PC39 - Special Section - 3rd place - Eganville Leader

Dr. M.J. Maloney

was a truly respected politician

An Irish gift for the gab is the least of what makes an MP eloquent

By Barry Conway

It is sometimes said that all any politician really needs to get elected is ready palaver, a facility to talk the talk, if not walk the walk. Undoubtedly, that dubious proposition will get tested again, not once, but twice in the next few months as Ontario first goes to the polls, then the entire country.

Still, Eganville, and indeed Renfrew County has had no shortage of politicians who can talk the talk, if only perhaps because an above average number of them have had some portion of Irish DNA in their make-up. But if Dr. Martin James Maloney, the Conservative MP for Renfrew South from 1925 to 1935, is any indication of what it takes to become a truly respected politician, it’s not just about an Irish ability to make great speeches.

Martin James Maloney was born in Wilberforce Township on October 9th, 1875, a son of Patrick Maloney and Mary O’Shaughnessy. He went to high school in Pembroke where he won the gold medal for mathematics. When just 16, he then went to McGill University in Montreal. There, he graduated with a medical degree four years later in 1895. Not only that, but he also graduated with high honours, winning the gold medal for pathology.

Indeed, so precocious was the tender young Martin James Maloney that he was also prevented from practicing medicine for a whole year, that is until he reached his 21st birthday, the minimum age at the time in Canada to legally practice medicine.

After he returned to Eganville to set up his practice, Dr. Maloney soon took an interest in politics. He also took an interest in Margaret Mary Bonfield, a daughter of James Bonfield, the Liberal MPP for Eganville. In fact, on February 19, 1901, Margaret and Dr. M.J. Maloney were married. The couple would go on to have 11 children, though one died at a very early age. The remaining four sons and six daughters all would establish their own distinguished careers in medicine, religion, politics and law.

But to say the good doctor had an uphill battle establishing his Conservative electability would be an understatement. When he first stood for the federal riding of Renfrew South in 1911, he was defeated, though narrowly, by Tom Low, but when Mr. Low unexpectedly retired the following year, Dr. Maloney again put his name forward for the by-election.

This time Dr. Maloney faced George P. Graham, a native son of Eganville, and the son of a clergyman. Mr. Graham won by an even slimmer majority than did Mr. Low. It was a campaign that brought out all the political heavyweights of the day, including Robert Borden and then sitting Prime Minister, Sir Wilfred Laurier, who came to Eganville to stump for the Liberal Graham. In the end, Dr. Maloney lost again in 1912, but he had come so close to victory, losing by a mere 223 votes, that such a close election brought him to national prominence. If it did not quite make him a young Goliath-slaying David, nevertheless, Dr. Maloney emerged by the end of 1912 as the unquestioned spokesman for the Conservative

Party in South Renfrew.

And so, Dr. Maloney happily pursued his appetite for politics elsewhere, that same year by being elected reeve of Eganville. For years afterwards, he also sat on the Separate School Board and was elected Warden of Renfrew County, in both places proving himself useful to the community. He would even go on years later to become the driving force in establishing the famed 1948 Eganville Old Home Week. Whatever national politics might be, the good doctor knew all politics is local.

Such was the case, that Dr. Maloney finally got elected in 1925, this time, again going head-to-head against Tom Low, who had surprisingly resurrected himself and had returned to politics as a federal cabinet minister. Rising to the occasion, despite again facing a seemingly invincible and very likeable Liberal foe in Mr. Low, Dr. Maloney campaigned using a simple yet ultimately effective slogan: “Napoleon was beaten.”

Indeed, if that Liberal Napolean was beat-

en in 1925, the Conservative victory was short-lived. Dr. Maloney faced re-election the very next year in 1926, when his Liberal challenger was the formidable Renfrew industrialist, J. L. Murray.

As the Eganville Leader reported at that time, the 1926 federal campaign “was an exciting contest but against heavy odds, Dr. Maloney was re-elected -- his majority 221.”

And so, Dr. Maloney was now a veteran federal politician with two back-to-back electoral victories under his belt. He again sat in the back benches of what was now Prime Minister R. B. Bennett’s Conservative government but where Dr. Maloney was quickly noticed by his new boss.

The Prime Minister said of the Eganville doctor: “He is the type of gentleman Canada requires in Parliament, a man of clear vision, thoroughly Canadian, who has the courage of his convictions. He is one of the foremost and most effective debaters in the House of Commons and when he rises to speak, every member on both sides of the Speaker gives strict attention.”

It wasn’t just Dr. Maloney’s Irish gift of the gab. It was his ability to be taken seriously by both sides of the House that eventually led Dr. Maloney into championing a cause that still remains a monument to his political ability. It was Dr. Maloney and his good friend, Dr. I. D. Cotnam of Pembroke who together sponsored a resolution to build a bridge across the St. Lawrence River at Ivy Lea.

The two doctors were also the driving force behind another important resolution, namely providing pensions for the blind. Dr. Maloney’s federal political career only lasted 10 years, from 1925 to 1935, but that international bridge at Ivy Lea still stands today. As do those pensions for the blind.

In 1951, Dr. Maloney suffered a stroke, the same year as he celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary, and so he eventually gave up the ghost in November, 1953. But for all his accomplishments, at the end

of the day, Dr. Maloney is perhaps best remembered not as a visionary builder of international bridges. Nor even for his support of the blind.

Rather, he is remembered, at least in the Eganville area, as a very fine country doctor who, along with Dr. Reeves and Dr. Galligan, rendered heroic service, despite almost insurmountable odds. Daily, for months on end, those three doctors fulfilled their Hippocratic Oaths, and eventually got their patients and neighbours through the worst of the Spanish flu epidemic of 1919. It’s a long, miserable, deadly event now often forgotten, but not by those who once lived through it. Or by those curious enough -- like all good politicians -- who read about it in local history books.

And so, when huge crowds finally gathered in Eganville for Dr. Maloney’s funeral mass on November 26th, 1953, it was not just a large throng of national politicians who showed up to make speeches. Most of Eganville and surrounding area did as well, with many remembering the quiet desperation of that horrible, horrible year of 1919.

The “Famine” in Mayo

This is an abridged version of an article By Mary

Teresa

Jordan published in 1995 in the parish magazine of Crossboyne, Claremorris, Co. Mayo.

By William Enright, Claremorris, Co. Mayo

In 1841, the population of County Mayo was the largest county population in Ireland at 366,328. At that time, a large part of the Irish people habitually lived on the verge of destitution. The food of most people was almost exclusively potatoes. Wealthier people had milk with their meal. As little as the people had, it was their destiny to have even less. The failure of the potato crop in 1845 and 1846, coupled with wholesale emigration, subsequently drastically depleted the Irish population. Mayo suffered badly and by 1851 the population was 275,716, a decrease of 25 per cent in 10 years. (Note: it is now only 137,231 (2022). The population of the island of Ireland has decreased from 8.2 million in 1841 to in about 7.1 million in 2022).

In January 1847, known as “Black 47”, food was so scarce and expensive in Mayo that committees were set up in every parish to purchase food and set up food kitchens. However, this did little to solve the innate hunger.

The recently built “workhouse”

in Castlebar (the more prosperous county town, 20 miles from Crossboyne), housed only 130 people even though it was originally designed for 600. The village of Crossboyne and surrounding area had 6,702 people threatened by hunger and disease. Enough potatoes to feed a family could be grown on a small amount of land. Families were large and farmers subdivided their land among their sons; thus, more and more people were living on less and less land.

