D'Arcy McGee

I mentioned previously that the Irish family from which I’m descended is named McGee. And so Thomas D’Arcy McGee has always been special to me. He was a member of the Young Irelanders in the 1840s, a journalist in Ireland, the US, and Canada, and ended his days as one of Canada’s Fathers of Confederation. Indeed, he is arguably the man who first conceived of Canada in its modern form and extent.

He was born in Carlingford in Ireland in 1825, and he participated in the Famine Rebellion – one of the many revolutions raging across Europe in 1848 – for which a warrant was issued for his arrest, resulting in his escape to the US. He worked there as a journalist in Boston and New York before eventually moving to Montreal in 1857, where he became politically active, and within a year, was elected to the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada. At that time, the Province of Canada was a simple colony; a legislative union between what had been Upper Canada and Lower Canada, and would later become the provinces of Ontario and Quebec respectively in modern Canada. Canada as we know it today did not yet exist.

But it was McGee who conceived of it and urged the people of British North America on to a new nationality. As early as 1860, he stood up in the legislature, and said to the members:

I see in the not remote distance one great nationality, bound, like the shield of Achilles, by the blue of the ocean.

I see it quartered into many communities, each disposing of its own internal affairs, but all bound together by free institutions, free intercourse, free commerce.

I see, within the round of that shield, the peaks of the western mountains and the crests of the eastern waves. The winding Assinaboine, the five-fold lakes, the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa, the Sauguenay, the St. John, the Basin of Minas, by all these flowing waters in all the valleys they fertilize. In all the cities they visit in their courses, I see a generation of industrious, contented moral men, free in name and in fact – men capable of maintaining, in peace and in war, a constitution worthy of such a country.

With these words, he first gave Canadians a vision of the future, and one that ultimately came true in every respect, although he himself lived to see a Canada that stretched only from the Atlantic to Lake Superior. But he was one of those who worked to achieve it. After the US Civil War ended, the leaders of British North America, fearing annexation, came together to work out the details of Confederation. These were the Fathers of Confederation, and prominent among them was D’Arcy McGee.

The irony here is great. As a younger man, McGee fought for the independence of Ireland from Britain. Yet he ended his days as one of those most instrumental in conceiving and realizing the creation of the first dominion in the British Empire, Canada. In fact, as one of the members elected to its first parliament, he lived long enough to see his dream realized – but only just. Canada became a nation in July, 1867; McGee died not even a year later in April, 1868: assassinated by Patrick J. Whelan, a Fenian sympathizer who considered McGee a traitor to the cause.

Today, on the street on which he lived, Sparks Street in Ottawa, the prominent Thomas D’Arcy McGee Building stands near the site where he died; an office building owned by the federal government that houses the Ottawa headquarters of the Royal Bank of Canada (a private institution not to be confused with the Bank of Canada, which controls the Canadian dollar). Not far away on the same street is the pub, “D’Arcy McGee’s”, which serves as a favoured watering hole of federal politicians. Schools, towns, and electoral ridings are named after Thomas D’Arcy McGee; Patrick J. Whelan, hanged for his crime, is a footnote in Canadian history.

In the town of McGee's birth there is monument to him, dedicated there in circa 1990 by the (then) Canadian Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney, and the Irish Taioseach, Charles Haughey. As it turns out, Carlingford is in County Louth, which I didn’t realize until today. There’s another irony here, but this one’s sweet. The photograph accompanying the beginning of this post is actually composited from two photos, both taken by me. One is of the statue of McGee himself, taken by me in July, 2007 on a trip to Parliament Hill in Ottawa. In order to get the detail in the dark statue, the camera altered the white balance and completely blanked out the sky behind him. I thought it would improve it to put in a sky like the one there that day, so I decided on one from my recent trip to Ireland last May. And the one I chose I took in a backyard in... County Louth. Only after doing so did I realize how justly I had put his own native sky behind him, strangely uniting the places where his life began and ended; the nebulous possibilities of his birth and the solidity of the achievements of his life; an unintentional, but appropriate, act that pleases me. I think it would have pleased McGee, an accomplished poet:

Long, long ago, beyond the misty space
Of twice a thousand years
In Erin old there dwelt a mighty race,
Taller than Roman spears;
Like oaks and towers they had a giant grace,
Were fleet as deers,
With wind and waves they made their 'biding place,
These western shepherd seers.

