also killed.The tragedy was the single biggest lossof life in a fire in Ireland in almost 35years.But it did not take long for it to becomeapparent that the wellspring of grief andsympathy for the dead would not beextended to the survivors.The victims are from a communityknown as Travellers which a report inthe New York Times calls “the most stig-matized group in Irish society.”Even in the midst of such catastrophe,there would be no softening of long-heldprejudices.When the authorities attempted to setup emergency accommodations for sur-vivors of the disaster, local residentsblocked access to the proposed site,saying it was “unsuitable” and they didnot believe the Travellers’ presencewould be temporary.The survivors eventually moved to anisolated parking lot next to adecommissioned dump, a site that hadno one living close enough to object.Aodhan O’Riordain, the governmentminister with responsibility for equality,described the objections of the localresidents as “indicative of a wider viewthroughout Irish society.”“There are few groups within Irish so-ciety about whom people can say prettymuch what they want, and often peo-ple in public life say whatever they wantabout Travellers and pretty much getaway with it,” he said on national ra-dio.Travellers make up about 0.6 percentof Ireland’s population, with about30,000 living in the country, accordingto the 2011 census.Their origins are disputed. Some saythey were people displaced centuriesago by invasion and famine, but thereis DNA evidence that their origins inIreland go back at least 1,000 years.Many speak a distinct language and in-termarriage is a norm.Many retain a nomadic lifestyle, butothers are known as “settled Travellers”because they have chosen to stay put.Their social exclusion makes them vul-nerable to drug abuse, suicide andcrime.The New York Times article goes on tosay, “It would appear that most peoplein Ireland form an image of Travellersfrom depictions of them as tight-knitgangsters, housebreakers and feudingthugs.“They are frequently refused servicein pubs, shops and hotels, though fewprosecutions on charges of discrimina-

tion have been successful.”At the funeral of Thomas and SylviaConnors a message from Pope Franciswas read out. Bishop Denis Brennandelivered the pontiff’s message and paidtribute to the strong family bonds he hasencountered in the travelling commu-nity.“Having worked with the TravellingPeople over the years I have come toknow and admire your lively sense ofthe sacred, and your strong familybonds.“I pray that these two traits, which area hallmark of your community, will helpyou through this time of tears,” he said.Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Cen-tre commended firefighters for puttingtheir lives on the line to rescue people.Martin Collins, co-director of PaveePoint, a Travellers’ rights group, said,“Our community has been sickened tothe pit of its stomach by the callous waythe survivors have been treated overthe past two weeks.“There is undoubtedly deep-seated rac-ism in Irish society to the point where ithas been normalized in the Irish psy-che.”Co-director Ronnie Fay said, “PaveePoint is concerned that many Travellerfamilies throughout Ireland are beingforced to live in overcrowded and dan-gerous situations due to the impact ofthe housing crisis. Travellers are oftenthe hidden victims of the housing crisis.

A LOCAL priest and mourners at a memorial for the victims ofthe Carrickmines fire which took the lives of 10 people, includ-ing five children and a pregnant woman.

“The difficulties in accessing the pri-vate rented sector are exacerbated formany Travellers who continue to expe-rience widespread discrimination andfind it nigh on impossible to rent fromprivate landlords.“This is in addition to the cuts made bythe government to Traveller accommo-dation under the guise of austeritymeasures with the budget reduced from40 million euro in 2008 to 4 million euroin 2013.“We call on the government to reinvestin Travellers and ameliorate the savagecuts that were imposed during auster-ity.”

SYLVIA AND THOMAS Connors [above left] died in the firealong with their three children Jim (5), Christy (2), and six-month-old Mary. Tara Gilbert and Willy Lynch [above right] inhappier times with daughters Jodie (8) and Kelsey (4).

FIVE hearses carry the bod-ies of the Connors family forburial.


MULLIGAN’SGrand Old Pub of Poolbeg StreetBy Declan DunneMercer PressISBN: 978 78117 348 0

By CATHOLINE BUTLERNot many Dublin pubs have had entirebooks written about them, but authorDeclan Dunne would argue that fewdrinking establishments can comparewith Mulligan’s. It was established asa spirit grocer in 1782 and still attractsan enthusiastic clientele.The pub has inspired artists, poets, mu-sicians, writers, dancers and journalists,many of whom conducted their inter-views in the pub. Several ghosts areeven reputed to have appeared on thepremises.It’s also a barometer used by the me-dia to gauge public opinion in Irelandon sport, politics and economic strate-gies – I think that must be very diffi-cult since very few Irish agree with theother’s opinion.The characters that Dunne writes aboutin the book are not only real but someof the most interesting and hilariouscharacters you could ever meet. Youwould need your notebook handy to takedown all the one-liners.There are some absolutely funny thingsthat took place at the bar with many apractical joke played.The famous and infamous all frequentedMulligan’s – Seamus Heaney, JudyGarland and James Joyce drank in it.A kidnapper was arrested in it, a mankicked his wife to death after leaving it,and Brendan Behan was barred from itfor using f...ng and blinding language.It seems that f...ng was acceptable butBrendan used blinding, and that wasjust too much.A man from Houston, Texas, in theU.S.A. was a frequent visitor toMulligan’s and in his final request askedthat his ashes be placed in the bottomof the grandfather clock in the pubwhen he passed away. His family andfriends still visit Mulligan’s today to pay

