Quotes and Articles
A quote from one of the music students
"I love it when Debbie comes to teach us tin whistle. I feel so good that I can play music and my family is proud of me".
St. Paul's Toronto School of Irish Music, Four years old and moving forward, by Norita Fleming, Toronto Irish News, Summer 2007
Well, our beloved President Mary McAleese has come and gone. What a visit! What a time! What a woman! We have all been imbued with her awesome grace, intellect, compassion, and love and understanding and so much more. In addressing the children in the St.Paul's School playground on the morning of June 21st, she spoke about their connection with our ancestral children as they both came to this country with a language other than English. How they tried to reach out to each other and all they wanted or needed was a friend. She spoke about the children of 1847 who would be so happy to know that today, children from 36 different countries, with 36 different languages were taking on their traditions, of Irish dance, fiddle and tin whistle. How they were continuing their love of music and dance and how she had never before heard the Irish National Anthem played on the steel drums. Without a doubt, these beautiful children of St. Paul's had been drawn into her heart forever.
Quote from Barry White, the Principal of St. Paul's whose theme of the morning was - Life Giving. "One of St Paul's advanced Irish Music students, who performed at the Irish Tea Party, has been accepted at Cardinal Carter School for the Performing Arts, in the are of Music, in September. Thanks to your patronage (of St Paul's Toronto School of Irish Music) and support of the enhanced music program at St. Paul's Catholic School, students from the neighborhood are being given a boost in life to develop skills and pursue their dreams. Your encouragement makes a difference. The gift of music s a gift to the world".
Remarks by President McAleese at St Paul's Catholic School, Toronto, Thursday 21st June 2007
Archbishop Collins, Archbishop Finley, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.
Martin and I are delighted to be with you here today. We thank you all most sincerely, especially the children, for the beautiful welcome you have extended to us.
It is a great pleasure to be in St Paul's Parish, the oldest Catholic community in the Archdiocese of Toronto. I have been told that the church and school are located in an area with long-standing links to the Irish community which makes my visit today all the more memorable.
Later on today, I will officially open Ireland Park, which will stand as a monument to the generosity shown by the people of Toronto towards the famine-stricken Irish emigrants of 1847.
Those of you familiar with Irish history will know that, beginning in 1845 and lasting for five terrible years, Ireland suffered a devastating famine when the potato crop failed. It is estimated that about one million people died as a result of hunger and disease which over the ensuing decade caused nearly two million people to leave Ireland.
In 1847, at a time when the fledgling city of Toronto had a population of just 20,000, ships carrying almost twice that number, fleeing the famine, passed through the port of Toronto. Their horrific journey across the Atlantic exacted a terrible toll on a people already enfeebled by hunger and disease, and eleven hundred of these poor souls died, a fortunate few among them having benefited from the care of the generous citizens of Toronto whose own resources were scarce indeed. Of those who perished, the remains of 757 were discovered in the area where we gather today.
Death did not discriminate between denominations and when I leave you this morning, I shall be going to St James' Cemetery to view the graves of 305 Protestant victims of the Famine who are buried there.
Among those who died were Bishop Thomas Power, the first Catholic Bishop of Toronto whose home was St Paul's, and George Grasset, the Chief Medical Officer at the emigrant hospital, and the younger brother of the then Anglican Bishop of Toronto.
Of those who survived their journey, most moved on to the United States, but some two thousand remained here in Toronto and the surrounding areas, where they made their home. They found work clearing forests to establish farms, digging canals, building roads and cutting timber, forging a new life from the ashes of their old.
The Ireland Park Memorial will be a fitting tribute to those who lost their lives in 1847. Equally, however, it will honour the people who extended the hand of friendship to their brother man in his time of greatest need - the Toronto authorities, the churches, and of course also the ordinary people of the city, made extraordinary by their selfless acts of generosity. Like its sister memorial on Grosse Île, Ireland Park will be an enduring monument to the steadfast ties of friendship than bind our two countries.
As President I visit many schools in my travels throughout Ireland and abroad. As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, St Paul's School was originally founded in an area where Irish Catholics settled. With changing demographics, it is now, your principal, Mr [Barry] White, informs me, home to more than forty different nationalities. So too is today's Ireland! The school is also actively involved in the community, providing day care, mother and toddler rooms and a free breakfast for the pupils. I commend everyone involved in these invaluable activities, who by their work are ensuring that every child is given the best possible start in life in those crucial first years.
Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a pleasure to be with you here today and once again thank you for your warm welcome.
President opens Toronto Famine Memorial Park, Irish World
President McAleese travelled to Canada to officially open Ireland Park, a commemoration of the Irish famine experience and its legacy in Toronto.
Inspired by the bronze sculptures on Dublin’s Custom House Quay by Rowan Gillespie, the Lake Ontario waterfront park commemorates the more than 38 000 Irish famine emigrants who arrived in Toronto between May and October of 1847. The architecture and sculpture of the Park aims to celebrate the spirit and determination of the people of Ireland who triumphed over the adversity of disease and famine.
President McAleese speaking at the official opening of the ‘Ireland Park’ in Toronto today said, “What a privilege it is not alone to be here today but to have the joy of officially opening Toronto’s ‘Ireland Park’ with its compassion in these sophisticated and prosperous times for another time and another era when men, women and children from the island of Ireland came here with the remnants of hope in their hearts, their bodies and spirits worn out and wearied by An Gorta Mor, the Great Hunger, the Irish potato famine”
The President went on to say, “They were destitute, sick, traumatised and terrified and they overwhelmed this city. Yet Bishop Power, Toronto’s first Catholic Bishop, who was in Dublin in January, 1847 signalled their arrival to the city authorities and urged the people of Toronto to prepare for the onslaught to come. To the city’s credit it did exactly that, building hospitals and sheds, constructing a coping structure that was simply heroic. By the year’s end over 1,100 poor souls were buried in the graveyards I was privileged to visit this morning – among the dead were many courageous public officials and the Bishop himself.