From The Celts, by D’Arcy McGee

The trip home

My last morning in Dublin followed my last night in Dublin, which might have been my "last morning-after my last night-before" in Dublin. Fortunately, I wasn't hung over or any the worse for wear when I woke up.

I spent some time putting my stuff together, getting things packed, making sure I hadn't forgotten or overlooked anything, and I headed downstairs. In the living room, I found Chris and Finn sprawled on the L-shaped couch in ways guys can only manage when they're too drunk to notice how uncomfortable they are. I didn't see Jay anywhere, but later on it turned out he was sacked out in the front room, the door to which was closed. I wandered around, rejigged my stuff, brought it down, and started getting antsy about making my flight, which was around noon. In Canada, living next door to the United States of Paranoia, I've gotten used to the idea you get to the airport at least two hours in advance of your flight. But no one seemed particularly bothered about it as time went by. At one point, I started wondering if I shouldn't hail a cab. Then Jay appeared, followed not long after by Dave. Even then, the urgency didn't seem to be real to anyone else but me. I found out why. Someone turned on the radio and they happened to mention that there was a big soccer match (or something) going on in England, and everyone was catching flights to it, so you'd better be smart and give yourself lots of time at the airport... maybe even an hour early.

An hour? On an unusually busy day? No wonder nobody but me was concerned. But, like I said, some things are different.

I said my good-byes and my thanks to Mary, who never once failed to make me feel at home despite the fact she had Cara to look after and another baby due in just a few weeks. No one could doubt the sincerity of Irish hospitality after that. It was another thing that impressed me that, yes, there are some things that are different on either side of the Atlantic.

Jay and Dave took me to the airport, reversing the course we'd taken when I'd arrived. It was a perfect send-off. They didn't just drop me and go, but they didn't linger and let things get maudlin. They came in with me and stood with me as long as they could before security protocols dictated we had to part. I thought it was nice that Jay came in to see me off, too, because I'd come to see him as a friend apart from Dave. I know it's a cliche, but I as I stood there, I really did find myself wishing I could stay longer. I watched them as they walked away, staying in Ireland, forever part of what I'd only managed to touch for a few brief days.

I remembered how I'd entered Ireland as an Irish citizen, proud of my Irish passport. Now I brought out my Canadian passport, travelling back to Canada as a Canadian. It just seemed like the appropriate thing to do. Strange to be one thing one day and something the next, but really, to be the same thing all along. They put a sticker on my passport, admitted me to the secure area of the airport, and I went inside.

I lingered in the bookstore there. I saw a lot of books about Irish history, and I was tempted. My last €25 were burning a hole in my pocket. I also saw a book about a recent discovery, some 47-million-year-old primate they'd named "Ida", who was supposedly ancestral to both wet-nosed and dry-nosed primates (a no-longer-missing link, as it were), and I nearly picked that up, but didn't. I wish I had; by the time I got home, it was a big deal all over YouTube. It would have made a nice souvenir. Oh, well.

I sat in the waiting area, looking at the other passengers bound for Toronto, and I played a game trying to figure out which ones were Irish going for a trip and which ones were Canadians going home. I figured most of them were Canadians, but when I was finally standing in the line to board, and everyone's passports were out, half, or maybe more, were burgundy, not blue. It's nice to know that some people still want to visit Canada. One guy I overheard, about 20 or so, was actually from Northern Ireland and heading to Canada for some sporting event way out west or something. I didn't envy him the trip; getting to Toronto was probably just a little over half way. But he was excited. I hope he had a good time.

When I got on the plane, I had the middle seat in my row, which sucks. But I made the best of it. At the window seat was a very slight woman, who was virtually never in my way when I availed myself of opportunities to shoot out the window...

Here is the takeoff from Dublin airport.

A view over Ireland, just west of Dublin.

Other views, a little further west.


Quite a bit later on, this is over the north Atlantic. The very, very white patches are ice in the ocean. When I was looking at this stuff, I was imagining my grandmother, coming over on a steamship, almost a century ago. What must have taken her days, or even a week, took me a quarter of a day.

Video over the north Atlantic.