THE VIEW FROMIRELAND

ByMAURICEFITZPATRICK

Brian Friel’s Final Act:A simple burial in Co. Donegal

FAMILY AND FRIENDS of the late Brian Friel bade farewell tothe world-renown dramatist in a simple ceremony in Co. Don-egal on October 4.S

EEING pallbear-ers convey play-wright BrianFriel’s coffin ofwicker to his

grave in Glenties, his moth-er’s village, on Sunday, Oc-tober 4 against the backdropof bevel hills, heather andMontbretia wildflowers,brought many preoccupationsof the man and his work intoone frame: gaiety and tragedy,celebration and loss, homeplace and exile were in gen-tle contrast.Brian Friel’s life as a dramatistbegan after a series of false starts,writing in other media.A newspaper columnist as a young man,he seemed comfortable in gossipy andself-revelatory idiom before he becamea regular short story writer for The NewYorker in the days when to do so al-most provided a living.He also wrote some radio plays. Friel,like his father, was an active memberof the Nationalist Party in Derry Cityin the 1960s and he seemed destinedfor a life of teaching, writing and mak-ing a contribution to local politics.Instead, local politics were unrecognis-ably recast by the 1960s generation inthe North and so, too, was the youngBrian Friel to change enormously.Tyrone Guthrie, the visionary theatredirector who believed in establishingtheatres away from the metropolis, sawFriel’s potential and invited him to theGuthrie Theater in Minneapolis for fourmonths as an observer in 1963.This period provoked in Friel “some kindof explosion in the head.”Friel had brought his family to Americaand witnessed the workings of a pro-fessional theatre, thought about exileand emigration, Ireland and modernity.Out of all this, he turned out a play,Philadelphia, Here I Come!, the fol-lowing year, which bore out TyroneGuthrie’s intuition that Friel was a play-wright of world stature.Friel’s dramatic ingenuity was appar-ent from the first. In Philadelphia,Here I Come! Friel splits his protago-nist, Gar O’Donnell, down the middle,into two characters.One is a sulky and lonely man, facingthe prospect of leaving his father be-hind to die when he departs from Don-egal for a new life in Philadelphia. Theother, an exuberant inner version of theself, a mouth in a world of inarticulacy,a mixture of pathos and exaltation.Here are two selves torn: old Irelandand the new United States, the past andthe future. It was a mould-breaking play

in Irish dramatic tradition and a rave onNew York’s Broadway.Much as international success liftedFriel, it also helped to ground him. Afew years after Philadelphia opened,he moved from Derry City to a housein Donegal where he would write abouthis ongoing concern with what has beencalled the “glocal”: the worldly importof local matters.Friel found in Ballybeg (literally, smalltown) a metaphor that formed much ofthe dramatic context for his work. Oc-casionally in Friel’s work, Ballybeg canbe anywhere in rural Donegal.At other times, it clearly mutates fromone part of the county to another.In Dancing at Lughnasa, dedicated tothe memory of “those five braveGlenties women,” Friel clearly writesabout his mother’s home place.In Translations, as Friel’s diary on May14, 1979, states: “Went to Urris today,the setting of the hedge-school in theplay-in-the-head…no response to thisremote, bleak, desolate strip of land at-tenuated between mountain and sea.”Take a trip to Urris, almost the north-ernmost tip of Ireland, and see the land-scape that inspired Friel. Not only is itmajestic; its sense of enclosure, of be-ing beyond the mountain and nearlyswallowed up by the sea remains.But Urris/Ballybeg, the fact that it wasIrish-speaking when Translations wasset (1833) and English-speaking in the20th Century was to provide Friel withone of his greatest inspirations aboutIrish identity and the division within oursociety.In a television interview to promoteTranslations, the woman who laterbecame the first Irish president fromthe North of Ireland asked Friel to ex-plain the implications of language in adivided Northern Ireland as he under-stood them.

Friel replied: “Loyalty, treason, patriot-ism, republicanism and homeland [are]words which we think we share andwhich are, in fact, barriers to commu-nication.”Out of Translations came one of Friel’smost lasting contributions to Irish thea-tre, the company he founded withStephen Rea to create a way for art toaddress the Northern Irish crisis: FieldDay.Friel was quite explicit about the needfor artists to help to create “a culturalstate, not a political state. And I thinkout of that cultural state, a possibility ofa political state follows. That is alwaysthe sequence.”Field Day expanded to become a liter-ary publishing enterprise and spawnedmany other plays. Its archive in theNational Library of Ireland is by turnsdeeply serious and hilarious, as Frielhimself was in person and as his playsoften are as well.After he left Field Day in 1990, Frielbecame difficult to access. Interviewsdried up completely; it was clear thathe had no wish to be interviewed andhad no time for the limelight.Yet Friel’s modesty and shyness did notpreclude many a tussle with theatre di-rectors.He formed the view early in his careerthat the role of a director in the produc-tion of a play was overblown; by theheight of his career, he wished he couldalmost dispense with them. When theytampered with his text he was apt tomake them pay for their interference.This was something that the ArtisticDirector at Florida’s Sarasota’s AsoloRepertory Theatre discovered last Janu-ary.A production of Philadelphia, Here ICome! there, which cut three charac-ters and eliminated two intermissionsand generally interfered with the play,was summarily pulled by Friel.In the end was his beginning. Donegal,where Brian Friel holidayed as a boyand lived for most of his life, and alsohad a holiday home, is his natural rest-ing place.Of his four grandparents who hailedfrom Donegal, two were illiterate andtwo could speak Irish only.Like the title of a volume of oral historyFriel edited, The Last of the Name, heembodied both the end of an Irish-speaking oral tradition and thereinvigoration of that into a new tradi-tion of world class drama.For that, for the 30 plays he has left uswith and for many other achievements,Brian Friel was a remarkable figure.

