By Jim Hagarty
1986
It’s a phenomenon stranger than jet lag the way a person’s nationality transforms itself in the air mid-way between America and the Old Country.
A few weeks before departure, an Ireland-bound young Canadian with Irish roots is, most positively, an Irishman. Sure, his thick, Irish accent’s lost a little in 150 years and he’s a few freckles shy of a faceful but he’s as Irish as whiskey, spuds and the colour green and eternally proud to call himself so.
“Yes, well, I’ve never actually been there before,” he tells you before he leaves, “but I know the country like the back of my hand. My ancestors were from there, of course, and I’ve been readin’, hearin’ and singin’ about Ireland all my life.”
But to the seatmate on the airplane, a “real” Irish native heading home for a visit to Dublin after three years in Toronto, our young traveller begins to confide his tremendous pride in his native Canada and before the five-hour flight is over, the conversation has switched from talk about Irish pubs, castles and cobblestones to Canadian landscape, history and hockey teams.
When both feet finally land on Irish soil for the first time, the proud young Irishman from Stratford, Ontario, turns suddenly as Canadian as Pierre Trudeau, Gordon Lightfoot and Anne of Green Gables. And to all the other natives of Ireland he meets over the next three weeks, he introduces himself, not as an Irishman, but as a Canadian.
Before the trip ends, though he loves the Emerald Isle even more now than he did in his dreams and his songs, he begins to miss home. Small things he longs for. Like a hot, dry sun on a dusty day in mid-July. Country music on the radio. The CBC National News. The sight of wide open fields and people with suntans.
Heading home, mid-Atlantic, le voyageur Canadien gets clunked again across the back of the noggin by the shillelagh of whatever leprechaun knocked the Irish out of him at about the same in-flight spot three weeks earlier and once again, he’s an Irishman.
Next night. Gathering of relatives. Guess what? There’s not a country on earth as beautiful as Ireland. People are the friendliest in the world. Food tastes best. Women are the prettiest. Singers are the finest. Music’s the most musical.
And get this. Can’t wait to go back.
He really can’t.
(Update 2018: The boy has been back to Ireland five times since he wrote this story.)
St. Patrick, after whom are named churches and schools in Ellice Township’s Kinkora and Hibbert Township’s Dublin in Canada, while he was a saint, was not above having “one of those days.” A particularly bad one occurred the day he climbed the steep hill up to the castle above the town of Cashel, Ireland, to baptize the king of that region. The baptism was supposed to be quite a coup for Pat. He reckoned, probably rightly so, that it’d be a cinch to get the natives to line up for baptism if he could get the king to agree to it. However, having climbed the hill, the aging man of religion was exhausted and took a breather at the top, resting his chin on his staff, the sharp point of which, went through the king’s foot. The king, normally murderous when dealing with people who hurt him, said nothing, believing the punctured foot was all part of the baptism ritual. The natives thought so too and took off running back to their heathen lives in the woods.
This all occurred in about the middle of the fifth century. The town, hill, castle and the rock the king lay across to be baptized – are still there. (Actually, the rock is a replica. The real one is in a museum.)
In a pub in Sligo, Ireland, I thought I’d open up a lively discussion by telling this friendly looking Irishman that near my home back in Canada, there is a village of 350 souls called Dublin. I picked the wrong guy to tell that to. Turned out he’s a postal worker from the original Dublin and he wasn’t much impressed. There are 13 Dublins in the world, he said, including one in Poland.
Dublin, however, is not the only Irish name in Perth County and area in Canada where I live and it’s a strange feeling to drive into towns and villages over there that bear the same names as here. Places such as Lucan, Listowel, Donegal, Palmerston, Carlingford, Tralee and Cromarty. And we saw a fancy home this nameplate on the gate: Kinckora House.
Have a grand St. Patrick’s Day.