When I got home to Toronto, the friends who'd dropped me off the week before were there to pick me up. As I made my way out of the terminal to the pick-up zone, I remember how strange it felt to be back in Canada. It was like some place I'd made up becoming suddenly real... like a place you're used to isn't quite real for you, and its reality is only brought home to you when it's been absent from your life for a while. While being overseas made Ireland a "real" place for me, somehow something about the experience made Toronto a "real" place for me, too, instead of just the backdrop of my life. It seemed like an unexpected bonus at the end of the most wonderful trip I've ever been on. I have so much to be grateful for, and so many to be grateful to. And I hope to see them again, so I can tell them so, face to face.

Sláinte.

My last night in Dublin

My last night in Dublin. I can't say I remember it in excruciating detail, and I probably couldn't have done so even the very next morning, let alone three months later. But I can tell you this much: I'm confident I remember more about the evening than anyone else.

It was Friday, the evening of the same day Dave and I had just spent seeing and returning from Ulster. We'd settled back with a couple of beers and I was anticipating a quiet night getting ready for my flight home in the morning. It was the second occasion that the drink seemed to hit critical mass in Dave, and before long, he was semi-intelligibly threatening to take me out on the town.

A couple of lines about me. Pretty much all my adult life, "going out for a few drinks" has meant finding a nice, subdued pub and settling back over conversation, backgammon, and trivia questions, hopefully in the absence of a television set showing any manner of sporting event. The sort of thing King Arthur might have meant when he referred to "gentle hobbies" in Camelot. Even when I was quite young, I was never the pub-crawling sort. Sitting in crowded, noisy bars with thumping music where I shout myself hoarse trying to talk to people three feet from me never held great charms for me. Especially not when I'm facing something like a trans-Atlantic flight in twelve hours. But by the time Dave's brother Jason and their nephew Chris arrived, the plan was in motion.

I wasn't keen on it, but for once, I managed to see it from someone else's point of view. Here was Dave... he had disrupted his own life and those of his friends and family for a week solid to make me feel welcome and entertained, doing his best to ensure that when I went home, it would be with a full, serious visit to Ireland, full of stories, behind me. And now all he wanted to do was give me a good send-off, and I was on the verge of being a colossal wet blanket and genuine Royal Canadian pain-in-the-ass about it, and how are we ever going to convince Ireland to rejoin the Commonwealth if we all carry on like that? So I said to myself, "Self, you're not going to do that. You're going to go out with these magnanimous people who've been busting their humps for you all week and show them you appreciate it. Focus on the fun, don't dwell on the noise." And you know what? It actually worked. Putting the right spin on it from the outset made all the difference and I genuinely managed to have a good time. :)

Part of the fun was watching the other guys as their inebriation, at various rates, outstripped my own... :)

I haven't mentioned Chris before in any of my posts, I don't think. He was around a few times during my stay, but that evening was the first time I really got to talk with him. Chris is Dave and Jay's nephew; a guy about 20 years old. As I recall, he was going to college north of Dublin, and he and his buddies were in a band. Comments he made gave me the distinct impression he'd recently and decently hooked up with an agreeable girl. In short, the guy had pretty much everything going for him (but he wasn't boastful about it). So while all this was in the planning stage, Chris said to me, "So it's your last night, then? I suppose that means you're out to get laid." I made some lame, self-deprecating remark about being too old for that kind of thing — the guy totally pwned me. Weeks later (of course) I came up with an ace rejoinder: "It's kind of you to offer, but you're not really my type." Damn! Why do you always come up with the perfect comeback when you're 10,000 miles away? Alright, you win this round, Chris... :)

The wheels were in motion. Literally: we hailed a cab so we could head downtown. By this time, I'd had a few, but I was still nominally sober. Jay and Chris hadn't really had anything much to drink yet. But Dave... ah, my genial host was by that time well in the bag. He was already doing the Drunkenstein walk — you know, the one that guys do that makes them look like Herman Munster walking into a stiff, intermittent gale? Yeah. Just getting to the cab. I figured at this rate we'd be taking him to the hospital before the night was over. :)

Meanwhile, Chris had a buddy, Finn, whom he knew would be cruising the city centre, and asked if we could all link up with him. This was going on over the cell phone as we headed south... ah, yes, the wonders of the age of mobile communications, eh? By this means, Chris managed to ascertain where Finn was... which was, approximately 85.9 nautical miles from where we were actually heading (okay, I might be exaggerating a little). Finn, apparently, lacked the wherewithal to hail a cab and meet up with us. Hmm, quite a dilemma. But no problem; it was Dave's beer-lubed logic to the rescue... Now, as I see it, we had three possible choices:

• Keep riding to the pub we'd decided to go to and let Finn just walk and meet us there...
• Tell Finn to meet us at such-and-such intersection, pick him up, and all ride together to the pub... (my personal fave, actually)
  
• Hop out of the cab somewhere in the vicinity of where Finn was supposed to be, try and spot him, and then all of us walk to the pub...