THE late Brian Friel was oneof Ireland’s best known play-wrights.

Fascinating charactersabound in one

of Dublin’s oldest pubs

homage to his ashes.Jack Grealish, news editor for the IrishPress, was a frequent visitor toMulligan’s. He introduced then Sena-tor John F. Kennedy to Mulligan’s.Chapter five speaks about that time be-fore Camelot.Oliver Grealish, Jack’s son, now makesEdmonton his home and he spoke abouthis father saying, “Kennedy told my fa-ther that he wanted to see a pub thatJames Joyce may have visited and myfather took him to Mulligan’s.“My father told my mother Nora thathe didn’t have any money so he bor-rowed a fiver for the drink from the girlon the desk at the Irish Press. Andthat’s what he bought John F. Kennedya drink with.”This meeting took place a full 14 yearsbefore Kennedy entered the WhiteHouse and Oliver said his father wasvery impressed by the senator.“He also told my mother that he foundKennedy very charming and ambitiousand that in his opinion, this man wouldbecome president of the United States.”The stories about the visitors toMulligan’s will keep you in stitcheslaughing and the most amazing partis...they’re all true.Mulligan’s Grand Old Pub of PoolbegStreet, is a hilarious read and wouldmake a great Christmas gift.

Gone Again Untoa Beginning at the End

Quiet, watching, underground. The season is as the dead.Too late to change what was, too early to say what will be.A reasonable drive toward madness, or something else.Inalterable change, greater than the days of the calendar, is underway.On foot to a new land, or just surviving until tomorrow, the present is breakingits bargain with the future. Can you feel it?Melting ice a world away creates rivers to the sea. Movement, ceaselessmovement, away from stability, toward fluid, restless change. Electric im-pulse, blinking eye, tipping point. Here.Ripping panic, any country, the crowd turns.Some trampled, some survive. Machines rain from the sky.Brutality, frail flesh falls, bones bleach.Raise your hand. Strike, defend, or answer.Spin the protest, business as usual.The sun pales to the onslaught, a spider navigates a windowpane. Look away.Evade the futility of Now.November butterfly flits toward twilight.Or something else.

– By Cynthia Wallentine


MAUREEN O’HARA was born in Dublin and moved to Holly-wood in 1939 where she became a U.S. citizen.

Maureen O’Hara Actressof Hollywood’s Golden Age, Dies at 95

IRISH-BORN actress and one of Hollywood’s biggest starsin the 1940s and ‘50s, Maureen O’Hara passed away on Oc-tober 24 at the age of 95, according to a statement from herfamily.“Maureen was our loving mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and friend,”the statement read.“She passed peacefully surrounded by her loving family as they celebrated herlife listening to music from her favorite movie, ‘The Quiet Man’.”The family said, “Her characters were feisty and fearless, just as she was in reallife.“She was also proudly Irish and spent her entire lifetime sharing her heritage andthe wonderful culture of the Emerald Isle with the world.”O’Hara was born in Dublin and moved to Hollywood in 1939 where she laterbecame a U.S. citizen.She first broke into motion pictures in 1939, with roles in Alfred Hitchcock’sJamaica Inn and as Esmerelda, opposite Charles Laughton’s Quasimodo, in TheHunchback of Notre Dame.Over her celebrated career, O’Hara worked with the greats of her time, includ-ing John Ford (most notably on the 1941 Best Picture winner How Green WasMy Valley) and John Wayne, with whom she made five films, including TheQuiet Man in 1952.She is perhaps most widely remembered for her roles in two family films, TheParent Trap and Miracle on 34th Street.Ireland’s president Michael D. Higgins said “she will be remembered as an out-standing and versatile actress, whose work especially in film, will endure formany years to come.”

A memorable encounter with Maureen O’HaraUCH has been written these past few weeksabout the passing of Hollywood screen leg-end Maureen O’Hara.

