Ulster Trek: The Voyage "Home", part I — Louth-Monaghan

At 2:15 p.m. precisely, on May 21, 2009, I crossed into the United Kingdom for the very first time.

Just over six minutes later, I left it.

This happened when the N53 road we were on became the A37 as it left County Monaghan near the border with County Louth, and slipped across the national border into County Armagh. We remained on the A37, and in Northern Ireland, for the next six and a half minutes until we crossed back into County Monaghan, the Irish Republic, and the A37 went back to being the N53, at 2:21.

But I’m several hours ahead of myself.

Dave and I made our way that morning down to the Dublin Skylon Hotel on Upper Drumcondra Road. This was where we were to meet Dave’s friend, Larry. Larry was an intriguing figure for me even before I met him. Just from the little I knew about him, he already sounded exceptional. Dave works security, and Larry had worked for him for several years... despite being roughly twice Dave’s age. But Dave had also characterized him to me as a man who had personal business interests all over what sounded like the whole northern half of Ireland. Despite this, he’d been determined for many years to hold down a serious “day” job. It was clear to me that this was a man who trusted little to chance, but did his best to make his own luck. Dave had a high regard for Larry, and that seemed mutual. Just because Larry had reason to travel around the north of Ireland hardly obliged him to drag someone like me around. But he did, because Dave was his good friend, and because they were both proud Irishmen eager to share their pride with someone who’d come from away to learn.

Dave and I had a couple of drinks in the lounge at the hotel. It was right around noon when Larry arrived to pick us up in his spacious minivan. Dave and I abandoned our drinks (how un-Irish) and hurried to meet him. Larry was a tall, avuncular man of retirement age (later on he gave his age as 70), who greeted us warmly and got us on the road north.


Dave had been concerned that, given the difference in accents, I might not be able to understand Larry, but I understood him just fine. He was a man who’d grown up in the borderlands, and he had an accent that was different from Dave’s... by no means the lilt of the south. It was much more the sort of brassy tones one hears emanating from Belfast and beyond. I understood him to be a native of either Monaghan or Louth... Louth is technically in Leinster, not Ulster, but as close to the border as Larry and his family seemed to call home, it really made no difference. Anyway, I think Larry had a harder time understanding me. It’s possible my own accent made me sound a little mush-mouthed to him. :)

Larry knew that my own family was from the North, from the environs of Enniskillen, specifically, and he was determined to get me there, showing me quite a bit of the countryside along the way. It was the sort of tour that you simply couldn’t have bought. It was guided not by a busman reading a book, but by a man who’d spent decades moving along the lanes and backroads, in and out of the towns and counties in the course of living a life.

In Louth, we left the northbound M1 and stopped off in a place called Dromena (at least, that’s what it says on the map). It was here that we dropped in, briefly, on Larry’s daughter and son-in-law and their kids. They had a large, impressive home in the countryside, which they were currently renovating. Adjacent to it was what Larry deemed an “eco-friendly” home. It was prefabricated, and I gathered it was now the principal residence for himself and his wife, as well as representative of a new, blossoming business concern for him. It was on a single level, roomy and nicely-appointed inside, and Larry told us a little about the significance of some of the furnishings. I have to admit, the one that impressed me the most was the rifle hung over the mantle. Larry told us that it had belonged to his grandfather, a member of the original IRA, and had been carried by him during the Anglo-Irish War (a.k.a. the War of Independence) in the early 1920s, which had led to both independence for the 26 counties and, sadly, the partition of the country that persists to this day. I felt privileged to be allowed to photograph it. On a personal note, without such men, I would not be a citizen of Ireland and Europe today, nor would the tens of thousands like me around the world (not to mention the millions who actually live in Ireland!).

When we got back on the road, we crossed the highway and made our way to a place that Larry either has, or had, an interest in: Darver Lodge. We stopped in front of it and had a quick look. I gathered it was being renovated with a big future in mind. Larry spoke casually of his various projects, without pretension. It was becoming clear to me that he was one of these people who simply has the knack for, more often than not, spinning straw into gold, and then moving on to the next haystack. It must make for an interesting life.


We left Darver Lodge and headed back out onto the road to resume our journey...


Literally just around the corner is the Readypenny Inn, which Larry also once had an interest in. I got the feeling it had proven to be a bit of a money pit for him over all, and he was glad to sell off his interest to someone else. Still, he spoke of it with warmth.


We resumed our trip northbound on the M1 and then cut west at Dundalk. It was ten minutes after that that we crossed, for the first of a dozen times, the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland.


Below is either the first photo I ever took in Northern Ireland, or is just a few yards short of the border: where the N53 becomes, temporarily, the A37.


And the beat goes on... This is one of the first sights that greeted us in south Armagh.

...But that was really the only obvious sign of the Troubles I saw. The rest of Northern Ireland was as lovely and placid as the South...

I remember remarking, as we crossed back into County Monaghan, that I thought the places we’d passed through in County Armagh didn’t seem as well-heeled as the places I’d seen so far in the Republic, but Larry reminded me I hadn’t seen that much of Northern Ireland yet.