...Three guesses which one we ended up doing, and the first two don't count. :) Yay, beer. Helping mankind fail to spot logic bombs for thousands of years. :) So, we all trundled out and, in the glare of the city night, looked around for a guy only one of us could actually recognize; me feeling a little like one of the cast of Gilligan's Island, trying to figure out just what had been overlooked in our latest plan to get rescued...

Now only Chris had seen Finn before. I didn't realize that; given how often Chris had been around and the very gregarious nature of the life I'd been shown in Dublin, I assumed any good friend of Chris's had to be known to his family. But not so. Chris finally spotted Finn and introduced him to us all. Finn was a tall, lanky, good-natured guy, eager to talk and joke without insisting on being the centre of attention; the sort of person that I think most people would quickly adopt as an affable companion. One of the reasons I thought he must have been well-known to Chris's uncles was that Dave immediately took to calling Finn "Cat-Weasel". Finn didn't seem to mind, and so I assumed this was just a good-natured nickname he endured whenever he visited Dave's place with Chris. But actually, Dave hung the moniker that very evening, right then and there.

And so, with our party now complete, Dave, Jay, Chris... uhhh, "Cat-Weasel"... and I set off along the south bank of the Liffey.


The pub we were all headed for was The Blarney Bar (the one with the backwards clock Dave and I visited the Tuesday I was there). It was very different from what it had been like when we'd been there for lunch. The place was packed, the music was loud; we barely managed to find a tiny table for the five of us to crowd around. Here's a heroic shot of Jay with a pint of Bud.


I was trying to take it easy, so I was drinking rum and Cokes (supplied by Dave, whose generosity was enough to shame a guy). I had that flight in the morning and wasn't eager to face it hung over; I had no great ambition to be the inspiration for changing the words of Leaving On a Jet Plane to "heaving on a jet plane". As for the other guys, they were into the beer. As I said, by this time, Dave was already only marginally coherent. Jay started to catch up, and it wasn't long before Finn had a buzz on. Before he did, he managed to shout a few questions to me about Toronto. He was surprised when he asked me how many people live here and the number I told him (about six million) was larger than the population of the whole of Ireland. I reminded him that North America is a big place, so it's not too surprising it would harbour a few large cities. All those people who left Ireland over the years had to wind up somewhere, after all. :)

The interesting thing was, bars in Dublin seem to have staggered (no pun intended) closing times. Where I come from, they pretty much aim for about 3 in the morning: an hour after they must legally stop serving. But in Dublin, they seem to close at different times, and people are used to this. They seem to plan the evenings by figuring out where they can migrate to next, and where they can go the hour after that. The Blarney Bar shooed us out at midnight. We wandered to the next bar.

Here's Chris on the way to the next watering hole. At this point, he was the only one, besides me, who was still quasi-sober.


Here's Finn, Dave, and Jason. This was the last photograph I took in Ireland, as it turns out.


...I did shoot one more video, however. Here we are at a pub called Eamon Dorans. As the video begins, that's Dave and Jay there in the middle at the bar. Eventually, I turned the camera, which was balanced on my glass, to face Finn and Chris, but unfortunately, Finn was sitting too near me to be fully in frame, which was really disappointing when I reviewed it because he and Chris were having a blast.

I'm not really sure what time we left Eamon Dorans. I wasn't sloshed when we did, though I had definitely taken the edge off... but the four of them were in the full-on drunk logic stage. Conversations like this are always frustrating if you're part of them, but they're hilarious if you're not. To get back to Ballymun, we hailed a cab. It was like something out of Blade Runner, except it didn't actually fly. I'd never seen anything quite like it. From the outside, it didn't look like much, but when we climbed in... well, poured ourselves in for the most part, in this case... it was like a small bus inside. Limited version of the TARDIS, in effect. Anyway, I was impressed. When we got there, I paid the driver, partly because these guys had been paying for me all night, and partly because I was the only one who was still arguably competent to deal with money.