Aer Lingus tocreate 200jobs with

launch of newU.S. routes

DUBLIN – More than 200 jobs are tobe created with the launch of three newAer Lingus routes to the U.S., the car-rier has announced.Direct transatlantic flights will operatefrom Ireland to Los Angeles, Newarkand Hartford in Connecticut from nextyear.Five flights a week will run betweenDublin and L.A., with daily flights onthe other two routes.The expansion is the first major an-nouncement from the former Irish flagcarrier since it was taken over by Brit-ish Airways owner International AirlinesGroup (IAG).Willie Walsh, IAG chief executive, saidIreland’s geographic location and U.S.immigration pre-clearance provides a“natural gateway” to build business be-tween Europe and North America.“This is the first step in our plans to addNorth American destinations, bring newaircraft into the fleet, increase passen-ger numbers and create new jobs,” hesaid. “This shows also our keenness todevelop Dublin as another key hubwithin the group.”The routes will connect to a range ofUK and European cities, including Lon-don, Manchester, Edinburgh, Paris,Amsterdam and Rome.They bring to nine the number of trans-atlantic services operating out of Ire-land by Aer Lingus. Other destinationsinclude Boston, Chicago, New York,Orlando, San Francisco, Washington andToronto.The airline described the move as thesingle largest expansion of its transat-lantic network since it started flying tothe U.S. in 1958.The promised 200 jobs will include pi-lots, cabin crew and ground servicesstaff.

translates into English as ‘shut yourmouth’).You could have heard a pin drop. Theentire room recoiled and there was com-plete silence. She had everyone’s at-tention.Then, with the sweetest smile, she said‘thank you’ and graciously stepped backto allow the introductions to begin.This was, of course, Maureen O’Hara.Following the glitzy gala, everyone wasinvited to meet up at a local pub for amore informal gathering.Maureen O’Hara was right there –charming, witty and down-to-earth –happily chatting with anyone and eve-ryone, sharing fascinating stories of heramazing life.There can be no doubt that whileMaureen O’Hara loved Ireland, shewas equally cherished by the Irish inreturn.

MBy MAURA DE FREITAS

She was an extraordinarily beauti-ful woman who earned great ac-claim and always brought Irelandonto a global stage alongside her-self.One of the most striking qualities forwhich she is remembered is her feistypersonality.I encountered this wonderful womanover 20 years ago at the Plaza Hotel inNew York City when I attended anawards ceremony for the top IrishAmericans of 1993 hosted by Irish-America Magazine.The reception was held in the massiveand ornate Grand Ballroom which wasfilled to capacity with around 600 peo-ple.

There was an enormous buzz in theroom with celebrities from Ireland andUnited States and further afar minglingwith unknowns....and everyone wastalking at once.When the event got underway on stage,organizers struggled to bring the roomto order as everyone continued to talkand talk.....as only the Irish can talk.Numerous pleas for ciúnas (calm) wentunheeded until finally, a red-hairedwoman impatiently stepped up to themicrophone.With a thunderous voice she roared outover the crowd Dún do bheal! (roughly

A beauti ful and spir i tedwoman, Maureen O’Hara isremembered for her personal-ity along with her great beauty.

Northern Ireland Newlywed CoupleTragically Drown During Honeymoon

BELFAST – Newlyweds who tragi-cally drowned on their South Af-rican honeymoon had describedtheir wedding six days before asthe ‘best day ever.”John Rodgers, 28, and his wife Lynette,26, died on October 23 after gettingcaught in a rip tide at Plettenberg Bay– less than a week after they walkeddown the aisle.She wrote on Facebook: “John andmyself would like to thank everyonethat joined us on Saturday and for allthe well wishes! We greatly appreciateit and had the best day ever. Headingoff today so will speak to everyonewhen we return.”In a joint statement their families saidthey had been left devastated. “It has

come as a great shock to both theReilly and Rodgers families to learnof the sudden and tragic events inSouth Africa, which has taken the livesof Lynette and John.“Our happiness in sharing their recentwedding has been thoroughly devas-tated. Both were very dearly lovedand brought us great joy.”Lynette, a physiotherapist fromHolywood, Co. Down, and John, anoffice worker from Ballygowan, alsoin Co. Down, tied the knot in front offamily and friends at the First Pres-byterian Church, Holywood on Octo-ber 17.The body of Rodgers was discoveredin shallow surf on Robberg Beach bya local man at South Africa’s NationalSea Rescue Institute (NSRI) said.

His wife’s body was found around 200metres away along the same beach, theinstitute said.Doctors performed CPR on the couplebut they were pronounced dead.

JOHN AND LYNETTE Rodgerson their wedding day.

Married priests wouldhelp priest shortages

DUBLIN – A lay Catholic group haslent its support to the Bishop ofKilmore’s request for Irish bishops toexamine the possibility of ordainingmarried men to the priesthood and ap-pointing female deacons.The Association of Catholics in Ireland(ACI) says the high percentage ofpriests over 65 years of age in Irelandand the low intake of seminarians sug-gest that in 10 years time many par-ishes will be without a resident priest.“Already the clustering of parishes hasresulted in some parishes being with-out a daily Mass and on selected weekdays only having prayer services with-out distribution of Holy Communion,”the association said in a statement.In a statement, the ACI says Bishop

O’Reilly’s proposals reflect elements ofits own recent submission to PopeFrancis for consideration at the Synodon the Family to be held in Rome.“Married clergy would bring the warmthand richness of their lived experienceto their pastoral ministry and be wellplaced to offer support to married cou-ples and families in difficulties,” thegroup said in its submission to Romefor the Synod on the Family.The ACI is of the view that ordainedpriests who left active ministry to marryand who could be invited back into min-istry right now.They would bring their experience ofmarriage to pastoral work while pro-viding extra resources to meet the chal-lenge of the shortage of priests, the or-ganisation believes.