It is hard for us now to imagine the lives of these Mayo people in the 1840s. But I wish you to relive those dark years through the eyes of Mary, a mother of six, in the parish of Crossboyne. Everyone was struck down the same; we all saved what we could, but it was very little. John’s father, God love him, watched a lifetime of work crumble before his very eyes, and I knew that would be the death of him as his wife Brid had died the previous year.

Maggie from next door was expecting her tenth child but joy turned to worry and indeed mother and unborn child were buried on a miserable damp day in November. A month after that, Peadar, my youngest, came down with the fever. I sat up with him all night bathing his burning little face. He died at six in the morning, just as the cock was crowing

outside. Death seemed to be everywhere. As families from back the village left for the workhouse in Castlemacgarrett, John and I decided that would be our last resort. We heard that families were split up when they got there and never saw one another again.

Ah, it was a terrible sight, Michael and Una O’Hagan carrying starved children, and Una’s old, crippled mother like a skeleton in Michael’s arms. Poor Tom Beag never made it to the workhouse; Sean, his brother, made it but was sent away and died in a ditch. May God have mercy on their souls.

As the days went by, it was

harder for us to make ends meet and to keep our spirits up. Whatever we had to sell was sold to pay our rent and to buy some “Indian meal” that wasn’t half as tasty as potatoes, but sure, it kept us alive. John went to work on the roads scheme, working long hours for little pay, but we couldn’t complain as it was keeping a roof over our heads. Some of the eviction scenes in our village were dreadful sights; mothers and children crying, the man of the house resisting the bailiffs, and then the violence that followed. Ah, ‘tis many the burning thatch that we have seen from near and far. The soup kitchens around the countryside gave some relief and we were grateful for them as they saved many from the workhouse.

But, mo chroi, it wasn’t possible for us all to stay here. My sister and her children set off for America. She wrote to tell me of her voyage, saying the ship was overcrowded and had the stench of disease and death. It is no wonder they are called ‘coffin ships’. Sure, some never even made it to the ships. We heard that 400 people from another parish left for the ships but only 100 survived the long walk and managed to set off for a better life in America or Canada.

In 1848, John died of fatigue on the road works and then I felt we had nothing to live for. John’s father died the day John was buried. Maura, my sister, sent me some money for the boat passage and I decided to leave for England as the passage was cheaper. Many others emigrated and they have blessed their relations in Mayo with money.

Mary and her five children emigrated to England in 1849. Her three sons got jobs on big farms, while her eldest girl went into service. Mary worked as a seamstress and carved out a life for herself and the youngest, Cait.

The “famine” in Ireland was tragic in every respect and most Irish people nowadays think of it as ethnic cleansing as, while the potato crop failed, the big England landowners in Ireland continued to export wheat, oats, barley, cattle, sheep and pigs to the British colonies. Learn more at ighm.org

Bernie Bedore grew up listening to Valley tales and folklore

Bernie grew up in the Central Hotel in Arnprior, a much fabled “stopping place” and “settin’ room” his parents managed. There he met the storytelling giants of the The Valley and learned their ways. It was here that he also started a life-long habit of collecting tales, yarns, jokes, soothsayings, which he transformed and retold in such books, plays and songs as Tall Tales of Joe Mufferaw, Yonder Lies the Valley, The Shanty, and Come Smile With Me.

Bernie described himself as a hotel brat and learned a lot of things he wouldn’t have had he not met so many people of various ethnic origins, attitudes, ways of life, educational levels, and general individual peculiarities. Back in those days, he said people were individualists. They didn’t follow the herd like cattle as the majority do now.

“Maybe that’s why I retained a sense of individuality,” he wrote in his book, Come Smile With Me. “That’s the one thing I hope I never lose. When I see results of the brush of sameness across the land it hurts me inside.

Bernie remembers the old, retired shanty lads gathering in the settin’ room after the evening meal, wearing their tall black hats, string ties about their necks. Their crooked pipes filled the air with a blue haze. They would beckon to a much younger Bernie Bedore, “Come here, littler Mufferaw, sit on my knee and I’ll tell you a story!”

“Take ‘er as she comes, and enjoy ‘er” is what the old lads would say as they pulled a rickety old chair or a bench across the bare pine floor to the homemade pine table.

“To each his own” was another saying “You go your way, I’ll go mine”.

“I’ve got plenty, any more would only go to waste.”

“What’s the use pilin’ ‘er up, she only gets in the way.”

“All I need is enough to bury me” and “you can’t take ‘er with yuh, there’s no pockets in a shroud.”

* * * * * *

Enjoy some of the stories Bernie recalled from his days in the hotel.

Faith Will Move A Car

One time three nuns ran out of gas as they were driving

in their Model T Ford along the Upper Opeongo Road, an early Ottawa Valley colonization road.

They walked to the nearest farmhouse, where, with true Ottawa Valley hospitality, the farmer assured them he could provide some gas for the car.

“But goldang it,” he said as he scratched his head. “What in the Sam Hill am I gonna’ put ‘er in? “Oh, by gol,” he grinned. “I know.”

He ran upstairs and took the thunder mug from the closet under his bedroom washstand.

“This’ll do the job,” he grinned as he filled the chamber pot with gas.

The three nuns returned to their car and, as they poured the gas from the thunder mug into the gas tank, along came a Presbyterian minister. He stopped and gaped at the unusual sight.

“Ladies,” he smiled. “I may not be of your church, but I sure do admire your faith!”

Bad Case of the Two’s

I mind one time they used to tell about these two old Irish lads up The Valley. They had known each other all their lives and together they had been through a lot, both good and bad. They were rough and tough old lads. They figured you could take them as they were or let them be. It was up to you.

They would argue between themselves all they wanted but if anyone butted in, they’d both turn on the interloper. What they did was none of anybody else’s business.

Well I mind hearn’ tell of this time they went to pay their respects at the wake of an old friend. Being a sad occasion, the one old lad blew his nose and sniffled a wee bit.

“You old sucky calf,” says his chum, putting on a tough front. “You’re cryin’!”

“No I’m not,” shot back the other old lad.

“Well then what’s that water runnin’ out of your eyes for?”

“You old crowbait. If you had any medical knowledge at all you’d be able to see right off I have a bad case of the two’s.”

“What do you mean, a bad case of the two’s?” snorted his chum, wrinkling up his nose.

“If you had one brain in your ugly head you’d be able to see in a minute I’ve had too many drinks and my eyes are too close to my bladder!”

Truthful

They tell about an old Irish lad on the Opeongo who was dying. The family sent for the priest to give him Last Rites of the Church. At least, this is the way we heard it. After he had been blessed, the old lad looked up at the priest with resignation.

Then, reaching out for a last ray of hope he said, “Tell me Father, do ya think there’s really a hell?”

The priest replied, “Well, to be truthful Paddy, I don’t know. But in about 10 minutes, you will.”

Windy Wolf

One night at the old Central Hotel in Arnprior, Jimmy Connelly was stumped for a story, but he didn’t let that stop him.

“I mind one time there was an old lad up near Dacre who was turrible afraid of wolves but he really liked to play cards with the lads.

“One night, he got to winning pretty good and didn’t notice how late it was getting. Suddenly, he jumped up.

“It’s getting’ pretty dark out there, lads,” he said excitedly. “I better be gettin’ home.”

He lit an old lantern figurin’ the light and the flame would keep the wolves away and took off for home. Ten minutes later he rushed back in through the hotel door. His chums asked him, “Were the wolves after you, Pat?”

Breathing hard, white-faced, he gasped, “Wolves? You could hear them up in the Opeongo hills just a-howlin’. I thought I was safe with me old lantern ‘til I looked down. There beside me was a grey-nosed old wolf. He had his nose right up to me lantern goin’, ‘Phooff! Phooff!’ – trying to blow me lantern out!”

