As Editor of the Toronto Irish News I had been getting the “sceal” about Ireland Park in one form or another for the last 10 years. I knew it was coming and the intensity of the project over the last 18 months especially, heralded the fact that the opening day was indeed coming on the summer solstice of 2007. I knew also that Ireland’s President, Mary McAleese was coming and that indeed was exciting in itself.

I was not prepared for the emotional juggernaut that hit me and the Irish community of Toronto when indeed the time did come and the tricolour waved proudly throughout the city that in the past had been known as the Belfast of North America. A place where the Orange and the Green didn’t always get along.

Toronto, the Hurons name for “A Place of Meeting” and home today to over four million souls from over 160 different nationalities and cultures was indeed the setting last week for an event that will be recorded in the annals of time as the Irish community’s finest hour.

Ireland Park Foundation Executive Committee

Photo by Tom Sadler

With twenty four hours still to go to the official opening, President McAleese took the podium at the prestigious Fairmont Royal York Hotel before a sold-out crowd of over 500, hosted by the Ireland Canada Chamber of Commerce and Enterprise Ireland. This amazing Head of State had this audience in the palm of her hand from the get go. She took the audience on a roller coaster emotional journey that recounted the experience of 160 years ago of those fleeing famine during Black ’47 to the Ireland of the Celtic Tiger, the peace in the north of Ireland and to a future where we must strive harder to eradicate the causes of famine, the world over.

President McAleese meets Ireland Canada Chamber of Commerce board
Back Row left to right: Eamonn O'Loghlin, Pat Quinn, Mark O'Brien, Damian Dupuy, John O'Dwyer, Anita Sands, Ronan Clohissey, Diarmuid Donnelly
Front Row: Eithne Heffernan, Ken Tracey, Dr. Martin McAleese, President Mary McAleese, His Excellency, Declan Kelly - Ireland's Ambassador to Canada, Paddy Ellis, Michael Power

In setting the scene, President McAleese remarked on the incredible open heartedness of Torontonians in those dark days when a city with a mere population of 20,000 was overrun by 38,000 Irish famine victims, weak, hungry and diseased from their herculean journey on the coffin ships as human ballast. She told a story of a City that not only lost over 1,100 Catholic souls in the fever sheds that had been hastily erected at King & John Streets but also of the 300 Irish Protestant souls buried at St. James’s Cemetery & Crematorium who had also fled the famine. The sick and the dying were administered to with care and compassion no matter which side they came from.

President McAleese meets Ireland Canada Chamber of Commerce Pillar Sponsors
Left to right: Breda Walls, British Airways; Samara McCarthy, IDA Ireland; Sylvia Fazzolari, Royal Bank of Canada; Ruairi Twomey, Diageo Canada Inc.; Dr. Martin McAleese; Ken Tracey, ICCC; President Mary McAleese; Nicholas Marmion, Enterprise Ireland; Ambassador Declan Kelly; Evelyn Dempsey, KPMG

This is the story of Ireland Park which is located on the shores of Lake Ontario with a vista of Toronto’s magnificent skyline and now with an address of Eireann Quay, recently renamed from Bathurst Quay by a very supportive City of Toronto. Mayor David Miller and Councillor Adam Vaughan have shown very tangibly how much they respect and appreciate Toronto’s Irish community.