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President opens Toronto Famine Memorial Park
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” Full
text below
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. |