Touring Ireland by rail or bus is a viable alternative

By Johanna Zomers

When it comes to driving an unfamiliar car on unfamiliar roads in an unfamiliar country you can count me out.

On my first trip to Ireland in 2019, I was happy to discover that trains and buses were a viable alternative on the Emerald Isle. If you’ve got four or more passengers to share rental car and insurance expenses, have piles of luggage or limited mobility, of course a car makes more sense. Just make sure the driver is prepared for roundabouts, large lorries, slow-moving tractors pulling liquid manure tankers around blind corners, or ancient oak trees

and stone walls where we would expect guardrails and a gravel shoulder. Couple this with a stick shift, a steering wheel on what is our passenger side, and driving on the left-hand side of the road, unfamiliar road signs in Gaelic (also in English but the Gaelic is both interesting and distracting) and the self-driving Irish road trip can easily become a nightmare. There are steep ascents or descents, double-curved bends, sheep, cattle, deer or tractors on the road, and the issue of parking which is often in short supply.

When you arrive, jet-lagged at an ungodly hour of the morning at Terminal 2

of Aerofort Baile Atha Cliath (Dublin Airport), it takes less than an hour to deplane, get your bags from the carousel (less if you have only carry-on) and go through passport control and customs. The Dublin Express airport bus outside the terminal travels every half hour into the city centre and to Heuston Station where the trains depart for other towns and cities in Ireland. You can buy an advance ticket online or at the kiosk by the bus stop. It helps if your accommodation is in central Dublin; otherwise, you may do better with a taxi or Uber. I stay on Aston Quay, one block over from Temple Bar and the only time I had any difficulty was when a driver deep in conversation with a passenger forgot to stop at the O’Connell Street bridge. Now I remind them where I want to exit the bus. Exploring Dublin is cheap and easy on the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transport), the quiet clean modern train that runs from central Dublin along the coast to colourful seaside towns such as Bray, Clontarf, Malahide and Howth. Go to Irishrail.ie and choose the Tourist Ticket category for daily passes. The LUAS (Gaelic word for ‘speed’) tram system is also fantastic. Also, affordable day trips on the green buses (wildrovertours.com) take you from Dublin to popular destinations such as Glendalough, Cliffs of Moher, the Giant’s Causeway and Belfast. In addition, the comfortable trains of Irish Rail also cross the country to Galway, Cork, Belfast and many other destinations. It’s a marvellous way to see the countryside and to meet the Irish locals. Irish se-

nior citizens get free transport on the trains and buses which means that there’s many a friendly old lad in a peaked cap happy to chat. Generally speaking, all the main train lines emanate from Dublin like spokes of a wheel; thus, you often need to travel by bus to go north or south once outside Dublin. For example, if you want to travel the Wild Atlantic Way you travel north from Kerry to Donegal. From Cork you can take day tours to Beara peninsula. From Galway there are easy affordable day tours to the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher in Clare, or to many beautiful locations in Galway and Mayo counties. Many of them take a break for a pub lunch or you can bring your own lunch. From Belfast you can travel to Derry and Donegal Town.

As in most civilized countries, train and bus stations are centrally located. There are many local small tour options at all price points, or you can choose private drivers who will take you anywhere you want. It’s affordable, relaxing and no need to stress about being stopped by the Garda if you’ve had a pint of Guinness with your leisurely lunch!

I’ve used Bus Eireann to travel north through Sligo to Donegal Town and Letterkenny. Going south, one goes to Wexford, Waterford and Cork. Crossing the country from Dublin to Galway is an easy threehour scenic trip by either train or bus. (I use the travel app ‘Rome to Rio’ which is invaluable for information on getting from A to B by various options anywhere in the world.)

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From previous page

My most challenging journey in Ireland was getting to and from a remote Buddhist retreat centre near Allihies on the Beara peninsula last year. The bus to Cork was easy, followed by another somewhat rattlier bus to Castletownbere which is one of Ireland’s largest fishing ports (despite being about the size of Barry’s Bay). Part of the bus route is along the Ring of Kerry with gorgeous views of Bantry Bay and the Special Area of Conservation of the Caha mountains with their Old Red Sandstone crags and outcroppings. The highest point, Hungry Hill at 685 metres, is immortalized in a Daphne DuMaurier novel. This is Harrington, McCarthy, O’Grady and O’Sullivan territory still commemorated in the names on the shops in Castletownbere where the bus driver called a lady taxi

driver to meet me at the end of the bus route. We don’t go any further, he said, unwrapping his sandwich.

The taxi driver drove me along the dramatic blind curves where sheep grazed on the sandstone outcroppings, pointing out the little farms of her neighbours. It was lambing time; her husband was away on the fishing boats, and she smelled of sheep. We had a lovely conversation and before she dropped me at the entrance to Dzochen Beara Buddhist Centre, we arranged for her to pick me up again in a week. Beyond the simple white buildings of the retreat centre built by English hippies in the seventies, the blue Atlantic stretched its lonely way to Newfoundland. Public transit may have its challenges but so does driving on ‘the wrong’ side of the road!

The tragic reality of deaths at the Cliff of Moher

By Cormac MacConnell @ Irish Central

For anyone planning a holiday in Ireland one of the most popular places to visit is the Cliffs of Moher

However, an Irish writer for the Irish Central, Barry MacConnell, recently wrote the following.

“These lines are the most important I will write and you will read for the rest of the year. I am shocked to be penning this message, but if it saves a life, I will be doing a very good deed indeed.

“The message is stark and simple. If you or anyone in your party is in a low state of mind or has a pressing personal problem of any kind in their lives, DO NOT VISIT THE CLIFFS OF MOHER ON THE CLARE COAST.

“I speak from long experience.

“They recovered another body from below the famed cliffs a few evenings ago. The rescuers have been doing that on an increasingly regular basis for years now.

“There was always a suicide toll at this awe-inspiring wonder of nature but, beyond doubt, for those with troubled minds, the Cliffs of Moher has become even more dangerous with every year that passes.

“Typically, a lone person travels in their car to the car park at the magnificently developed visitor center, which now attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors

annually. Typically, their friends and families have no warning that a tragedy is imminent.

“Often it is the deserted car, alone in the car park, early the following morning which tips off the locals to the possibility of a tragedy having happened again during the dark hours. Typically, too, those who take the long horrific fall leave a suicide note in their cars. It is a weird ritual by now.

“Typically, and horribly also, the recovery of their broken bodies, even for the experts, is a very difficult task, especially if the weather is bad. Often it takes weeks rather than days before there is recovery. I think some of the lost souls are never recovered at all, God love them.

“I have reported down the years on some of the suicides at Moher. I have seen a couple of bodies away down below in the surf line after the events.

“One sight that stays with me is that of a female body wearing a bright red dress, tossing and turning in heavy seas which prevented the rescuers from reaching her.

I will never forget that sight.

“Her story later emerged and it was almost standard for the scenario. She was a middle-aged Dubliner, with no mental or personal problems her family and friends were aware of, and she travelled down to Moher as a pas-

Breathtaking views await visitors to the Cliffs of Moher, but sadly, many people choose to end their lives here.

senger on a coach tour.

“She was missing when the party boarded the coach again after viewing the mighty cliffs and enjoying one of the most scenic vistas along the Wild Atlantic Way that has been so successful as a tourist attraction in recent years. There was no warning for anyone who travelled with her about her dread intentions.

“I think I told ye before about a conversation with a Cork taxi driver who picked up a male fare in Cork city a few years ago. The thirty-something passenger was a pleasant young man who talked

freely about life and sport on the journey.

