SPEECH BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE CONFERRING OF HONORARY DEGREE AT ST. MARY’S UNIVERSITY, HALIFAX
SPEECH BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE CONFERRING OF HONORARY DEGREE AT ST. MARY’S UNIVERSITY, HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA
Firstly I would like to thank St. Mary’s University for conferring on me the Honorary Doctorate in Civil Law, and on my first State Visit to Nova Scotia – though not, I am happy to say, on the first occasion that I have been here. Indeed, my own family connections with Halifax have engendered in me a deep interest in the peoples and cultures that make up the Maritimes – the Atlantic Provinces of Canada – cultures which make it a unique place – a beautiful place in which to live and a wonderful place to visit. It is also a particular pleasure to address a university audience in a country that values university education so much – a country that, like Ireland, sees education as the primary key to progress - lighting the way forward for society as it faces into a new millennium, with all the challenges and opportunities that the changing world brings with it.
Looking back to an earlier millennium - to an Ireland which had a well-developed Druidic culture of learning among the ancient Celts – we see a country that met the change to Christianity with imagination - and which latched on to the new learning with all the zeal of the convert. Ireland and Scotland - north of the Antonine wall - were the only places in Western Europe which had not been conquered by the Romans. And St. Patrick brought more than Christianity with him to Ireland – in the classical learning of Greece and Rome, that had a great influence on the country.
Following Ireland's conversion, it was firstly to Scotland that Irish monks went, bringing with them the message of Christianity, and the culture that produced treasures like the Books of Kells, and of Lindisfarne. In Ireland the monastic sites of Glendalough, Clonard, Kells and Durrow were the universities of their day, and with an international reputation. From the sixth century onwards, the missionary impulse drove Irish pilgrim monks to the continent of Europe, where their influence on higher learning was vital to the education of generations. Even today, as you travel across Europe, there are many places where you can see in the name of a street or a village, some link with one of those saintly travellers from Ireland. The Irish monasteries in German-speaking parts of Europe, such as those in Regensburg and St. Gall, are still known as Schottenklöster, after the mediaeval name for the Irish, Scotti. Their work centred on the book: on the Book, of course, meaning the Bible.
The earliest university in Ireland in the modern sense was Trinity College, Dublin, which was also very much devoted to the study of the Bible. When Bishop Bedell had the English - Protestant - Bible translated into Gaelic in the early 17th century, Ireland and Scotland shared one literary language, and his Bible could be used equally well in Ireland and in Scotland. In time their descendants - Celts from separate islands - set up new communities together, in North America, bringing with them their separate baggage and working through it.
For those who stayed in Ireland, access to education was to remain an obstacle to progress for further generations until well into this century - when a whole new world of opportunity was opened up to a generation emerging from the economic and cultural turmoil of the 2nd World War - where it was possible at last to break out of the confinement of economic repression - and where people could be participants, rather than onlookers, in the emerging post-war world.
The phenomenal economic success that we have been enjoying today has its roots in earlier decades, when far-seeing Governments and visionaries in the 3rd level education sector – believing in the potential from investment in education - committed the necessary resources to make our education system the great asset that it is today. The tremendous response of the universities, along with the other 3rd level institutions, in meeting the rising demand for higher education, has been fundamental to that success.
When I reflect on just how far we have come, and on the role which the universities have played in bringing about this new, dynamic and progressive Ireland, I am reminded of the words of Seamus Heaney, Ireland’s most recent Nobel laureate, in his poem “From the Canton of Expectation”, where he describes the changes wrought when education became available to those whose destiny had been to be second best, and to make a virtue of stoically, even pathetically, putting up with it.
“... suddenly this change of mood.
Books open in the newly wired kitchens.
Young heads that might have dozed a life away against the flanks of milking cows were busy
paving and pencilling their first causeways
across the prescribed texts. The paving stones
of quadrangles came next and a grammar
of imperatives, the new age of demands.”
They would banish the conditional for ever
this generation born impervious to
the triumph in our cries of de profundis.
Our faith in winning by enduring most,
they made anathema, intelligences
brightened and unmannerly as crowbars.
What looks the strongest has outlived its term.
The future lies with what's affirmed from under."
Seamus Heaney speaks of the generation that gained access to education; that could at last “dig”, as he did “with the pen”.
In the metamorphosis from the fledgling Irish State to mature nation of today, education has been the light of propagation and encouragement. It has equipped recent generations with the means to look closely at their own place, and to look beyond blinkered boundaries to new opportunities and horizons. They have realised their potential to create a new society by courageous engagement with their own talents and in partnership with the talents of the world around them. We now have a different Ireland - whereas in 1900 for every Irish person who remained in Ireland there were two abroad. We now have a country with a booming economy which for the first time in 150 years is increasing its population; where over half of the school-leavers now go on to tertiary education; where there is a flowering of activity in culture and the arts, and most of all, because of the historic Good Friday Agreement, a country facing a future of peace and prosperity for all.
Yesterday, I visited University College of Cape Breton – a university that caters for the needs of a modern community in Nova Scotia – a community of different nationalities. Through its work in providing employment-related education and, with links to other universities – including Queens University Belfast where I was privileged to have been Pro Vice Chancellor – it is working to preserve the cultural heritage of the people of Cape Breton – of people like the “settlers” from Scotland, Ireland, France and England and of the Mi’kmak people who have been here for thousands of years. Through that process they are helping to promote a society which not only tolerates diversity – but sees it as something to be celebrated and preserved.
When people come to Canada from Ireland – both Orange and Green – they are in time able to unpack the baggage of bitterness and division that has been part of some of their lives – and to learn to live in a new society with hope and mutual respect. The new environment in which they find themselves makes this transformation possible – and now stands as an example to us in Ireland of how, with maturity, openness of mind and firmness of purpose – we too can take new perspectives on old conflicts – and build a better future for all our people.
Of course, Canada has not only been a source of good example. It has also provided practical help for the peace efforts through its support for the International Fund for Ireland – through the participation of General John de Chastelain in the arms decommissioning process – and through Judge Hoyt and Professor Shearing, who are serving on bodies established by the British Government to deal respectively with the issues of Bloody Sunday and the future policing of Northern Ireland.
While Ireland today is very much a part of Europe – and has links with our European Union partners facilitated by the Erasmus and other exchange programmes - these should not weaken our strong connections with countries such as Canada. Indeed, with 70 million people throughout the world who proclaim their Irishness, we are truly a ‘global’ nation – a nation preserving its links with places like Canada and Nova Scotia, and reinforcing those links by encouraging greater access to Irish studies - the focus of which is not merely the habitat, the history and the heritage of the island and its people, but also the dynamics of social change and the structure of the economy and society in the recent past and in contemporary Ireland.
Learning about your culture and other cultures is a process that has many dimensions – in examining and comparing customs – in exploring the varied and shared histories – and in recognising the influence that they have on how you live with your neighbour today. Through Irish Studies programmes, students of Ireland in Canada will not merely be better informed about Ireland and the Irish experience over time, but will also be able to formulate interesting questions about their own society.
I hope that the academic links between Nova Scotia and Scotland and with both parts of Ireland will be strengthened, and that students will come to see university life together as a vital constituent towards improving life in our communities in Northern Ireland, by giving them a broader perspective. People of Irish and Scottish descent have come together in Nova Scotia and now learn in the same universities. There is a tremendous lesson here for Ireland, north and south.
ENDS