Dave could not actually figure out how to unlock the front door to his house. I think that has to be the drunkest I've ever seen anyone who could still actually operate his limbs. So if I was surprised at how fast he got loaded, I was also impressed by how well he navigated the evening (with obvious operational limitations). He and Chris both needed to take a leak really badly, so... they watered the front lawn. NOW I know why Ireland is so green. :)

My relative sobriety seems to have failed me at about that time, because I don't actually recall exactly how we got in... if Mary came down and opened the door and went back to bed, or if Dave finally did manage to get the key in the lock. Anyway, we did get back in, and by this time, everyone was ravenous. It was decided that a pizza should be ordered. A very, very large pizza. And so one was. And said very, very large pizza duly arrived. Now, I've heard of kosher pizza... if you're Jewish, you can have dairy, or meat, but not both... but this was the first time I'd ever seen one. When we opened the lid, there it was: a gigantic doughy platter of cheese, and sauce, and... nothing else. Not a single topping. Not a rabbi in the world could have found fault with it. Ah, but a bunch of Irishmen? Fingers were pointed, recriminations exchanged, accusations of epicurean incompetence flew to and fro. It's obvious that what happened was that someone picked up the phone, managed to dial the number, gave our address and ordered a large pizza and, mission accomplished, hung up before the obvious supplemental question was asked. Large pizza with no toppings? Sure, you got it, Pontiac. I suppose it's a small mercy no one gave the address as "Dave's place" or something. As I say, words were exchanged as a result. The only thing that staved off a fight was hunger, and the fact that humans can either have a mouthful of words, or food. Everyone opted for food. The pizza survived about ten minutes; the chicken fingers and potato wedges vanished even faster.

Oblivion ensued.

Ulster Trek: The Voyage "Home", part IV — Tyrone-Armagh

Leifear, Donegal, immediately before we crossed the River Foyle into Northern Ireland. This is, technically, the last picture I took in Donegal.


Strabane. This is in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, just across the border from County Donegal. Notice that the sign refers to "Londonderry" rather than "Derry" as it would be on road signs in the Republic.


Below was an interesting gathering of statues that reminded me of nothing so much as a bunch of Terminator endoskeletons, frolicking joyously. I suppose that's uncharitable, but there it is.


We drove along deeper into Tyrone. At a place a little south of Ballygawley, there was a roadblock. I was going to take a shot of it but Dave quietly advised me to get the camera out of sight. As it turned out, the cops weren't looking for bombs or weapons, but were doing insurance certificate spot checks. Larry told us that it was a cross-border effort to make sure every car on the island displayed a valid insurance certificate. Any car of either registration, stopped north or south, will now be impounded if it doesn't have its certificate displayed. Larry's did, so off we went.

As the morning passed, we happened to pull into an Esso gas station just north of a place called Aughnachy. It was here I had what I would consider to be my premier "Zen moment" of the trip. The station had a large general store of the SuperValu chain attached to it, and we wandered into it to refresh ourselves. Machines issued us coffee and cookies while other people milled around us. It was really the only time in my trip I mingled among the people of Northern Ireland (though in truth we were, at the time, only about half a mile from the border). I was a Canadian, used to dollars, who had adapted to euros, and here I was in a store that was selling its goods in pounds and pence.

I remember we stood outside in the gloomy overcast, drinking our coffee, nibbling our cookies, watching the local people come and go in the mid-spring air to buy the little things they needed, pick up the gardening things on offer outside... we stood there, almost in the way, living in the moment. And, once again, I failed to take a single photo of what would, in retrospect, become impressed on my mind as one of my singular moments on the trip. I can't say why I feel that way, but I do. It's one of those places, one of those moments, where a little bit of my soul resides for some reason and will never quite leave. And I don't have a single frame to remember it by.

The shot below is quite a bit further into Tyrone, about an hour and a half later than the previous photo (by which time we'd already passed through Omagh, within a stone's throw of the site of the infamous bombing of 1998 — sadly, without my fully realizing it). It's in the vicinity of Tynan, where the road takes a sudden and dramatic 90 degree turn as it meets Tynan Abbey. As we drove by, Larry informed us that it had been the home of a British peer (Sir Norman Stronge), who was murdered there (in 1981) by the IRA, with his residence burnt to the ground in the attack. History, even recent history, is thick on the ground in this place in a way it simply isn't in Canada.