“Initially he said he wished to go to nearby Lahinch resort but, when they reached there, he changed his mind, said the taxi driver, and asked to be brought the few extra miles to Moher. When they arrived there, he paid the agreed fare, gave his bottle of water to the driver, and wished him safe home. Then he went off to his death just like that.

“I’ve stood on the verge of the attraction myself many times down the years. Before the splendid visitor center was established

you could position yourself right on the edge of the fearful void and look downwards at the foaming Atlantic far below.

“Personally, I’ve always thought how dreadful it would be to trip and accidentally take the final tumble. There is certainly for most a high level of awe and wonder and fear involved in standing there.

“For some, clearly, there is much more.

“Nowadays it is not really possible to have an accidental fall because of the fencing. Those who go over, tragically, are doing so deliberately. And it is happening far too often.

“Accordingly, on any occasion now when I hear of another broken body being brought ashore by the dedicated first-responders, the phrase which leaps into my mind is “the terrible beauty...”

“And that is why I am writing this way this week of the peak holiday season. The stupendous sight of the Cliffs of Moher is totally worthwhile and stimulating for almost all who come there.

“But far too often, also, there are the lonesome cars at dawn in the car park or nearby. And the notes on the dashboard.

“Isn’t there an old saying, “See Naples and die…” Truly there is a wider context, for whatever reason.

“Be careful out there.”

When Irish nuns came to Combermere to build no ordinary school

By Barry Conway

It’s a story that beggars belief. A little girl, Catherine Windle, gets born December 12th, 1884 on a hard-scrabble farm, back of the beyond, in Raglan Township. Somehow, her Irish grandparents had escaped the Great Hunger in the middle of the 19th Century and traded the Shannon River that separates County Kerry from County Clare for the Madawaska River that separates Wingle from Latchford Bridge in the Upper Ottawa Valley.

The Windle clan soon found themselves struggling immigrants in Renfrew County, at first settling near Renfrew, then the close-knit family moved to Raglan Township. Ultimately three grand-daughters, Anne, Catherine and Maggie, all moved again, if only temporarily to Alberta.

Back in the 1890s, however, Catherine Windle was a precocious and hardworking young student near Wingle, struggling to complete her schooling locally, though ending her school days in far-away Bancroft. By the beginning of the 20th Century, she had found a job in Bancroft working in a law office. Still, she loved her home near Wingle, even though her ability and skills, if not her future, seemed to want to take her further and further away.

Eventually, she qualified as a legal secretary and by 1905 she and her older sister, Ann left by train for Calgary. There, Catherine did so well as a legal secretary, she bought her own house, that is after spending several years boarding with a curious group of nuns, a French order called The Faithful Companions of Jesus (FCJ).

Sister Catherine Windle (1884-1967), General Superior of the Faithful Companions of Jesus, 1947-1966, born near Wingle, Ragan Township, along the Madawaska River, and founder of St. Mary’s School, Combermere.

The FCJ order was established in Amiens, France, in 1820 and dedicated itself especially to educating young girls from around the world. Yet, even though the order was French in origin, it was brimming with Irish recruits, many from along the Shannon, where Catherine’s grandparents had once come from.

The Faithful Companions of Jesus had

come to Canada during the Riel Rebellion in the spring of 1885 and had worked several projects on the Prairies where they built schools and educated especially disadvantaged young girls. It was something Catherine knew something about, and felt very strongly towards, and so like Saul on the road to Damascus, she soon decided to change the direction of her life’s work.

On June 2nd, 1913, Catherine Windle joined the Faithful Companions of Jesus and after returning to Raglan to tell her parents, she travelled to Upton-on-the-Wirral in England where on January 10th, 1916, she made her final vows. By September of that same year, she returned to Canada where she went back to school to qualify as a teacher before taking up teaching duties at St. Mary’s High School in Edmonton. Two years later she was moved to St. Mary’s Girl’s School in Calgary where her inspector reports considered her both “impressive and effective.”

So much so, that in 1920 it was no great surprise when Sister Catherine Windle was asked to become private secretary to the order’s General Superior in Belgium, Sister Philomena Higgins, who, ironically, was Irish, the first non-French woman to lead the order. Three years later, Sister Windle was elected to the FCJ general council and in 1934, she was elected as Assistant General.

During the Second World War, the General Superior’s office had to be removed to Kent in England, where it was bombed in 1944 while Sister Windle was in the building. She survived but when the General Superior eventually died in 1947, it was Sister

Catherine Windle who was elected as the new General Superior, the top job, and the first Irish-Canadian to hold it.

One of her first duties as head of the order involved a new girl’s boarding school that was to be built in Mission, British Columbia, yet shortly before construction was to begin, the building site along the Fraser River was unexpectedly flooded. So, the FCJ order needed to regroup quickly, if not find another location somewhere else in Canada.

As it turned out, Catherine Windle never forgot the hardship she had as a young girl trying to complete her own education. Her decision was simple and consistent with FCJ’s mission. In 1948, the Faithfull Companions of Jesus established that new St. Mary’s boarding and day school in Combermere, where it could provide secondary education for both foreign boarders and local children. In 1952, Sister Windle even offered her own scholarships for two student places in the new Combermere boarding school.

The rest, they say, is history. St. Mary’s School in Combermere soon established tself as an excellent boarding school, attracting students from as far away as South America. It also had a robust coterie of local, day students, many who were attracted by its unique commercial course that turned out more than a few business graduates and executive secretaries. So much so, that by the 1960s, federal deputy ministers in Ottawa would often hire St. Mary’s graduates, sight unseen, knowing their students were always a cut above the rest.

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Faithful Companions of Jesus

Curiously, because so many of the FCJ nuns who taught at St. Mary’s in Combermere were Irish in origin, it was often thought the school had been established by an Irish order. And with teaching nuns whose family names included Cavanagh, Doyle, Fitzgerald, Murphy, O’Connell, Ryan, Somerville and Vallely, who could blame people for making that mistake.

Throughout her tenure as General Superior, Catherine Windle would build five new FCJ houses in Canada and England and several new schools. As well, the FCJ order made countless improvements to most of its other houses and schools internationally.

But in May 1966, Catherine Windle’s health finally gave out and so she resigned as General Su-

perior. Curiously, she then made a trip to Ireland to convalesce along the Shannon but eventually she had to return to London, England where she died in October, 1967. She is buried in Poles, Ware, just northeast of London.

Her parents -- John and Bridget (nee Culhane) -- and most of her siblings -- Patrick, Mary, Bridget, Margaret and John, are all buried in St. Francis Xavier Church, Latchford Bridge. Anne and Catherine are not.

It’s probably just as well. By the end of the 1970s, after nearly 30 years St. Mary’s School in Combermere was no more. Yet, there are still many of its graduates throughout the Ottawa Valley and elsewhere who fondly remember that little girl from Raglan and all the good work she accomplished.

1963 Hockey: Ernie Peplinskie refereeing a St. Mary’s Girl’s Hockey game.

LEFT: 1967 Aerial View of St. Mary’s School, Combermere.

Once the residence for St. Mary’s School boarders who came from all over North and South America when the school operated in Combermere between 1948 and 1974. Currently, it is a residence owned and operated by Madonna House and is used mainly as a retirement home for its own employees.

BOTTOM PHOTO: December 19th, 1967: (Clockwise, left to right) Dale Churcher (Whitby), Barb Pickering (Toronto), Darlene Chapeskie (Barry’s Bay), Gloria Broderick (Toronto), Elaine Bordowicz (Whitney), Sister Felisita (i.e. Joan Ferrigan, Whitney), Barb Nicholson (Barry’s Bay), Ann Harrington (Killaloe) Mother Agnes Coglin (Limerick, Ireland), Mike Nicholson (Barry’s Bay), and Martin Lepinskie (Combermere)

Visiting Ireland during National Heritage Week a time to remember

By Cecilia (Dwyer) Buelow

Each year the Heritage Council of Ireland organizes a National Heritage Week with a view of promoting awareness of heritage across Ireland. What an appropriate time for two Irish ancestral buffs to visit Ireland and that Dianne and I did in August, 2024.