President Michael D. Higginsvisits California to honour

balcony victimsSAN FRANCISCO – ThePresident of Ireland MichaelD. Higgins travelled to Cali-fornia last month to honour thevictims of a balcony collapsethat killed six college studentsand injured several others.He met Berkeley’s mayor, publicsafety workers, healthcare providersand area residents to thank them forhelping when the balcony snapped offan apartment building.Higgins called the balcony collapse thathappened during a birthday party onJune 16 “a tragedy that has affectedour people very deeply.”Five of the young people who died werefrom Ireland and working in the SanFrancisco Bay area for the summer.“We were told and witnessed from afaryour quick and unwavering support forour students and their families,” he tolda group of emergency service respond-ers at a hotel close to where the bal-cony gave way.Higgins and Berkeley mayor TomBates shovelled dirt around a pair ofstrawberry tree saplings planted in hon-our of the victims in the corner of acity park near the Library Gardens com-plex, the site of the accident.

MICHAEL D. HIGGINS participates in a tree-planting ceremonyin Berkeley, California. The trees were planted near the acci-dent site where six college students were killed and seven oth-ers seriously injured when a balcony collapsed in June.

Bates said the city council has givenfinal approval to more stringent con-struction and inspection rules for bal-conies and decks that were a responseto the tragedy.“This event is not going to go unnoticed.It’s not going to go down as a footnotein history,” he said. “We are going tochange the way we do business inBerkeley so it never happens again.”Five Irish students, all aged 21, and the22-year-old Irish-American cousin ofone of them died after the balcony gaveway, tossing them and another seven

young people celebrating at the party50 feet down to the street below.A city investigation revealed that thewooden beams supporting the structurehad rotted through from water damage.The Alameda County district attorneyhas been conducting an investigation todecide if criminal charges are war-ranted.Higgins was on an eight-day west coastvisit that included a stop in Seattle, avisit to Google’s headquarters, and aspeech on world hunger at the Univer-sity of California, Berkeley.

IRISH SENIORS LUNCHEON - SEATTLE

PHOTO: Fennel PhotographyKATHLEEN HERBER, Rose Boyle, President Higgins andBernadette Noonan at the Irish seniors reception.

PHOTO: Fennel PhotographyLEO COSTELLO, President Higgins, Paul Heneghan and KayQuinlan at the Irish seniors reception.

PHOTO: Fennel PhotographyMIKE BOYLAN (L) meets President Higgins at the Irish sen-iors reception. The president knows Mike’s brother Tom, a uni-versity professor at University College Galway.

PHOTO: Fennel PhotographyPRESIDENT HIGGINS meets 96-year-old Father Bill Treacy atthe Irish seniors reception. Treacy, a native of Co. Laois, leftIreland in 1944.

PHOTO: Fennel PhotographyBRIGID MORKEL, President Higgins, Julie Kinahin, JohnDoonan and Danny Quinn at the Irish seniors reception.

PHOTO: Fennel PhotographyMIRIAM DOYLE, President Higgins, and Michael Spillane atthe University of Washington. Doyle is from Co. Galway andSpillane from Co. Cork and both are Marine Research Scien-tists at the UW Joint Institute for the study of the Atmosphereand Ocean.

Average Irishwages reboundto 2007 levels

DUBLIN – The economic outlook inIreland has improved significantly thisyear according to a leading think-tank.The Economic Social and ResearchInstitute (ESRI) said average wages areback to what they were in 2007 andliving standards have returned to pre-crash levels for the first time.The economy is now growing twice asfast as Spain, the nearest European ri-val, and unemployment should plungeto eight percent by the end of next year.Kieran McQuinn, associate researchprofessor at the ESRI, said people arealso spending cash again as homes startto feel the effects of the recovery.“It has taken us eight years to get there– but we are back at 2007 levels, interms of income per capita and livingstandards,” he said.And although the bounce-back is mostobvious in Dublin, the economist said itshould trickle down into other cities andrural areas over the next year.In its latest forecast, the think-tankwhich advises the government onpolicy-making said the value of the Irisheconomy will grow by a substantial sixpercent this year, and four and a halfpercent next year.Joblessness will continue to fall over thecoming year, dropping to around180,000 by the end of 2016, it predicts.There are currently 205,300 people outof work.Although unemployment is comingdown, there is still some way to go toreach boom-time levels, when just over110,000 people were on the dole.


ByJOHN

KEANE

SEATTLE IRISH NEWSPASSINGS

• Mary Byrne Hjorth, a native of Co.Wicklow, died in Seattle October 22

• Austin Rynne, a brother-in-law ofDanny Quinn of Edmonds, died inNew York October 15

• Ted O’Donovan, 87, a native ofCork, died in Seattle October 13

• Mavis Hartman, 88, a native of Co.Down, died in Tumwater October 3

• Rose Caldwell, 96, a native ofDerry, died in Port Townsend Octo-ber 2

Ar dheis Dé go raibha nanamacha dílse

May their faithful souls restat the right hand of God.

PANEL DISCUSSION – Irish NetworkSeattle hosts a social media and dig-ital content marketing event onThursday, November 12 at T.SMcHugh’s, 21 Mercer Street, onlower Queen Anne.

Gather and mingle from 6-6:45 PMand then from 6:45-8 PM local ex-perts will participate in a panel dis-cussion on how to use social mediaand other digital media to engageyour audience and tell your story.

