Canada?s first-ever Irish burial site officially came into being this past September, providing a final resting place for the descendants of St. Patrick?s isle.

The event was marked by the rededication of a Celtic Cross at the new Irish burial section of the Assumption Catholic Cemetery in Mississauga (6933 Tomken Road). ?The Celtic Cross is a symbol of our Christian faith,? said Master of Ceremonies Eithne Heffernan during the ceremony. Heffernan, who was also the harpist for the occasion, noted that the ceremony was an opportunity ?to celebrate our Irishness in this wonderful country of Canada.?

It was also a chance to celebrate our heritage with some blissfully un-Irish weather.

?If I were to enter into why the Celts took so quickly to Christ, we?d all get sunburned,? joked Reverend Father Gerry Scott, the homilist, and one of the mass?s concelebrants, of the brilliant late summer sunshine that greeted the crowd.

Though surrounded by signs of mortality in the countless gravestones that stretched before him, His Excellency Bishop Pearse Lacey, the celebrant, told the crowd that, as he approached his 89th birthday this past November, he did not fear death.

?I?m looking forward to seeing [the Virgin] Mary.? Rather than being morbid about the end of life, the Irish race has always had a healthy respect for the afterlife.

?The Celts had a great interest in the afterworld, had a great knowledge of the comings and goings between this world and the next,? said Fr. Scott during the homily. ?The Celtic nature of the church in Ireland was more of a church of the people?The Celtic tradition offers a good example to the modern church. [It was] a church built on local culture, built on local traditions.?

According to Fr. Scott, among the spiritual lessons of the Celtic culture, ?One can no more separate the physical from the spiritual or this world from the next, than one can separate Sunday from the rest of the week?.

Speaking of the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, Fr. Scott noted that when the church hierarchy was drafting Vatican II, ?It seems to me that somebody there had studied the Celtic Church,? by including local traditions in some of its reforms.

The event was attended by more than 450 people. Members of the 4th degree Knights of Columbus (Father Gregory Kelly Assembly) and members of the Canadian and Toronto Boards of the Gaelic Athletic Association acted as Guards of Honour. The procession marched under a canopy of raised Knight?s swords and GAA hurling sticks.

?Today is a very special day for the Irish community of southern Ontario,? said Bernie Hanrahan, one of the chief architects of bringing the Irish cemetery idea to fruition, after the ceremony. ?The cross will dominate a new Irish burial section, the first one in Canada, and the adjoining relocated historic Elmbank cemetery.?

?It was a long time in coming,? he added. ?The Irish associations really came through.? A lot of the funding came together in the second week of May, when $4,000 was raised in the space of about two weeks. The groundwork, so to speak, for the site began some five years ago. Hanrahan also thanked Pat Gunning and the Committee for their commitment to the cause.

?There were nine plots sold today alone. It should have been done four, five years ago.? Hanrahan said. ?It?s so satisfying. It was a community effort.?

The Assumption Cemetery is located just north of Highway 401, off Highway 410 at the Derry Road exit. One block east of Highway 410 on Derry, turn right on Tomken Road.