Madam Speaker, first off I would like to thank my friend and colleague from Etobicoke—Lakeshore for tabling this motion to make March Irish heritage month. Secondly, I will admit that I am not Irish, or at least my claims on Irish heritage are weak. My mother's grandmother's family, the McCurdy family, originated on the Isle of Bute in Scotland, but did flee to Ireland in the 1600s. They lived there for about 100 years before they left for Nova Scotia. Other than that, my genealogical heritage is basically English and Scottish.
I have been to Ireland. I have drunk Guinness in Dublin. I have seen the green hills of Kildare and the beautiful barrens of County Clare. I have not kissed the Blarney stone. When I was in Ireland I had no plans to go into politics, so I did not realize the benefits that Blarney might bring.
From the early 1600s to the early 1900s, over seven million Irish left their homeland for foreign shores. In the late 1800s alone, immigration cut Ireland's population in half, and many of those people found their way to Canada. The earliest immigrants, starting in the 1500s and 1600s and continuing for two centuries after that, were those who came to Newfoundland for the cod fishery. A considerable number ended up in New France in those early years as well, and many Irish immigrants, especially those who came during the famine of 1847 and the years after that, came to Canada in destitute circumstances, but this was not always the case. Many Irish immigrants, both Catholic and Protestant, did well within a few years after they arrived in Canada.
One was John Carmichael Haynes, who was born in County Cork in 1831 and emigrated to Victoria, British Columbia, in 1858. After a series of jobs as constable throughout the southern interior of B.C., including postings at Rock Creek, Osoyoos, and the Similkameen Valley, he settled in Osoyoos in 1872. Here he was a justice of the peace and a customs agent. He quickly assembled 20,000 acres of land and 4,200 cattle.
Thomas Ellis was born in Ireland but emigrated to B.C. at the age of 19 in 1865. He soon moved to South Okanagan and bought a section of land in what is now the City of Penticton. By the 1890s he had 20,000 head of cattle and 31,000 acres of land from the South Okanagan all the way to the U.S. border.
I will not go into the background of how Tom Ellis and Judge Haynes amassed that land for their cattle operations. Some of it involved shifting land out of first nations reserves, a practice that happened all too quickly when settlers were moving into unceded territory, but the fact remains that these two Irishmen played a large role in shaping the future of the Okanagan Valley. Ellis's ranch was later subdivided to create Penticton, and much of Haynes's lands were eventually subdivided to create orcharding opportunities around Oliver for veterans returning from World War I.
On the other side of my riding in West Kootenay is the city of Castlegar. It was founded by Edward Mahon, who came to British Columbia with his brothers seeking their fortune in mining and real estate. They owned several claims around Nelson in the Slocan Valley, and in 1891, Mahon bought a ranch at the confluence of the Columbia and Kootenay Rivers. In 1897 he had the land surveyed for a new town site. Eventually the town of Castlegar was created, named after the home of Mahon's family in County Galway. It means “short castle” in Gaelic.
The most Irish part of Canada is clearly the island of Newfoundland. Some have called it the most Irish place outside Ireland. My maternal grandfather's family came from Newfoundland, but those ancestors, the Mundens and the Munns were English and Scottish.
I lived in Newfoundland in the mid-1970s to get a masters degree in biology from the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Indeed, I am wearing my MUN tie today for this occasion. It was in those years that I really learned about the Irish heritage of that wonderful rock. For much of one year, I lived at Cape St. Mary's, a lighthouse at the southwestern tip of the Avalon Peninsula.
Cape St. Mary's is the central namesake of the Cape Shore, and I think it is the most Irish part of Newfoundland. I love the drive down the rocky road south from Placentia past Little Barasway, Great Barasway, Ship Cove, Gooseberry Cove, Patricks Cove, Angels Cove, Cuslett, St. Bride's and on to Branch. These are all communities first settled in the late 1700s and early 1800s by Irish immigrants, mainly from around Wexford and Waterford. Each cove is a patch of fertile ground along a rocky shore, and several of these communities were first settled by farmers. However, quickly those in Cape Shore quickly concentrated on fishing the incredibly rich resource of cod found off that coast.
The Cape Shore was thoroughly Irish Catholic, through and through. When I first moved to Cape St. Mary's, I quickly learned that the head lightkeeper and his family were, by their reckoning, the only Protestants on the Cape Shore. They had come from Grand Bank, on the other side of Placentia Bay on the Burin Peninsula. The assistant lightkeeper was from Point Lance, just around the corner, east of the cape. The two lightkeepers often claimed that they could not understand each other at all because one spoke a Burin dialect from the West Country of England while the other spoke Cape Shore, an old Irish dialect. I was often called in, jokingly I am sure, to translate.
The road through the Cape Shore is now paved and even continues on around St. Mary's Bay to the southern shore and on to St. John's, passing many outports where most of the inhabitants have a strong Irish background. The remoteness of the Cape Shore preserved its Irish heritage and it is rich in stories and music that go back centuries.
My friend Tony Power grew up in Branch before it had electricity, and the long nights were filled with storytelling, song and dance. I remember walking through the stunted firs with Tony once, talking about bird conservation, and then, with the barest twinkle in his eye and in all seriousness he pointed toward a cavity under an overturned tree and said, “That's where the fairies live.”
Newfoundland and Labrador celebrates Irish heritage every day, but especially on St. Patrick's Day, which is a public holiday in that province. I remember going over to the Strand pub in the Avalon Mall on the morning of St. Patrick's Day, making sure that we were early enough to get a seat to enjoy the music and merriment all day long. One of my roommates was studying folklore at MUN, and one of his classmates was Denis Ryan, who led a fantastic trio of musicians called Ryan's Fancy. They were always the stars of the Strand in those days, and it was great to hang out with Denis and his bandmates Fergus O'Byrne and Dermot O'Reilly.
Another critical ingredient in Irish heritage is laughter. Perhaps it is the result of centuries of struggle, but it is clear that comedy is something the Irish do very, very well. Again, when I was living in St. John's, I had the great opportunity to see the team from Codco in person. That was Newfoundland comedy with a definite grounding in Irish heritage.
While much of the history of the Irish diaspora has been a history of hardship and often tragedy, it has provided Canada with a hard-working community that has played an important role in creating the society we know today. In the face of adversity, it has given us music and laughter. In the face of opportunity, it has given us visionary leadership.
So I say, go raibh maith agaibh, thank you, to all those with Irish heritage who have enriched our country for centuries. I will happily raise a glass of Guinness to them all: Slàinte.