REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT A LUNCHEON IN ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND 14 OCTOBER 1998
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT A LUNCHEON IN ST. JOHN’S, NEWFOUNDLAND 14 OCTOBER 1998
Honorable Senator, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
I finish my visit to Canada in Newfoundland, the place where it all began: the place where Canada began, because it was here that the first landing by Europeans in North American took place five hundred years ago - an event which you marked with the Cabot 500 celebration last year; the place where the Irish presence in North America began, because Newfoundland was the first place to which the Irish came and to this day it remains the place with highest proportion of Irish stock world-wide among its population.
Newfoundland has been called Britain’s oldest colony. But it is truly, and I say this with great pride, Ireland’s oldest colony - not, of course, a colony in the military or the political sense, but a colony of kinship, mind, and spirit.
It is sometimes said of people that only a mother could love them. Newfoundland is known, affectionately be it said, as the Rock. You inhabit a wild, bleak, and storm-swept piece of rock in the North Atlantic. Others may have been repelled by the harshness of your climate but to Mother Ireland and to her offspring it has always been a place of strange enchantment. The Irish are here in great numbers because they loved this land and nothing would tear them away from it.
Let me quote from the greatest of all Newfoundland songs, Cape St. Mary’s:
“Take me back to my Western boat
Let me fish off Cape St. Mary’s
Where the sagdowns sail and the foghorns wail
With my friends the Browns and the Clearys
Let me fish off Cape St. Mary’s.”
That could be an Irish song because our music has the same nostalgia as yours, the same fierce attachment to place which is one of our many shared characteristics.
As is well known, the Irish in centuries gone by spread out from Newfoundland to other parts of Atlantic Canada, bringing in many cases their language with them. When I was recently in Cape Breton I learned that the Gaelic speakers there came not only from the Highlands of Scotland but also from Ireland, either directly or, as “two boaters”, from Newfoundland.
But is this all ancient history? What, some people may ask, is the relevance of our shared kinship in a modern, multi-cultural world? There are two answers to that question.
The first has to do with one of the themes which I have addressed during my visit, the observation that Canada, like Ireland, has been pre-occupied with questions of nationality and identity. We in Ireland for a long time attempted to imagine ourselves as something other than what we were, an attempt which was destined to fail and which had an alienating effect on these elements of our identity which were excluded. It is fair to say that both of the great Irish traditions erred in this regard.
As I have travelled around Canada and around Atlantic Canada, I have felt myself among friends, I have recognised a kindred culture, I have felt truly at home. I have also observed that Atlantic Canada is regaining a sense of its own unique place in the Canadian tapestry and that an important part of this has been a new pride in your own rich cultural heritage. You are regaining the self-confidence and the vitality which made these provinces the wealthiest and the most dynamic part of Canada in the last century. It is no accident that next year, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia will have the highest growth rate of all Canadian provinces.
The second part of the answer to the question I have asked has to do with the fact that kinship matters, in all kinds of practical ways. It makes it easier to do business together. It also means that on the great issues of war and peace, democracy and authoritarianism, human rights and tyranny we see eye to eye and are natural allies in the search for a world order that reflects the basic values we have in common.
Our relationship, in other words, is not only a matter of kinship, it has and ought to have practical consequences. We believe that the close historic ties between Ireland and Newfoundland provide a solid base on which we can build a new relationship which will serve both our interests in the modern age and world. It was for that reason that our then Taoiseach, Mr. Bruton, and Premier Tobin signed in November 1996 a Memorandum of Understanding on economic, social and cultural co-operation between our two Governments. Ireland and Newfoundland face similar challenges and we are both moving rapidly from being predominantly traditional economies to being economies with a high technological content. We have no choice but to move in this direction since, in both our cases, natural resources are limited and our essential resource is our manpower. As two small islands, we do well to travel together, to give each other a helping hand and to assist our corporations and our businesses in forming alliances and joint projects that will be mutually beneficial.
Much progress has been made in two years and I congratulate Vince Withers and the Irish Business Partnerships, which manages the Newfoundland end of the relationship, on what has been achieved. Let me cite one example. The Geological Survey of Ireland and your Department of Mines and Energy are collaborating to jointly sponsor and organise a biennial North Atlantic Minerals Symposium. The first of these symposiums took place in Trinity College, Dublin last month, from the 19th to the 21st of September, and was a considerable success.
Two years ago you had the first visit of an Irish Taoiseach to Newfoundland. This year, you have the first visit of an Irish President. As Premier Tobin said to Taoiseach Bruton at a banquet in this hotel just before St. Patrick’s Day 1996, you, the most Irish part of our diaspora, have waited a long time for us to visit you. In the past two years you have had more visits from Irish political leaders than in the hundred years before that. Let me assure you that we will continue to make the short hop to St. John’s. And we look forward to welcoming you in Ireland.
I thank you for the warm welcome you have given me not only in Newfoundland but everywhere else I have visited in this great country.