The country-wide event ran from August 17th through the 25th We weren’t in Ireland for the first few days of that week, nonetheless we sure got involved when and where we could. Our week was full of informal and formal events organized by various communities and organizations.

The 2024 theme was connections, routes and networks

Our first event of 2024 wasn’t an official occasion. For us it was a continuation of building on a connection we’ve made in past visits to the island. We were hosted to lunch by the “lad” we met in a hayfield in 2022 and had a chance to catch up on our everyday lives. We’ve stayed in touch with Michael Ryan Kitt the last few years and had sent him the 2024 Eganville Leader Irish Edition, in which he appeared. He said he never thought he’d have his picture published in a Canadian newspaper. He told us his next publication is going to happen in the Leader’s equiva-

lent in the United States, the New York Times! A bit of a move up Michael, but a good laugh and as they’d say in Ireland, a great bit of craic!

The informal reunions continued when we settled into Terryglass, County Tipperary, with Pat and John. That didn’t take much effort! They kept us oh so comfortable and Pat ensured we were well fed and updated on all the local happenings.

We visited the tourism office in Nenagh, where displays promoted everything local and checked out the Nenagh Castle. The first formal presentation we attended was housed in the Village of Kilbarron community hall, having had to move inside because it rained (no kidding). Our pal, Henry O’Donoghue, chauffeured us there. It was the official launch of the information panel at the Old Kilbarron Church. The panel provides a coloured illustration of what the ruins of the church would have looked like with its various sections and floors dating as far back as the 12th century when it served as a monastic abbey.

Prior to the speeches we had a chance to reacquaint with Helen, Jimmy, Kittie, Noreen and Tony, all of whom we had met in 2023. Newly re-elected County Councillor Joe from across the street

was also there, remembering us from our visit to his pub the year before. We met another sister of the O’Donoghue’s, Carmel, Frank Moran and the Cormican’s, along with a host of others. A fantastic opportunity to reconnect.

Caimin O’Brien, an archaeologist with the National Monument Service, delved into the history of the Old Kilbarron church that evening and then recounted the story of a local son by the name of John Cormack who is buried in the old graveyard. He described Mr. Cormack’s various journeys around the globe after joining the British army on August 5th, 1859 and ultimately returning to his homeland in Ireland – a link of Kilbarron to the world beyond the edges of this small locale. The theme of connections, routes and networks was woven into the event.

Dianne and I were touched to be recognized during the presentation. Here we were in Kilbarron in 2024, 200 years after our four times great-grandfather John Grady was buried in the Kilbarron graveyard in April, 1824.

Henry continued the theme of the evening by driving us to the area where the Cormack fellow would have lived and noting a few highlights along the way. What a great time full of new found information and comradery. We were privileged to be asked to go along with the Kilbarron Terryglass Historical Society members on a bus trip they had arranged for the Heritage Week, to yet another graveyard tour. No, graveyards aren’t our only interest, but I’m sure if you asked our husbands, they’d disagree!

The tour was to the Shanballyedmond Megalithic Tomb near Rearcross, County Tipperary. It was so interesting to have Caimin’s insight into the history and purpose of this tomb and its layout in relation to the mountain, the sun, the landscape and how its existence 6,000 years ago was discovered in 1958. This is the only such tomb located in County Tipperary, while over 300 were found in more northern parts of Ireland.

After the visit to the tomb site, we had lunch at Kennedy’s Bar in Rearcross. Some may have lost a bit of their appetite prior to lunch when Caimin started to describe the various ways humans have disposed of dead bodies over the ages! And what better way to end an outing than to have Dianne give a running shoe step dance in Kennedy’s to the hum of Helen’s rendition of Miss McCloud’s Reel.

In addition to these formal events during our 2024 visit, we had many occasions to make memories informally. Breda, Joan, Noreen, Henry and Tony hosted us to delicious meals in their homes. Mairead’s hospital-

ity at Paddy’s Bar in Terryglass was superb and we had a lovely chat with Catherine at the Nenagh Bookshop. Our visit there always sees us weigh down our backpacks with a few books from local authors – this year’s favourite a signed copy of “Heart, be at Peace” by Donal Ryan.

It was a short week’s stay in 2024, nonetheless we managed to visit all those we’ve come to know and cherish our growing relationships with. Then again, we continue to make new contacts, this time with Mary Grady and Ollie. We missed meeting Mary during other visits to Ireland however, this time we made it happen, with only a few hours before we had to head back for our flight home. We had a terrific visit with them and then hugged goodbye. And about an hour later when we were on the Tipperary Local Link bus to Nenagh, Mary and Ollie were at the stop at Coolbawn Quay. We thought, wasn’t that nice that they came to wave us off. Though it was even better; they had grabbed family pictures off the walls of their cottage to show us and sat sharing more family stories, on the rest of our bus ride into town. Genuinely nice people, who we will definitely stay in touch with. We value our acquaintances with the local folks we’ve come to know in our ancestral area of County Tipperary. However,

there was a non-Irish connection we made that really impacted us. While waiting for the bus in Nenagh, we met a teenage Ukrainian girl and her brother. They were refugees. They left the war in Ukraine in 2022 with their family and now live in a very rural part of Ireland. They were taking English language classes, and the girl was having fun testing her new skills out on us. They were so upbeat and seemed to be adapting to their new environment. She was making plans to finish school, get a driver’s license, get a job and planning for the future.

Dianne and I couldn’t image leaving our Canadian homes, though our homes are safe and our lives aren’t in danger; no comparison to this girl’s life. Her story made me reflect on similarities between her and John Grady’s widow Honora (nee O’Meara) who left Ireland in 1826 with her family for Canada. The Ukrainian girl had left her homeland to relocate to this very peaceful Ireland landscape and my four times great grandmother had left this very same land to relocate to Canada; both no doubt leaving lands they loved to enter into an unknown life. We all have different journeys we take in life, some willingly, some forced; just remember to learn from the routes you take and the connections you build.

Irish Mysticism and the Holy Well at Mount St. Patrick

By Barry Conway

Even up until the middle of the last century, it was something many Irish Catholic parents did all over Renfrew County, usually on a warm Sunday afternoon in the dead of summer. Load a gaggle of kids into the family station wagon and head down to Mount St. Patrick. Park the car near the new graveyard and refill a small glass bottle with the sacred waters from the Holy Well.

Later in the year, that sacred water could be used to ward off all manner of illness, if not cure someone already infected. But it was to be used sparingly. Often at the first sign of illness, a child might be told to ‘shake it off,’ or ‘toughen up.’ If that didn’t work, maybe a swig of pink Pepto-Bismol, sure to cure man or beast. But if someone was really sick, then it was off to bed with flat ginger-ale and dry toast. Rarely was a doctor called, and even more rarely was the Holy Water from Mount St. Patrick ever used. It was only for serious cases and no kid’s sniffles nor belly ache ever seemed a serious case.

Still, even if you only half-believed in the mystical powers of that Mount St. Patrick Holy Water, it was nice to know it was available, if need be. It came from a well that was usually blessed at least once a year by the parish priest, if not the bishop and, given that the Holy Well had been around for over a hundred years, that water had been blessed at least a hundred times. That had to count for something.