A couple of views along the way...


...and then, not quite 45 minutes after leaving Northern Ireland, we were in Monaghan Town...


It was just before 3 when we arrived at Monaghan Town, where Larry very kindly treated us at a smart little sandwich shop in the middle of town. I stand to be corrected here, but I believe the name of the place was Corr’s Corner Restaurant. Monaghan Town is gorgeous; it’s everything someone would come from abroad to see in Ireland (at least, outside the urban attractions of Dublin itself). We gazed out into the street as we chatted and enjoyed the ambiance of the place, the placidity of the moment, and each other’s company before hitting the road again to make our first serious foray into Northern Ireland, and my ancestral home.

P.S. Here's Dave, sitting opposite me at Corr's, while we wait for Larry to arrive from parking the van. :)

A visit to Dunleer

The plan was for me to be in church on the Wednesday I was there. And it might not surprise you to hear, then, that I was. Though the trick is, it was for an entirely different reason.

Initially, when Dave convinced me to stop just mooning about visiting Ireland and actually do it, the "excuse" was a wedding. Not his; I missed that by several years — but that of the brother of a friend of his. So, I was planning to visit Ireland to attend the wedding of a friend's friend's brother. It's not quite six degrees of separation, but it's still kind of out there.

In the couple of years we were talking about this, the wedding was on, off, on, and finally off again. When it was finally called off for good, the wheels were in motion, and by that time I was committed to the trip regardless.

While Jay was kindly driving me and Dave around the first couple of days I was there, he happened to mention that his daughter, Sarah, would be having her confirmation that week. I don't think he was pressing us; it seemed to me both that he was hinting he wouldn't be available that day, and perhaps, in an unobtrusive manner, inviting us along.

The subject came up between me and Dave on Tuesday and he asked me if I'd care to go. In fact, I was hoping he'd ask. I was hoping to see a real ceremony while I was there. Besides, I hardly wanted to the reason he and his family couldn't be there for his brother and niece on a singular day in the lives of them both. There was also the trip. Dublin was great, and I could stand to see a lot more of it, but there was still all the rest of Ireland as well, and we hadn't stepped outside the county yet at that point.

The story is a bit complicated. Jason was together with Linda for years, but isn't anymore. They had two children, Sarah and Andy. Linda has since married, and had two more children with her husband. But of course, Jay is still in Sarah and Andy's lives, and everyone seemed completely cool with all of this, which was great.

Jay came by and picked up Dave, Mary, Cara, and me. Given that I'm the biggest of the bunch, and the one who hadn't seen any of it before, they quite nicely left the shotgun seat for me. We were headed north out of Dublin on the M1 to a small town up in County Louth called Dunleer, which is not quite half way to Belfast.

It was the first time I'd been on a superhighway in Ireland, and Jason clearly loved being on it, though he complained about it being only four lanes, two each way. Many of the people I met had spent time living in England, and so had ideas about what else was possible and glimpses of Ireland's own infrastructural future. For myself, I was reminded of the highways between towns when I was a kid in Nova Scotia. I noticed, too, that the speed limit in Ireland was 120 km/h, 20 higher than the speed limit on such highways in Canada (or in Ontario, at any rate).

I was surprised, everywhere I went in Ireland, to see that they tell you the distances to cities in both parts of the country. In Canada and the US, in my experience, they'll tell you how far to the border... after that, you're on your own; it's terra incognita. But notice that here, in the Republic, the precise distance to Belfast is on the sign.


As you enter Louth, there's a toll booth. It's €1.90 to proceed. Jay referred to this as "the Louth Tax". It was also at this point that I realized that I had misconceptions about how the names of certain counties — Louth, Meath, and Westmeath spring to mind — are actually pronounced — differently from what I expected. Being from North America, I would pronounce the "th" with my tongue against my front teeth, creating the lisping sound characteristic of "th" here. In fact, they're pronounced with a sound something between a "t" and a "d", such that when Jason mentioned "the Louth Tax", "Louth" to me sounded something like, but not quite, "Loud". Later in a newscast I was to hear "Meath", predictably, pronounced something like "Mead".

The weather was, typically, one thing for two minutes and something else the next five. The rain came and went more like a flock of birds than a herd of bison. It happened to be raining when my attention was called to an upcoming sight I was assured I would not want to miss. It was the highway bridge over the River Boyne. It was, truly, lovely... the sort of thing you really wouldn’t see them spending the extra money on in Ontario anymore. I don't know if it was intended specifically to have anything to do with commemorating the fighting of the Battle of the Boyne in its vicinity in 1690. I suppose it's possible, though the battle is not what you'd call popular with Irish nationalists. Then, the bridge itself is neutral, and could be seen, I guess, as a smoothing of the waters.

Eventually we left the highway and drove into Dunleer. Dunleer was a very small place; a handful of old main streets with some very, very recent suburban housing around it. It must have been a boon to the local parish, though, given how many people were in attendance.