The closer we got to Armagh, the more Larry reminisced about his brother, Donal, who had been a priest in south Armagh. Larry hinted rather broadly, without ever actually coming out and saying it, that his brother had had certain ties to Republican causes, and had the polite but focused interest of the local RUC. I noticed that whenever Larry spoke of his brother, the speed the SUV was travelling would slow noticeably, as though he were unable to prevent himself from slipping just a little into a wistful reverie about his brother, who was clearly a man he loved dearly and held in high regard.

Arriving in south Armagh, Larry took the occasion to visit his brother's resting place and show us his former parish in a village called Skerries.


We entered the church where Father Donal had once preached. As we did, I noticed a collection plate, and I paused, pulled out my wallet, and deposited a Canadian $5 bill in it. Utterly useless to the congregation, I know. But I left it more as a calling card than as a monetary contribution. I once saw a €5 bill in a contribution box at Fort York in Toronto, and imagined it would be a real kick to the curators to discover it and have proof-positive that someone from Europe had happened by. I hoped the same small pleasure would accrue from my act to the people who handled the collection at the church.

While we were there, we were joined by a woman, one of the laypeople looking after the chuch, who remembered Father Donal well. Larry made it clear that he had issues with the shabby way the Church had handled his brother's funeral, effectively leaving the responsibilities for it (especially financial) on Larry's shoulders. The woman seemed to be aware of these facts and agreed with Larry. She remembered Father Donal fondly and expressed the impression that things were not really as good with the parish since his passing, which I thought was a kindness.


We left Armagh and crossed back into the Republic, in the form of Country Monaghan. As you can see, SuperValus aren't confined to Northern Ireland... here's one selling goods in euros. The "price match" they're talking about here is against those denominated in pounds ("sterling") across the border. At the time I was there, the euro was rapidly closing in on parity with the pound, and since the prices in pounds were lower than those in euros, people from the south of Ireland were streaming to the north for bargains, and it was playing havoc with the merchants in the Republic, and hence, tax revenues — to the point that the finance minister, Brian Linehan, who had once shooed folks complaining of the price differences off to Northern Ireland to shop if they didn't like it, turned around and accused them of being "unpatriotic" when they took him up on it... no sympathy here for this turkey and his open-mouth-insert-foot policy.


We headed south from there, heading back towards Dublin. On the way, we listened to a radio news special about the boarding schools abuse scandal in Ireland. To my utter amazement, the woman interviewed was a childhood emigrant from Ireland, living in, of all places, Toronto. It was a strange thing hearing my own accent on Irish radio. The woman spoke of members of her family who had, as young boys, been victims of the abuse, and how it had adversely affected their lives. One cousin had eventually moved to Toronto himself... she hadn't even been aware of it until she had happened to bump into him while he was working in Eaton's (at the time the largest nationwide department store in Canada; defunct since 1999). The content of the news report notwithstanding, it was a weird thing to have all these extremely familiar references tossed around while I was sitting in a car in rural Ireland, so far from home.

In Slane, County Meath, we crossed an ancient one-lane road bridge over the River Boyne. As we headed down to it, Dave remarked, not altogether to my great joy, that the bridge is infamous for high-speed fatalities. It has largely, but not entirely, been superseded by the nearby M1 bridge, seen in earlier postings on this blog.


In a place called Skerrymount on Dublin Road, we stopped in mid-afternoon at a restaurant called Brambles. Larry knew it to be an inexpensive place with good food; a soup-and-sandwich kind of joint. We lingered there for a while and then got back onto the road into Dublin. We arrived just before the onset of rush hour. Larry dropped us off in a strangely empty part of Ballymun in the throes of redevelopment, within a ten minute walk of Ard na Meala, and we said our good-byes. I found the place hauntingly beautiful and somehow, it reminded me of places I'd seen when I was very young. Dave and I took a brisk walk back to Ard na Meala, and home... home, for me, such as I knew it in Ireland.

Larry, eternal gratitude. Thank you for sharing your Ulster with me and Dave, and your unceasing kindness and generosity to a plastic paddy seeing the place for the first time.

Ulster Trek: The Voyage "Home", part III — Donegal

To continue with our road tour of Ulster...

