REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE AT THE IRELAND FUND OF CANADA GALA DINNER
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE AT THE IRELAND FUND OF CANADA GALA DINNER, TORONTO THURSDAY, 21 JUNE, 2007
Dia dhíbh go léir a chairde. Ta an-áthas orm bheith i bhur measc anocht ag an ócáid speisialta seo.
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, Martin and I are delighted to be with you this evening for the final event of an unforgettable visit to Toronto.
Congratulations to the Ireland Park Committee for choosing the Royal Ontario Museum as the venue for this evening’s gala dinner. I have just had the pleasure of meeting with the Museum’s Director, William Thorsell, who spoke with such obvious pride about the Michael Lee Chin Crystal, the magnificent new addition to this world-class museum.
It is hard to believe that such a very short trip to Canada could be so full of lasting, deeply-etched memories - the beautiful concert at the Roy Thomson Hall on Tuesday, the hugely evocative Famine Symphony, the cemeteries which hold the famine dead, the bounce back into the present at the lively St Paul’s Catholic School this morning where the steel band did considerable justice to the Irish national anthem. All of these moments will stay with me but without a doubt the highlight was the opening of Ireland Park. Looking out on the harbour and at the magnificent Toronto skyline, our lives seemed as far from those dreadful days of 1847 as it was possible to be and yet in the sculptures, in the atmosphere, in the carefully crafted landscape we were mesmerisingly drawn deeply into that appalling time when the then small city of Toronto showed just how big a heart it had.
As the patron of Ireland Park I pay tribute to the memory of those hearts that opened up to Ireland’s walking dead, who arrived here diseased, traumatised, injured in mind and body and spirit beyond imagining. Here they found heroism, help and healing.
I pay tribute not only to those past, proud generations but to today’s, the prosperous and sophisticated one which could have been forgiven for forgetting that cruel episode, but which once again showed the greatness of heart that made this city a champion of Ireland’s destitute. So many of them went to their graves believing that they counted for nothing in this world, that their contribution was wasted. Yet in and through your beautiful memorial they are given a fresh respect, a surging, fresh power as their voices remind us of our shared history and of our shared challenge as prosperous nations to continue to be champions of the world’s destitute.
I thank the Mayor and the City Council who so generously provided that beautiful site and for the lovely generous act of renaming Bathurst Quay, Eireann Quay. I thank both the Federal and Provincial governments for their considerable financial contributions which made the project possible. The Irish government’s contribution of $500,000 is an indication of the importance we attach to Ireland Park.
By combining their skills, Jonathan Kearns and Rowan Gillespie, architect and sculptor respectively, have opened our hearts and our minds with their genius and their sensitivity and, of course, it was Aidan Flatley and his team of skilful craftsmen who made the vision real.
The champions behind it all can be found in the Ireland Park Foundation and in the Irish community which so enthusiastically embraced the idea. The indefatigable Robert Kearns proved the truth of the saying that ‘there is no man with endurance like the man who sells insurance’! And this project took some endurance as people like Terry Smith, Oliver Murray and John Maxwell know only too well.
There is an old Irish saying ‘You'll never plough a field by turning it over in your mind.’. The field that today is Ireland Park has been well and truly ploughed the hard way. To every hand that took its turn on that plough - a big thank you. You did it all for love of a people whom you never saw or knew except through the stories of their sons and daughters, your fathers and grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers. Many of you have their eyes, their build, their colouring. You have the love they brought in their hearts for Ireland and the love that they grew in their hearts for Canada. They believed in the future and we live that future. I think they would be proud to see the easy, comfortable kinship that exists between Ireland and Canada and they would be prouder still that this, the best generation our two countries have ever known, with its confident eye to the future still can stop and look backwards with gratitude to them and has a beautiful new park to remember them by.
Is iontach an obair atá déanta agaibh anseo. Gurb fada buan sibh ‘s go raibh míle míle maith agaibh.
Thank you.