The panelists include Kristen Gill,owner of Kristen Gill Travel Writing& Photography, and Kate O’Neill andChuck Leach, co-owners at SocialSky Marketing.

The discussion will be moderated byFiona Remley, VP and Director ofProgram Management atWunderman Seattle. For more infor-mation, visit Irish Network Seattle onFacebook.

FÉILE PORTLAND – The Irish Cul-tural Society of the Pacific Northwesthosts Féile Portland on Saturday and

Sunday, November 14-15, at Renais-sance School of Arts and Sciencesin southwest Portland.

The Féile is a celebration featuringworkshops in Irish Gaelic, sean-nóssinging and sean-nós dancing, withguest instructors including nativeIrish speaker and singer Máirín UíChéide and Seattle-based dancerAlicia Guinn.

For details, contact Kimberly [email protected] or visit http://www.seannos.org.

IRISH FILM – A new Irish movieBrooklyn hits Seattle theaters on No-vember 20. Starring Saoirse Ronan,the film tells the profoundly movingstory of a young Irish immigrant navi-gating her way through 1950sBrooklyn.

The initial shackles of homesicknessdiminish with a romance, but soon herpast forces her to choose betweenIreland and the U.S.

The film is based on the book by thesame title by Colm Toibin and USAToday says of the movie, “If you wantto join the awards conversation,you’d better learn how to say SaoirseRonan.”

CELTIC YULETIDE – Magical Strings’37th Annual Celtic Yuletide Concertseries starts November 28 in King-ston and Seattle’s concert will be De-

cember 12 with Tacoma’s on Decem-ber 11.

Featuring the lyrical and joyfulsounds of Celtic harps, hammereddulcimers, violins, cello, whistles,concertina, percussion and more,this grand gala of Celtic-inspiredholiday music is filled with Irish sing-ing, dancing, juggling, caroling andstorytelling.

Concerts will also be held in Kent,Mount Vernon, Bellevue, Portlandand Leavenworth. For the details,visit magicalstrings.com.

SENIORS’ LUNCHEON – The IrishSeniors’ Christmas luncheon will beat noon on Saturday, December 5,at F X McRory’s, 419 Occidental Av-enue South, Seattle.

All seniors of Irish birth, descent orinterest are welcome along with theirspouses and friends.

Our special guest on the day is Daidína Nollag (Father Christmas). Over400 Irish seniors, the majority of themIrish-born, have attended theseluncheons over the past six years.

Sit-down lunch with choice of ham orturkey at $10 per person ($20 non-seniors). Please call for reservationsto (206) 915-1878 (include names ofany guests and their lunch choices).

IRISH SOUNDERS – Two differentsoccer players with the SeattleSounders have declared that theywould like to play for Ireland.

Lamar Neagle already has an Irishpassport through his Irish-borngrandmother, and MLSsoccer.comsays the Irish Football Association(IFA) is seriously interested inNeagle.

Another Sounders player, AaronKovar whose mother is from Dublin,

told RTE-TV that he would like to playfor Ireland.

He was interviewed while attendingthe reception in Seattle for Irish Presi-dent Michael D. Higgins.

The FAI has been scouting NorthAmerica for awhile, and current Ire-land captain and LA Galaxy forwardRobbie Keane has been helping torecruit players from Major LeagueSoccer.

COMHALTAS SETS – Seattle’s localComhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (CCE)branch organizes dance sets onSunday nights from 7 to 9 PM at St.Elizabeth’s Anglican Church, 1005

SW 152nd Street, Burien. For detailscall Jim Belcher at (425) 402-8363or check www.hoilands.com for pho-tos and videos.

MISCELLANEOUS• The next Irish Book Club meetingis Sunday afternoon, November 15with the location to be determined.Contact [email protected] formeeting details.

• Paddy Noonan has a cruise toAlaska departing Seattle on May 28featuring Irish musicians JimmyWalsh, Tommy Mulvihill and PJ Car-dinal. Contact [email protected] for details.

THE GAELIC language choir at the annual Mass of Commemo-ration in Gaelic. (L-R) [Front Row] Cáit Callen, Nancy Ingle,Gary Ingle, Christina Bonfield, and Miriam Doyle. [Middle Row]Olivia Bermingham-McDonogh, Mary Kelly, Barbara Gordon,and Eileen Kilgren. [Back Row] Geraldine Scanlon and LindaNoe.

Ex-Anglo Irish Bank bossDavid Drumm arrested in the U.S.

DUBLIN – The former headof rogue lender Anglo IrishBank, who authorities in Ire-land want to question over thecollapse of the bank, has beenarrested in the United States.David Drumm, 48, was detained byU.S. Marshals on October 11 inMassachusetts and was being heldin custody ahead of an extraditionhearing.Ireland has long-sought the extraditionof Drumm after he failed to be declaredbankrupt in the U.S.He moved to Massachusetts in 2009,six months after resigning as chief ex-ecutive of the now defunct bank, whichwas central to Dublin’s recent boom-to-bust saga.Along with two others, he stood downafter hundreds of millions in directors’loans were uncovered.He refused to return to Ireland to bequestioned about the events leading tothe collapse of the bank, which was laternationalized before being wound up.Drumm fought a four-year legal battlein Boston to write off his own debts of10.5 million euros but a U.S. bankruptcycourt rejected his claims in January,