……………..”Today 800 million people, including 300 million children, do not get enough to eat each day to enable them to lead healthy and active lives. They need friends and champions as our Irish poor once did. That is the challenge and the message this Memorial Park offers to a new generation. Here the most overlooked, forgotten and neglected of the world’s 19th century poor have been restored to memory, not simply so we will be moved to tears but that we will also be moved to action”
While in Toronto, President McAleeese will undertake a number of other engagements. The President will visit St Paul’s Catholic School and St James’ (Anglican) Cemetery, both the sites of large famine graves.
The President will also be guest of honour at a business lunch hosted by Enterprise Ireland and the Ireland Canada Chamber of Commerce, and an Irish community reception. The visit to Toronto will culminate in the President’s attendance as guest of honour at the Ireland Fund of Canada Gala Dinner at the Royal Ontario Museum.
Remarks by the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese at the Opening of Ireland Park, Toronto
Thursday June 21, 2007
Is mor an pléisiúr dom bheith i bhur measc inniu ag an ocáid seo agus tá me buíoch díbh as an chuireadh a thug sibh dom teacht go dtí Toronto.
Minister Jim Flaherty, Premier McGuinty, Mayor David Miller, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
What a privilege it is not alone to be here today but to have the joy of officially opening Toronto’s ‘Ireland Park’ with its compassion in these sophisticated and prosperous times for another time and another era when men, women and children from the island of Ireland came here with the remnants of hope in their hearts, their bodies and spirits worn out and wearied by An Gorta Mor, the Great Hunger, the Irish potato famine.
Wherever their story is told whether here, or in Grosse Ile or along Dublin’s quayside, or in Sydney or in downtown Manhattan, all places where I have visited or opened memorials to that cruel era, it is almost impossible for a prosperous and free generation to get their heads around the sheer scale of the massive personal loss and Irish national loss caused by the Famine. Yet we can still get our hearts around it and that is a very reassuring thing. And here in Toronto a generous and caring generation has honoured those tragic, forgotten souls and that dark period in Ireland’s history with a magnificent, moving memorial that gives respect, real respect to their lives and their sacrifice.
To Aidan Flatley and his crew who built the Park, to all who supported its creation in any way, there is real passion and love in this place as well as skill and art. I congratulate and thank you all on a job beautifully done.
The location is stunning, Rowan Gillespie sculptures are haunting and Jonathan Kearn’s landscape design is elegantly stark. Together they create a space of profound sensitivity and reverence in tribute to those convulsive times that changed the story of Ireland, Canada and Toronto, over a century and a half ago.
In his comprehensive research Professor Mark McGowan of the University of Toronto introduces us to the months from May to December of 1847 when a city of some twenty thousand inhabitants, as Toronto then was, experienced the tidal wave of misery brought to their streets in the hearts of thirty-eight thousand Irish emigrants.
They were destitute, sick, traumatised and terrified and they overwhelmed this city. Yet Bishop Power, Toronto’s first Catholic Bishop, who was in Dublin in January, 1847 signalled their arrival to the city authorities and urged the people of Toronto to prepare for the onslaught to come. To the city’s credit it did exactly that, building hospitals and sheds, constructing a coping structure that was simply heroic. By the year’s end over 1,100 poor souls were buried in the graveyards I was privileged to visit this morning – among the dead were many courageous public officials and the Bishop himself.
In the presence of Mayor David Miller, I offer the heartfelt thanks of the Irish people for the selfless concern of this city for our tragic ancestors. These links hold Ireland and Toronto in a friendship that is in fact a kinship for, as a result of Toronto’s great goodness, many famine Irish survived to build new lives in Canada and the United States. The decision to rename this part of Bathurst Street, Eireann Quay is deeply appreciated and strong evidence of just how formidable is that bond between us. In the generations that followed that fateful famine the Irish became a scattered and scattering people with a well-worn track from its shores to Canada. Among those who came here were members of my own family, so numerous that I can safely say I am probably related to one in three people in Halifax.
So many of us have such links, including Terry Smith of the Ireland Park Foundation whose great grandmother travelled to Toronto in the summer of 1847, losing a brother along the way. Thanks to the humanity and decency of the people of Toronto, Terry’s great grandmother survived and raised a family in the city that had been so good to her. So today’s memorial is not just in memory of those who came but also those who helped them.
Ireland’s Naval vessel, the LÉ Eithne, is moored today alongside Ireland Park. Her name gives a clue to why she is with us for this lovely event. In Irish mythology, Eithne’s baby son was thrown into the sea only for the Sea God to take pity on the infant and have the waves throw him up on a distant beach where a kind and generous stranger took him in and raised him as his own son.
Today Ireland and Canada are two of the world’s most prosperous nations but also two with a strong sense of moral responsibility for ending the scandal of poverty and hunger in our world. That sense of outrage and responsibility has made both our countries into leading donor countries to the Third World. Today 800 million people, including 300 million children, do not get enough to eat each day to enable them to lead healthy and active lives. They need friends and champions as our Irish poor once did. That is the challenge and the message this Memorial Park offers to a new generation. Here the most overlooked, forgotten and neglected of the world’s 19th century poor have been restored to memory, not simply so we will moved to tears but that we will also be moved to action.
The great city of Toronto is a not just a place with a heart but with an abiding conscience, captured here in a place that makes us humble, proud but also determined to do what we can, to ensure that this kind of avoidable suffering becomes a thing of the past right across the globe.
To those whose passion has given us this Park, this memory, this challenge a huge thank you.
Go raibh míle, míle maith agaibh.
Thank you all for being here today.