The Holy Well was the brainchild of Father John McCormac, who was born in Ballinvana, County Limerick, in 1841. He had arrived at Mount St. Patrick in January, 1867 and in little over two years, Father McCormac replaced the old wooden church -- All Saint’s -- with a new stone edifice, St. Patrick’s, a church that still stands today.

That same year, Father McCormac also opened up a new cemetery and built his Holy Well. But his tenure was short-lived. On June 4th,1874, at aged 33, he drowned while fishing in Constant Creek, the very waters that fed his Holy Well. He would be one of the first to be buried right next door in his new cemetery.

But Father McCormac’s Holy Well remains today as potent as it ever was to ward off sickness and all manner of ailments, at least for true believers. And it’s little wonder. In Ireland, where John McCormac hailed from, there are still upwards of 3,000 similar Holy Wells and so his Mount St. Patrick creation is only one more mystical pearl in a long string of Irish Catholic jewels.

Holy Wells date back to the pagan mists of Celtic history, and long before St. Patrick himself arrived in Slane, Ireland on March 25th, 433 AD. Those wily Celts had long held that certain bubbling springs were ‘miraculous,’ and so the new Bishop of Ireland took it to heart. Before long those old pagan watering holes were christened as Holy Wells and they began popping up here, there, and everywhere.

So, when Father McCormac found his miraculous spring while looking for a building site for his new church near Constant Creek, he did what any good Irish priest would do. He blessed it according to Irish Catholic tradition. According to local oral tradition, he also dug out the well with his own bare hands, so the bubbling water could better cleanse and heal its trusting patrons.

Others claim Father McCormac performed many cures at that well site, even before he and Daniel Lynch got around to building a formal structure over the spring. Whatever the truth, when a new cross was finally erected to consecrate the new stone church on March 17th, 1870, the parish’s new Holy Well was also blessed that very same day. It was so successful, that Archbishop Duhamel of Ottawa, blessed it himself a few years later.

Some local Irish Catholics swore by their new Holy Well and claimed all manner of miracles over the years. That was especially true after 1917 when, in the midst of the Great War, three Portuguese children said they saw the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of God, at Fatima.

And, indeed, like Fatima, between the two World Wars, the Holy Well at Mt. St. Patrick generated regular pilgrimages and attracted large crowds, regardless of the weather. Lo-

cal parishioners soon began bearing witness to remarkable, if not wild, testimonies.

Take the case of Mrs. Michael Neville, who left a signed affidavit at the well saying: “I the undersigned came here in the year 1933, all the way from Toronto, given up by a specialist, never to walk again, with an ailment caused through an operation. And given strict orders not to travel. I did and came here out of a wheelchair and through the intercession of Our Mother of Perpetual Help, I walked out alone and have been doing so since.”

A few years later, Margaret M. Hunt would also recall that, “I remember in 1935, Father Tom Hunt was at the Mountain when

they started devotions to Our Mother of Perpetual Help. Each morning, there was mass and a sermon. In the evening, there was a procession from the church to the Well. That time we fasted from midnight to noon. Not everyone had cars then but there was always a good turnout. One evening they brought Teresa (Tessie) Hanniman out, Lorne and August’s aunt, who was very sick. Out she walked around thereafter. I knew that Mrs. Neville was cured, here too.”

And so it goes, by the 1960s and ‘70s some Irish Catholics gave their kids Pepto-Bismol, if not tea and toast. Others sought out a doctor. Still others, well, they had their Holy Water from Mount St. Patrick.

Singer, songwriter, musician, storyteller, Gail Gavan is one of Eastern Ontario’s best known entertainers and she has been delighting audiences since she was a young girl. Her passion for music started at a young age growing up in Quyoon where her parents owned the well known Gavan’s Hotel.

Gail Gavan: Preserving the Irish Storytelling Songs

By Lesley Cassidy

Everyone can claim to be a bit Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s a day filled with singing, step dancing, fiddle tunes, and toasting Celtic heritage. And nowhere other than across the pond in Ireland is that more celebrated than in the Ottawa Valley and the Pontiac.

If the region’s pines, the Ottawa River, and the rocks could talk, they would share stories of shanties, log drivers, dance halls, first loves, and sons going to war. These stories are found in the lyrics and choruses of many Irish songs. This type of Irish music is rooted in traditional storytelling that has been passed down through generations, and these songs share tales, histories and emotions about life in this area.

Gail Gavan is one such storyteller Gail’s passion for music started at a young age. Her father, a Canadian Irishman, married her French mother, and she grew up in Quyon, Quebec. Music literally flowed through the walls of her family home as her parents started the Gavan Hotel, a well-loved live music venue in the Pontiac. The family lived above the jukebox and pool table.

“He and mom worked the hotel, 24 hours a day, seven days a week while raising six kids,” Ms. Gavan shared.

The Gavan Hotel, part country, part Irish roadhouse, served up quarts and local country and international music acts starting in the late 1940s. In the 1960s, when Ontario liquor laws were strict, stopping by the Shamrock Lounge in the hotel on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, you could hear the tunes of Ottawa Valley Legends such as Mac Beattie, Ron McMunn, Ralph Carlson, Howard Hayes, the CFRA Happy Wanderers, The Family Brown, and many others.

Gail remembers coming home from school and walking into the main room, where a full-blown céilí (Irish gathering) would be in progress, with fiddles and guitars and singing. Her father not only owned the hotel but was also wellknown for his musical talents. He sang in folk festivals and performed with the Ireland-based Clancy Brothers and Tommy

Makem. He sang regularly with one of his closest friends, Mac Beattie from Arnprior, a member of the Melodiers

In his younger years, Gail’s father worked in logging camps, where he learned many traditional Irish songs, most of which were never written down. Gail loved these lyrics and the stories they told.

Learning the traditional Irish tunes her father sang wasn’t easy. She recalls, “he used to have bacon and eggs at the end of the night (early morning) when the bar closed, and he would say to me –’Gail, this is a song you should learn.’ He would sing it, and I would write out the words on a placemat or whatever was in front of me. He would remind me not to sing it wrong; it was his way of mentoring me.”

Another time, Gail was driving up Highway 148 to Quyon from Ottawa, and she put a cassette in the car stereo. Her father had passed away a few months prior, and to her shock, it was a tape of songs he was singing. His voice stating clearly at the beginning ‘Hello Gail. Here’s a few songs I think you should learn.’ I pulled off to the side of the road in disbelief. It was like he was talking to me from heaven! So that is when I decided to write out the words and seriously get to know these songs.”

She also adored Mac Beattie’s lyrics.

“He wrote about local towns with all their nooks and crannies and local characters with fun and musical singalong lyrics. It helps keep these places and Valley icons from our history, relevant.

“As I got older, I realized how important these songs were to people. They ignite pride and a sense of connection when one of their towns is mentioned. For older folks, songs like The Lake Dore Waltz bring back great memories. And I love how the younger kids in my town sing The Log Driver’s Song with hearty enthusiasm as if it were a new hit! It’s important to people in this area of the Pontiac and the Valley that we are left with this legacy and knowledge of traditional storytelling songs of the people that came before us. Whether it be Irish, French, German, Polish, Scottish, etc.”

* * * * * *

The Log Driver’s Song, by Mac Beattie and the Melodiers:

“There’s a valley I know where the tall timbers grow,

Where the Ottawa River flows swiftly along;

In the spring, if you go where the headwaters flow,

You will hear this old Log Driver’s song: [Chorus]

Yo-hip, hip-ho, Keep the logs on the go, Keep ‘em rolling and tossing, and send the spray high;

Yo-hip, hip-ho, through the rapids below

Where the Ottawa River flows by…… * * * * * *

Despite her shyness acknowledging her talent, she’s an accomplished performer and musician.