ruling the ex-banker was “not remotelycredible.”During the proceedings, the Irish BankResolution Corporation – formerlyAnglo Irish Bank – fought his claimsfor bankruptcy, as he owed it nine mil-lion euros.Dublin’s Director of Public Prosecu-tions also recommended a number ofcharges be brought against Drumm af-ter a years-long probe into Anglo IrishBank by the Garda Bureau of FraudInvestigation and the Director of Cor-porate Enforcement.If the authorities succeed in extraditinghim, Drumm could face 33 criminalcharges in Ireland. The majority relateto his alleged role in the so-called Ma-

ple 10 transactions.The plot involved the bank lendingaround 450 million euro to a secret cir-cle of clients in July 2008 in order forthem to buy shares in the bank to stopits price tumbling.It was the outworking of a bid to savethe institution from a doomed 2.4 billioneuro gamble on its shares – 28 percentof its total stock – by former billionaireindustrialist Sean Quinn.In relation to the events around theMaple 10, Drumm is accused of dis-closing false or misleading financial in-formation; giving unlawful financial as-sistance related to the purchase ofshares.He is also wanted for forgery; and be-ing privy to document falsification.He faces two further counts – of falseaccounting and conspiracy to defraud– in relation to so-called “back to back”transactions.These charges relate to claims Drummwas involved in giving billions of eurosto Irish Life and Permanent only for itto return the money to Anglo throughits corporate subsidiary Irish Life As-surance.Anglo then presented this money as acorporate deposit, in an effort to bol-ster its faltering books.

DAVID DRUMM, the formerchief executive of Anglo IrishBank, has been arrested in theU.S. on an extradition warrant.


By EIFION WILLIAMS

NOVENASNovena to the Blessed Virgin MaryNovena to the Blessed Virgin Mary (neverknown to fail). O most beautiful flowerof Mount Carmel, fruitful vine, splendourof Heaven, Blessed Mother of the Sonof God. Immaculate Virgin, assist mein this my necessity. There are nonethat can withstand your power. O showme herein you are my Mother, Mary,conceived without sin, pray for us whohave recourse to thee (three times).Sweet Mother, I place this cause in yourhands (three times). Holy Spirit, youwho solve all problems, light all roadsso that I can attain my goal. You gaveme the Divine gift to forgive and forgetall evil against me. This prayer must besaid for three days, even after the re-quest is granted and the favour received,it must be published.

– KLSMC, PMKMC, MJF, DF, ADB,CSKB, CC, CKB, LC, SLMKR, CTK,

CC.•

Novena to St. AnthonyO Holy St. Anthony, gentlest of Saints,your love for God and charity for his crea-tures, made you worthy, when on earth,to possess miraculous powers. Encour-aged by this thought, I implore you toobtain for me (request). O gentle andloving St. Anthony, whose heart was everfull of human sympathy, whisper mypetition into the ears of the sweet InfantJesus, who loved to be folded in yourarms; and the gratitude of my heart willever be yours. Amen. – SVS

•Novena to St. Clare

God of mercy you inspired Saint Clarawith the love of poverty. By the help ofher prayers may we follow Christ in pov-

erty of spirit and come to the joyful vi-sion of your glory in the Kingom ofHeaven. We ask this through Our LordJesus Christ, Your Son, who lives andreigns with You and the Holy Spirit, oneGod, forever and ever. Amen. – SVS

•Novena to St. Jude

O Holy St. Jude, Apostle and Martyr,great in virtue and rich in miracles, nearkinsman to Jesus Christ, faithful inter-cessor for all who invoke you, specialpatron in time of need, to you I have re-course from the depth of my heart, andhumbly beg you, to whom God has givensuch great power, to come to my as-sistance; help me now in my urgentneed and grant my earnest petition. Iwill never forget thy graces and favoursyou obtain for me and I will do my ut-most to spread devotion to you. Amen.

– CB, LMC•

Novena of Childlike ConfidenceO Jesus, Who has said, ask and youshall receive, seek and you shall find,knock and it shall be opened to you,through the intercession of Mary, theMost Holy Mother, I knock, I seek, I askthat my prayer be granted. [Request] OJesus, who has said, all that you ask ofthe Father in my name, He will grantyou through the intercession of Mary,the most Holy Mother, I humbly and ur-gently ask Thy Father in Thy Name thatmy prayer be granted. [Request] O Je-sus, who has said, “Heaven and earthshall pass away but My word shall notpass,” through the intercession of Mary,Thy Most Holy Mother, I feel confidentthat my prayer will be granted. [Request]

– SVS

Tryweryn – A Shameful Episode in Welsh HistoryAINTED in large letters on a wall atLlanrhystud, near Aberystwyth, Wales, isa Welsh slogan, Cofiwch Dryweryn. InEnglish the words simply mean ‘Remem-P

ber Tryweryn’.The word ‘Tryweryn’ reminds theWelsh of one of the most significanthistorical events of the past hundredyears in Wales.In 1965 the small Merionethshire vil-lage of Capel Celyn disappeared underthe rising waters of a reservoir thatwould provide drinking water for thegrowing population of Liverpool.The valley was dammed at one end,creating the Llyn Celyn reservoir.The official opening of the Trywerynproject took place 50 years ago, onOctober 21, 1965, following years ofprotest and demonstrations by variousWelsh groups during construction of thedam.The 70 inhabitants of Capel Celyn were

THE famous ‘Cofiwch Dryweryn’ grafitti on a roadside wall atLlanrhystud, near Aberystwyth, Wales.

all Welsh-speaking and the villageboasted a chapel and a school.Media reports on the last service heldin the chapel and the last classes heldat the school, together with familiesleaving their stone cottages for the lasttime, angered the great majority ofWelsh people.