Once we had passed through Enniskillen, where my grandmother was born, we continued westward towards County Donegal, back in the Republic.

The weather being what it is in Ireland, the relatively sunniness we'd experienced travelling up the west side of Lough Erne became the moodiness of the rugged west coastal areas. Below are views of Ballyshannon (and vicinity), about ten minutes west of the border.

There's a road called Single Street that hugs the coastline in the extreme southwest of County Donegal. Larry drove us along the road and showed us an impressive establishment called The Great Northern Hotel that looked like a small castle, flying the flags of the province of Ulster (not to be confused with that of Northern Ireland), the Republic of Ireland, and the European Union out front.

Below is Single Street, passing through Bundoran westbound.

An interesting point here: the shot below represents, more or less, the furthest west I ever got in Ireland (at least on the ground). I didn't realize at the time that the roundabout we're at in this shot is within a mere matter of yards of Country Leitrim — which, unlike Donegal, is in the province of Connacht. Had we driven west just a few more moments, I would have technically visited three of Ireland's four provinces. Here, like me, you can glimpse Leitrim and Connacht without actually being there. So close... so close and yet so far. :) [Note: below the shot is a screen cap from my photo geotagging software that displays routes using GoogleMaps... you can see just how close we were.]

But, at this point, we used the roundabout to swing back east and then north, and headed up towards Donegal Town itself.

By the time were were in Donegal Town, it was in the evening, and Larry had been driving for hours and hours. He found us very reasonable lodgings at an agreeable bed and breakfast called The Water's Edge. Dave introduced me as a Canadian and our hostess remarked that she'd just "got rid of" a party from Calgary (yeah, I think I know what you mean, missus :) ). Dave and I engaged a double room on the second floor and Larry took a single room on the ground floor. It was at this point that I twigged on one of the attributes that has helped Larry in his successes in business. He spoke gregariously with the owner of the B&B, a pleasant and helpful woman, and solicited her advice on where we might find a good meal after our long road trip. She recommended a place just down the road called The Harbour Restaurant, so he thanked her and we headed off, parking the car beside a tidal inlet of Donegal Bay just across the street from the restaurant...

(Below, shots of the area at the end of the inlet — none, I'm afraid, include the B&B, which is near its mouth.)

...and on arriving at The Harbour Restaurant, Larry made a point of letting the staff there know that we were there on the recommendation of The Water's Edge B&B. And I realized that part of Larry's character was to make contacts in this way; to build up commerce and working relationships between businesses wherever he could. There was nothing in it for him to do this; he didn't make a cent out of re-enforcing the connection between these two businesses. But by so doing, he forged another link in the chain of local commerce in Donegal Town. I was impressed by this; I took note.

Below, Dave and Larry at The Harbour Restaurant, Donegal Town.

We ate well and settled up. We drove back up (and down) the hill to the B&B and Larry, understandably, excused himself to retire for the evening. For Dave, the night was young, and he suggested going out for "a jar". I took this to mean grabbing a bottle of something at one of Ireland's ubiquitous liquor stores and settling back in our room over the RTE news and a few sailor's tales, but discovered that "a jar", in the local vernacular, is actually a drink in a pub.

As a result, we wandered up the road up the rise beyond the restaurant to the centre of Donegal Town, called "the Diamond". At the edge of the Diamond was a tiny little hole-in-the-wall pub called O'Donnell's, where we settled in amongst a dozen or so other 30- and 40-somethings (locals, I assume) for a couple of hours.

At one point Dave excused himself to wander out back for a smoke (I gather Ireland has the same sort of anti-smoking laws for such establishments as most of North America), and I ruminated there by myself for about ten or fifteen minutes in the glow of the television and the bits of conversation around me. I do recall hearing snatches of Irish Gaelic, "Gaeilge", which left me feeling a bit akin to times I've been in Northern Ontario or in the vicinity of the Quebec border, picking up on the French around me and feeling, if not foreign, at least culturally different from the people I was among. Ireland is a real place, not just some romantic notion in books, and for all the general similarities, still, it's a little different from Canada in particular and Anglo-America generally.