“I’m just going on a wing and a prayer. I just get out there on stage, and the music takes over,” she said.

In 1991, she won the CKBY talent competition. After that, she participated in a live talent show in Toronto and placed in the top 10. She wrote the team song for the Ottawa Lynx Baseball Team and travelled to Bosnia to perform for the Canadian Peacekeeping Mission.

Not long after her father passed away, she created a cassette of Irish music. Her first cassette, “For the Love of the Valley—Vol. I,” sold 10,000 copies, and she followed that up with Volume 2.

“I ordered 500 cassettes in 1991 for friends and family. I sold out within a few days, so I asked the company to make 100 more, but they said that it was cheaper to produce 500. I had no idea what I was doing, but I stopped by gas stations and all sorts of places in the Valley and Pontiac and dropped a few off each time.” She laughed, surprised. “I sold over 20,000 cassettes and CDs that way.”

Last week, she was visiting her 97-yearold aunt, Sr. Marie Meilleur, a Sister of St. Joseph, who is now based in Peterborough as the convent in Pembroke closed down.

“She’s still singing her French songs.

And it wasn’t just my dad who was musical; my aunts and mom loved music, too. Sr. Rosenda Brady, of Barry’s Bay, was also there with a wealth of knowledge of old Irish ditties and sang a few for us. My Aunt and Sr. Rosenda both told me –‘Gail, we all have gifts, and it’s our job to use them. What you have is a gift from God, so don’t waste it. These 90-something, wise ladies make one think: ‘Take nothing for granted. We only go around here once’.”

Gail is also an accomplished radio and TV host. She hosted her own variety show on CHRO-TV, Gail Gavan and Friends, in Pembroke, and co-produced and wrote the theme song for another TV show, “Fred’s Place.” The song is based on Fred’s Hotel in Chapeau, Quebec, another historic music venue owned by her uncle, Fred Meilleur. The theme song aired nationally and won an Independent Producer’s Award. She also spent four years as co-host of CBC’s “Cottage Country.” Gail did much of this while balancing a teaching career and a family.

A good friend, Gillan Rutz, a local promoter and musician, advocates as she does for these old stories and histories that should be told and taught to the next generation to keep these special tunes alive.

“This past summer, I was in Newfoundland, and they are so proud of their East Coast Music and culture, and people recognize that culture. We have so many special people and talented musicians here, too, and I hope that more people get to know about our beautiful Ottawa Valley culture.”

Gail entertained at the annual St. Patrick’s Day Show at Gavan’s Hotel on Sunday, March 9th along with other featured performers fiddler Louis Schyrer, The Ryans, Terri-Lynn Mahusky, Virginia Schwartz, Gary Patrois, the Pauline Brown Dancers, and others.

On Monday, March 17th, she will perform at Buster’s Bar in Kanata, joined by many of the same musicians. Check out Gail’s music on YouTube and Spotify to support local musicians.

and her uncle,

The mystical ‘Sean-nos’ singers of the Upper Ottawa Valley

By Barry Conway

Anyone who has ever lived in the Ottawa Valley knows that Irish culture runs deep here, and in more ways than just how English sometimes gets spoken with a very peculiar Irish twang

Take local musical tastes, for instance. There’s an abiding passion for Irish fiddle music and there’s definitely a special love of acapella singers who can belt out Danny Boy unaccompanied.

But did you know the 19th Century acapella sound that used to raise the rafters on a winter ’s night in lumber shanties up and down the Ottawa Valley was, well, pure Irish.

How so? Well, it can still be heard in the acapella songs of 80-year-old Brian Adam, probably the last consummate practitioner of what is known in Ireland as ‘Sean-nos’ or ‘old style’ singing.

Mr. Adam was born and raised on Allumette Island and learned his mystical form of Irish acapella from the last generation of lumber shanty singers who at one time kept over half a dozen Island pubs welloiled, to say little of countless ‘rambling houses’ where private parties were often held on Saturday nights as recently as the last century.

In fact, Sean-nos was once sung in nearly every Upper Ottawa Valley lumber shanty since 1826 when the Bonnechere River timber trade was first developed by James Wadsworth and by the Skead brothers who first harvested Madawaska River timber in 1840 up near what would become Algonquin Park.

Curiously, the very word ‘shanty’ stems from the Irish ‘seanteach’ meaning ‘an old house.’ Often used negatively in the rest of North America, to refer to ‘shanty Irish’, meaning impoverished 19th Century Irish immigrants who lived in little more than tumbled down shacks, ‘shanty Irish’ means something quite different here.

In the Ottawa Valley, ‘shanty Irish’ refers to those boisterous singers and fiddlers who can be depended upon to entertain a shanty-full of lumberjacks. And though fiddles, harmonicas and even mandolins might have found their way into those remote 19th century timber shanties, there was a certain type of acapella or unaccompanied song that the shanty Irish could sing that would bring down the house.

How do we know that? Well, shortly after the Second World War an industrious young woman by the name of Edith Fowke got interested in the authentic sound of Canadian folk music. By 1958, she had convinced Folkway Records to record “Folk Songs of Ontario” and three years later, in 1961 she released two more extraordinary Folkways albums, Lumbering Songs from the Ontario Shanties and Irish and British Songs from the Ottawa Valley as sung by O.J. Abbott.”

In particular, Mr. Abbott, then an 85-yearold lumber-camp veteran living in Hull, Quebec, made the first known recording of such local sean-nos music. More than half of his recorded songs were classic Irish acapella tunes such as The Colleen Bawn, The Bonnie Irish Boy, Mountain Dew, Skibeereen and By the Hush Me Boys

He had spent 15 years in the Upper Ottawa Valley including five winters in the 1890s in lumber camps, working for J.R. Booth and others. His repertoire, all

learned by ear, numbered well 0over 100 songs. And, according to Edith Fowke who personally recorded him, O. J. Abbott could not only remember each of those 100 plus songs nearly 60 years after the fact, but he could sing them with spot-on eloquence.

Edith Fowke’s other album in 1961 was no less extraordinary. Lumbering Songs

from Ontario Shanties included other Irish acapella singers such as Joe Kelly, Jim Doherty and Martin Sullivan. Their recordings included such lumberjack favourites as When the Shanty Boy Comes Down, The Jam at Gerry’s Rocks, How We Got Back to the Woods Last Year, and The Chapeau Boys

Indeed, it was “The Chapeau Boys” that Brian Adam first heard about 75 years ago on the Island where he grew up, and long before Edith Fowke ever recorded it. As a boy, it was enough to get him interested in acapella singing in that unique Irish style once rendered by shanty or lumberjack singers.

But for all the traditional music that Edith Fowke researched, recorded and wrote about in the latter half of the 20th Century, she seems to have missed one fundamental element of those first recorded Shanty Irish songs. But so too did Brian Adam.

“I never heard of Sean-Nos,” Mr. Adam said recently in Waltham, Quebec, when he was asked about his own reportoire, as rich as O. J. Abbott’s and that includes a number of Mr. Adam’s own remarkable compositions. “I only sing songs as I heard them once sung here on Allumette Island.” True, but to anyone who visits the West of Ireland or listens to a CD of Ireland’s

most famous Sean-nos singer, Joe Heaney, the similarities and comparisons with Ottawa Valley shanty acapella singers is as obvious as the frozen red nose on a lumberjack’s face.