TRYWERYN VALLEY before and after the drowning. It wasflooded in 1965 to create the Llyn Celyn reservoir.

In the previous century there had beenseveral floodings of Welsh valleys andthe displacement of Welsh-speakingcommunities in order to supply waterto English cities like Birmingham andLiverpool.None aroused the intense emotionalresponse that Tryweryn did.Opposition to the project included someminor acts of sabotage by militant youngWelshmen.However, most of the protests werepeaceful, conducted mainly by theTryweryn Defence Committee, whichcarried the protests to the city of Liv-erpool itself, where the protesters werelargely ignored or dismissed.What riled the protesters more thananything else was the fact that the Liv-erpool City Council and the UK Parlia-ment made no effort to seek the con-sent of Welsh authorities to the drown-ing of the valley.The Tryweryn Reservoir Bill sponsoredby the Liverpool City Council waspassed at Westminster without the sup-port of a single Welsh member of par-liament.The most significant result of Trywerynwas that it gave a huge boost to Welshnationalism and demands for devolution,much of which has come to pass, in-cluding the establishing of a Welsh As-sembly.The year following the official openingof the Tryweryn dam, Gwynfor Evans,president of Plaid Cymru, the WelshNationalist Party, was elected memberof parliament for Carmarthen.On October 19, 2005, 40 years afterthe valley was flooded, the LiverpoolCity Council officially apologized for itsactions over the Tryweryn episode.The council issued the following state-ment: “We realize the hurt of 40 years

ago when the Tryweryn Valley wastransformed into a reservoir to help meetthe water needs of Liverpool.“For any insensitivity by our predeces-sor council at that time, we apologiseand hope that the historic and sound re-lationship between Liverpool and Walescan be completely restored.”Not to be outdone, the current Under-Secretary of State for Wales, AlanCairns, declared on October 14 in aHouse of Commons debate on the

Tryweryn episode, “Let me say fromthe outset that the whole question wasa shameful episode in Welsh history andshould not be forgotten.“In fact the words Cofiwch Drywerynpainted on the wall in Llanrhystud areinstantly recognisable by people acrossWales as they travel from north to south.“But those words remind us all of thedarkest and some of the most regretta-ble days in modern Welsh history.”

The heartbreaking reality for somany elderly on Christmas Day

CARDIFF – Over 11,000 eld-erly people in Wales say thatthey are forced to spend theirChristmas day alone.The lonely reality for the elderly onChristmas Day has been exposed innew figures.On what is traditionally seen as a dayfor spending time with family and lovedones, more than 11,000 elderly peoplein Wales have no one to keep them com-pany on December 25.And, according to the Royal VoluntaryService (RVS) statistics, more than16,000 people aged over 75 feel lone-lier on Christmas Day than at any othertime of the year.More than 40 percent of older peopleacross the UK wish they had someoneto spend the day with, while 44 percentsay they expect the day to go by with-out seeing anyone at all.Speaking from her own experience,Charlotte, a 70-year-old widow fromCardiff, said she dreads Christmasevery year.“For years, we had five Christmas treesand trimmings all around the house andpeople staying with us,” she said.“My house was Christmas and my late

husband was ‘Mr. Christmas’. But youwouldn’t know it was Christmas if youcame to my house now.“There’s no Christmas cards being putup and I don’t send any either and Idon’t have any special food becausebeing by yourself it’s just not the same.“I never realised what isolation andloneliness were until I was left on myown.”Since losing her husband Charlotte saidthat her life is now often confined tothe house, as she feels unable to reach

out to anyone around her.“People who know me would be sur-prised to learn that I’ve felt like endingit many times,” she said.“The fact is that there are thousands ofpeople like me.“Older people are crying out for helpand we need to be prepared for isola-tion and loneliness because it can hap-pen overnight.“People don’t understand what isola-tion and loneliness are about until it hap-pens to them.”Sarah Rochira, Older People’s Com-missioner for Wales, said, “It is essen-tial that loneliness is recognised as akey public health issue as it can have asignificant impact on older people’shealth and well being – the equivalentof smoking 15 cigarettes a day.”Sam Ward, director of RVS Wales, said,“We urge everyone to spare a little timeand thought this Christmas for olderpeople in their community who may bespending the festive period alone. In-viting them to pop over to celebrate thefestive period could make all the dif-ference to their Christmas.”Elderly peoples’ charity Age Cymru iscurrently running a ‘Spread the Warmthcampaign’ – aimed at resolving issuesincluding loneliness during the holidays.

MANY elderly people will findthemselves alone this Christ-mas. On what is traditionallyseen as a day for spendingtime with family and lovedones, more than 11,000 elderlypeople in Wales have no oneto keep them company on De-cember 25.

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