We'd had a snootful by 'round about 11 or so and I was really starting to feel the wear of the day. Dave and I paid up and wandered... not quite staggered, but something not altogether unlike it... back to The Water's Edge and let ourselves in. We made our way upstairs to our room and got ready to crash. I don't remember clearly the things we talked about, but I do remember having the distinct impression that it was a lot like the days back when you'd have a sleepover in the living room when you were 10 or 11, staying up way past what you were used to, to the point that the conversations, as the brains of you and your friends slowly undertook a forced shutdown, would take on an increasingly surreal air until there was oblivion and suddenly, dawn was there.

You know, I wish I'd actually taken pictures of the room. It was all done up in white, with only a few dark wooden accents; it was really beautiful. I'd love to show it to you — I'd love to be able to show it to myself again! — but it was one of those blind spots on the trip that I just didn't happen to photograph it. A friend of mine here in Toronto has a way of elevating this sort of shortsightedness by referring to it as a "Zen moment". Yeah, why don't we go with that.

I woke up before Dave, and I decided to go out and photograph the cemetery beside the B&B. It was in the churchyard of a glorious ruined Franciscan abbey dating back to the 15th century, overlooked by our room, as you can see in the first shot...

I even made a friend as I sat there beside the churchyard. She was a friendly little charmer, and made me miss my own two cats at home.

I went back to the room to collect Dave, who was up by then. He remarked to me, later, that that night in Donegal represented the first night he had spent apart from Mary since their wedding. I was moved to learn that my visit was the signal for such a sacrifice.

We went downstairs and linked up with Larry. Breakfast was served in the common room downstairs. We ate amid some foreign tourists who sounded as if they were from Eastern Europe. I can smugly say this because I wasn't technically "foreign" when I was in Ireland. ;) The food was good, and of just the right amount; neither skimpy nor wasteful (or waistful!); a nice combination of "Continental" and "English" style breakfasts; the former being available at a separate table and the latter brought to us by the hosts.

We paid up and headed out, driving back up to the Diamond. Larry had spotted a gift shop and offered to drop me off to look for something special for my mother and to circle around till I re-emerged. I found a nice pendant for a chain; a tiny shamrock carved in Connemara stone and set in silver. But when I opened my wallet to pay for it, I noticed (with what I might characterize as "calm alarm") that I was missing my last €50 note. Fifty euros is no small thing, at least to me; at the time, it was about $80 Canadian. I thanked the woman and left with my purchase and, having gotten back into the SUV, told the guys about my awful discovery, whereupon Larry drove us back to the B&B to look for it. I informed the hostess and she graciously bade me to search the common room where we'd had breakfast, and our room, which had not yet been serviced. I did, but no luck. She asked me if I'd care to leave contact information in case the bill were turned in, but I told her we were heading back to Dublin and I'd be on my way back to Canada in the morning in any case, so, sadly, there wasn't much point. Clearly, it was my own hard luck. She made some kind commiserations, and with that, I left and let her get on about her business.

True Confessions time (if you're reading this, Dave)... Not long after I got back in the SUV and we headed out from Donegal Town, I recounted the math in my head and realized I'd already blown through my last €50 bill. I'd put everyone through half an hour of nonsense. I felt like an idiot, but I kept the news to myself... till just now. Sorry, guys. :)

Below is the southeast side of the Diamond, in the heart of Donegal Town. The shop I went to is just out of frame at the left side; the pub Dave and I went to, out of frame on the right. Nice how that works out, huh?

We headed out of town heading northeast. These shots below are from the vicinity of Barnesmore, not far from the border with Northern Ireland. These shots, by the way, were taken from the back seat. Dave had sat in the back, leaving the shotgun seat to me, all the previous day, and had mentioned in passing that it felt good to get out and walk around because his legs had grown cramped in the back. Fundamental justice dictated to me that I yield the front to him for the trip back. The unfortunate upshot of that was that I had fewer opportunities, and less inclination, to take pictures on the way back, but it did lead to more "Zen moments".

The video below captures the rugged beauty of the area; aside from the scarcity of trees, it reminds me of the Applachian Mountains region of the western spine of my native Nova Scotia. You may notice that the road markings you see are essentially the reverse from what you'd expect to see on such a road in North America... generally, the shoulders would be indicated by solid lines, and a dotted line (indicating the legality of crossing into the other lane to pass) would run up the centre.

Below, pretty much the last shot I took in County Donegal (roundabout Ballylast), right along the border (according to the map, the trees on the right hand side just might actually be in Northern Ireland). Just beyond: County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.