And though Sean-nos as a formal musical term only came into existence in Ireland in 1904, the particulars of its style are as ancient as Croagh Patrick. Indeed, it is distinguished by five significant traits:

1. Songs are sung unaccompanied with the use of free rhythm, varied melodies and with an occasional nasal effect or dramatic pause;

2. The bare, male voice, though never syrupy, retains a natural, heroic force;

3. There is no use of vibrato, nor dynamic soft/loud range,

4. Significant vocal ornamentation -such as grace notes and triplets -- varies with each singer, but all Sean-nos singers express emotion through the ‘heart and soul’ of the words; and,

5. The last line or phrase of a Sean-nos song frequently ends with a speaking voice.

Given those five very Irish Sean-nos graces, it is something one either loves or hates.

Or, as Irish music writer, Seamas Mac Mathuna says: “Sean-nos singing is at once the most loved and the most reviled, the least often heard and the least understood part of that body of music which is generally referred to as Irish Traditional Music.”

Put another way, Sean-nos singing does not use the standard “bag-of-tricks” most famous pop singers use, and so to some it sounds downright unmusical. But, so does, to some listeners, el cante flamenco, fado, jazz or, God-forbid, rap music.

Still, if you grow up with an Irish-Canadian lumberjack in your Upper Ottawa Valley past, you probably will enjoy listening to such Sean-nos singers as O. J. Abbott and Brian Adam. You may even be inspired to take a trip across the pond to Galway’s famous Crane pub where Sean-nos is next door to a religion, with each winter night capable of its own very extraordinary, mystical state of being.

An Ottawa Valley Ceilidh at Festival Hall in Pembroke

An Ottawa Valley celebration that’s as old as our beginnings takes place at Festival Hall in Pembroke on Sunday, March 16 at 2 p.m.

Long time Ottawa Valley singer/storytelling entertainer Gillan Rutz was asked to provide a special show, a touch point to our past…ditties, shanty songs, and stories learned in smoke-filled bars on both sides of the Ottawa River.

The show will feature folktales of the area’s earliest beginnings, from lumberjacks, and Irish leprechauns and humour from some of the Valley’s most celebrated characters of the day all learned by Mr. Rutz as a young singer doing the hotel circuit.

Mr. Rutz admitted to never finding that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but the real gold nuggets are in fact these stories and songs he so much cherishes and enjoys sharing with others.

The show promises to be a great cabin fever reliever and a welcome to spring, and reminiscent of past Valley celebrations.

Ottawa Valley Céilí Kitchen Party features Mr. Rutz with special guests: the very popular and much sought-after Lucy

and Wilson Lazarus, The Fiddlaires and Friends along with a mystery guest the audience will be thrilled to hear.

Patrons can expect to step into a warm and lively celebration of the Ottawa Valley’s rich Irish heritage and the enduring spirit of its people. Ottawa Valley Céilí Kitchen Party is a heartwarming tribute to the timeless songs, stories and folklore that have echoed through generations.

With rollicking Irish tunes, nostalgic shanty songs, and captivating tales passed down through the years, this show honours the deep roots of Valley communities while embracing the vibrant character of the land.

Each song and story is steeped in Valley tradition/folktale and captures the history, humour and heart that have shaped the unique personality of the Ottawa Valley.

Enjoy a lively afternoon matinee of music, storytelling and connection as the songs that built a legacy and the stories that keep it alive are shared.

Tickets are on sale now..$29 and can be purchased at Festival Hall @ L’Equinoxe, Pembroke

Irish Boxty -- more than just to get a man

Boxty on the griddle Boxty in the pan

If you can’t make boxty You’ll never get a man!

-- An old Irish street song

By Barry Conway

If you have never heard that bit of old Emerald Isle logic in the rambling streets of Donegal, Dublin or Dingle, you’ve probably never been to Ireland, a land where potato pancakes have their very own Irish name -- boxty. And boxty is not just sung about by little Irish girls and gossoons jumping rope in the street; boxty gets prime mention in some of Ireland’s best-known works of fiction.

Take Flurry Knox, that incorrigible horse-trader in Some Experiences of an Irish R.M, a classic Irish novel that is still very much read in the 21st century though it was written by Somerville and Ross in 1899. More recently, it was turned into a much-loved prime-time TV series late in the last century.

Remember it was Flurry, very much a man of strong, masculine appetites who once got a whiff of boxty, licked his lips, and said, “While I live, I shall not forget potato pancakes. They come in hot from the pot-oven, speckled with caraway seeds, swimming in salt butter, and we ate them shamelessly and greasily, and washed them down with hot whiskey and water.”

That’s high praise from a hungry Irishman never known to have been got or caught by eligible ladies, no matter how hard the effort put forth. Flurry knew well that Irish boxty is not just any ordinary

potato pancake to inspire high praise or higher literature. Boxty is still prepared and eaten all over Ireland today, having originated shortly before the potato harvest failed and that led to the Irish Famine, or An Gorta Mór or Great Hunger, as it has become known.

It’s easy enough to make and, better still, the recipe for boxty makes good use of even waxy, old or semi-blighted potatoes that still have some good in them. It’s also a very flexible dish that can be served morning, noon or night. And, it’s very capable in accommodating a wide variety of extra ingredients that can be added to the basic recipe to make it an ever-changing midnight snack all on its own.

In Ireland, it’s often plated with a side of bacon, fried tomato, black pudding, and all manner of eggs for breakfast; or with sauteed mushrooms and roasted zucchini or cucumber salad for lunch. But it’s best served with smoked salmon, buttered vegetables and sour cream for supper. And never forget the infinite conversational possibilities of adding a little hot whiskey!

The basic recipe is quite simple: Take a pound or two of potatoes -- roughly four to six potatoes, one for each diner -- and once peeled and diced, grate them with a fine grater on a clean tea towel. Leave the resulting mash for 10 to 15 minutes to ensure any liquid runs off.

Then, scoop up what remains of the potato gratings in the towel, place it over a bowl, and squeeze out any remaining liquid, making the mash as dry as possible. Once the bowl has been emptied and dried out, place that remaining potato mash in it.

Stir in about four ounces of milk -- butter milk if you have it -- and half of a finely-chopped Spanish onion, two cups of flour and a pinch of salt. Mix well before adding two egg whites and again mix well, making a soft doughy batter.

Let that batter sit for another 10 minutes or so, while heating a skillet with some vegetable oil or butter -- Kerrygold if you have it -- and then into that skillet, spoon a small amount of batter -- about the size of a hockey puck. Depending on the amount of heat under the skillet -- medium is best -- let

the boxty sit in the crackling pan for two or three minutes (or more, depending on the amount of heat) before turning the ‘pucks’ over for the same amount of time so as to ensure both sides turn golden brown.

When done, remove the ‘pucks’ from the skillet and let them sit a short while on a paper towel to soak up any excess oil or butter (or not if, like Flurry Knox, you prefer your boxty good and greasy, swimming in butter. Only don’t tell your doctor!).

After that, serve the boxty piping hot with a garnish of chopped green onions. Some Irish cooks use mashed potatoes, either wholly or in equal proportions to the grated potatoes in this basic recipe, so feel free to try that at least once. You never know how much you might like it.

But to get the sort of boxty Flurry Knox went all ga-ga over, simply add four strips of finely-chopped bacon and two ounces of caraway seeds to the potato mash while adding the egg whites mentioned above.

Other very good Irish cooks suggest another approach, namely first boiling the potatoes in salted water with their skins washed but left on; or sweating the chopped onions separately in a fry pan using loads of Kerrygold butter to fry them in. Still others argue that proper boxty should only be garnished with chopped parsley.

It seems everyone in Ireland has an opinion about every blasted thing, even boxty. Perhaps, then, it might be a good idea to hold off on serving any hot whiskey until everybody at the table swears that whatever their true opinion of the boxty served, nobody will say anything about the cook that St. Patrick himself wouldn’t approve!