Cara was excited to be seeing her cousins again and said their names many times as we pulled over. We parked facing the traffic, which I gather is very common in Ireland and UK, but utterly unknown in anyplace I've ever been in North America. When we stopped, we first hustled into a corner store for Dave to get a congratulatory card for his niece, and then we walked up the lane to the church. We arrived just in time for the ceremony; in fact, it was just about standing room only by then. I ended up standing at the back, but I didn't mind at all because it gave me an excuse to get some better angles to take pictures from.

Three bishops entered — pretty impressive. One was actually visiting from Nigeria, and had connections with the Irish church. The music for the ceremony was provided by a local youth choir of both boys and girls, energetically conducted by a woman I took to be their music teacher.

It strikes me now as kind of strange to hold a confirmation ceremony in the middle of a work day... it didn't, then, because I was on vacation, and so of course it seemed to me the whole of Ireland was on vacation as well. Not the case, of course. Surprising how well-attended that ceremony was, given it happened smack in the middle of a Wednesday.

The bishops came out to bless the new confirmants, and one of the last was Sarah herself. She was blessed by the visiting bishop from Nigeria.

It was a different experience for me, and one I was looking forward to. Let me explain. I've always lived in Canada, and I've always been one person amid people of many different traditions. Mine was nothing special or even particularly in evidence. Now, I used to always wonder about Jewish people and their connection to Israel and the idea of their "people", when they all came from far and wide. What could that mean? And I guess I came in search of that, in my own way. It was standing there in the back of that church, that I felt it. Like the people around me, I was an Irish citizen, and I was a Catholic. I felt like one of them — if one of them from far away. I didn't feel like a stranger or a foreigner; these were my people. In places just like this, all over Ireland, my ancestors lived, and not so long ago. Feeling Irish was, for me, a different and distinct thing from feeling Canadian. Not better or worse, but different. And I'm richer for it, and grateful to the country and my friends for the gift of being able to realize that.

From there, we went back to a reception at Sarah's home. I was introduced to a few people there, including Sarah's mother, Linda, and Sarah's step-father, Dave, among other relatives. One of the more interesting things was that Jay's son, Andy, is a budding artist, and he proudly showed me a painting of his hanging in the hallway. Andy was eleven, I think, and though he said he had "help" with the painting, I was struck by how lovely I found it. Maybe it was the snow-laden pines calling out to a Canadian far from his usual digs, but I found it deeply compelling and I would have quite readily hung it on an appropriate wall at home myself.


There was food... highly Irish fare like lasagna, garlic bread, and pizza. Dave, ever the host to me even in someone else's home, made sure I was appropriately furnished with a plate and a beer. For the most part, I sat out in the warm late spring sun of the back yard, taking it all in. People drifted in and out, and at one point Linda came out and spoke with me for about half an hour about Canada. Either out of politeness or earnest, she mentioned to me that she and her husband had discussed moving to Canada, which I found curious when she mentioned they'd already lived in Detroit at some point. I thought it was interesting that, having forged a connection with the US that would presumably be easier to resume, they were considering Canada as an option instead. I think I put her off by mentioning snow, but if she's lived in Detroit, she knows the drill. During my stay there, at least a few people mentioned moving to Canada to me. The usual alternative, generally mentioned in the same breath, was Australia... but they seemed keenly aware that Australia's immigration policy is tightening, at least for the moment. Several people astonished me by being aware of the (reputed) solidity of Canada's handful of federally-chartered banks, and more than once I was complimented on it... gratifying, even if I myself had nothing to do with that (other than voting for a party that wouldn't let them merge and use their size to make the stupid, overreaching mistakes that US banks made). You can imagine that I'd hardly object to having a few more Irishmen and Irishwomen come to Canada's shores.


It was during my conversation with her mother that Sarah came up to me. I congratulated her on her confirmation and she thanked me, and then playfully inquired as to where I came from. When I told her, she turned to her mother and said something to the effect of, "Doesn't he have a lovely accent?" and vanished back into the company of her celebratory guests. I think it was the first (and likely the last) time I've ever been complimented on bearing the flat, slightly nasal accent of central North America. I guess anything's exotic if only it's uncommon where you happen to be.

They'd rented one of those inflatable bouncy tents for the kids. I enjoyed watching Dave bouncing Cara safely at the edge; she absolutely loved it. I watched Jason and Andy romp together and felt a little sad. It's clear they really love each other's company, and I felt sorry they didn't get to share it on a daily basis anymore. But at least it's clear Jay's devoted to his kids and they can count on him, and that they see him often enough it's in no way awkward when they're together.

I guess we were there a couple of hours when we bundled back into Jay's car and headed back down to Dublin, paying another installment of the Louth Tax. The day had been special for me. Previous days had put me in touch with Ireland as an historical, cultural thing. But this day had put me in touch with my own roots in the place, among the people themselves, generous and open. I'm glad, and grateful, that I had that.