THE CANADA TIMES Celebrating Little Known Or Forgotten Stories of Our History
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June, 2019 THE CANADA TIMES Celebrating little known or forgotten stories of our history There are no unmixed blessings in life Newsletter from The Jeanie Johnston Educational Foundation -Mary Robinson , the woman that changed Ireland -Dubliner Cornelius Ryan “ I was there” The Longest Day” -Sir John Gorman -Hennessey, the Cognac Founder 155, du Buisson, Pierrefonds, P.Q. H8Y 2Z5 Tel.: 514-341-7777 Email: [email protected] Website: jeaniejohnstonfoundation.com Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem Website: hospitaller.ca Note from the Chair Mary Robinson, the woman that changed Ireland (ake Marie Therese Winfred Robinson,nee Bourke) By Leo Delany “Mary Robinson the most consequential Leo Delaney Irish woman of the 20th Century” "Ireland’s first female president with a A Dubliner's "I was there" pioneering spirit and a welcoming heart," coverage of World War II's so says Niall O’Dowd, Irish Central. D-Day, 75 years ago today, changed journalism forever in Mary Robinson was elected President of Ireland in 1990, causing the biggest terms of how he documented shock wave in Irish politics. The all powerful Fianna Fail’s Brian Lenihan was the Allied invasion. The regarded as a shoo-in for the job upon the resignation of Patrick Hillary the description came from sitting President. Rommell’s adjutant and puts the reader smack in the room At this time family planning was forbidden using condoms and birth control with Hitler’s greatest general pills. Women could not serve on Juries, women had to retire from teaching just as the Allied invasion is and any government jobs if they married and they were paid approximately about to hasten his end. half that of men in similar jobs. Our next issue which will Into this, in 1990 stepped Mary Robinson! Condemned by the Bishops and be in September wil include the Primate of Ireland, Cardinal Conway for her views on family planning, articles about Mary McAleese she decided to open the doors of the presidency, which had become a haven Preident of Ireland, a native of for old politicians. She invited the exiles and welcomed them back home. Belfast, who visited Montreal She threw open the doors of Aras an Uachtarain, the presidential residency in 1998. to all groups from across the country, her placing of a candle in window of the president’s residence in the kitchen window where it was visible to the We will also feature a century public as it overlooked the public view (placing a candle in the widow is an old old book sent from Polands, tradition to guide the way of strangers). Children to Ireland. Mary Therese Winifred Bourke born in Ballina, Mayo in 1944 of the Heberno- The story of the St.Brendan Norman Bourkes who lived in Mayo since the Thirteenth century. Some voyage and its connection to relatives were of the Anglican Church while others were of the Catholic faith. Montreal's Annual Parade. The family was a historical mix of rebels against and yet servants of the crown. The story of the Irish soldiers munity that rocked the British Empire. News of the Montreal Sports Center. Aras an Uachtarain 2 She attended Mount Anville Secondary School in During her term with the UN a position she held Dublin and studied Law at Trinity College Dublin for four years, she visited Tibet (1998) the first High and was elected Scholar of the year. Commissioner to do so. She extended her four-year term to preside over the “World Conference against Graduated from Harvard with first class honours, Racism” in 2001 in Durban, South Africa which proved she was called to the Irish Bar in 1967. In 1969, when controversial. Under continuous pressure from the accepting a law position her acceptance speech, United States she resigned in September 2002. advocated the removing the prohibition of divorce in the Irish Constitution suggesting at same time that When she left the UN Robinson formed “Realizing there should be a removable ban on contraceptives Rights; The Ethical Globalization Initiative “which and the decimalisation of homosexuality and came to a planned end in 2010. Some of their activities suicide. included – fostering equitable trade and decent work - Good Governance in developing countries. 1970 saw her married to Nicholas Robinson a Protestant and a solicitor. They have three children. Author David McWilliams described Robinson” an Her early career included when she became one of advocate for the underprivileged” adding that “While University of Dublin’s three members of Seanad most of our Political class do their utmost to shame, Erireann where she was elected as an Independent embarrass and ruin us, she is a beacon a real reason to Senator. From this body she campaigned on her be proud to be Irish. favorite theme of abortion and family planning. Her campaign was not well received and it was never put As chair of “The Elders” She criticized US, President on the agenda. Donald Trump for “his egregious act of Climate Irresponsibility” in withdrawing from the Paris Climate As President of Ireland, she continued to reach Agreement. “Bad leadership has consequences out to leaders of other countries and in her role now-that are really bad for people in the poorest she travelled to London to meet with Queen communities including the United States.” Elizabeth, the first President of Ireland to do so. Her controversial visit to Belfast to meet with Gerry Adams was another significant gesture which raised many eyebrows. The British Government was appalled and was very much against such a move. To meet Adams she had to travel through the “NO GO’ area of Belfast due to the IRA, she shook hands with Gerry Adams publicly and her ratings went “through the roof.” As she comments to the Harvard Review “The Irish People said it was the right thing to do.” In one of her roles as President she had to sign into law Bills, passed by the Oireachtas, for which she “Just as the suffragettes need to embrace military had fought for, throughout her political life; Fully tactics to win the fight for female emaciation, so liberalise the law on the availability of contraceptives; today we need to be fiercely determined to challenge and a Bill fully decriminalize homosexuality which vested interests, especially in the fossil fuel sector.” provided for a fully equal age of consent, treating homosexuals and LGBT people alike. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said “Smoking kills people and tobacco that tried to confuse Just before her term as President of Ireland, was the public about that reality were being evil. But up, in fact two months before her term was due Climate Change isn’t just killing people; it may well to expire, on 1997, under extreme pressure of Kofi kill Civilisation. Trying to confuse the public about Annan, who was ill, she resigned to accept of “The that is evil on a different level. Don’t some of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights.” people have children.” 3 Roberson returned to live in Ireland and set up the Robinson is the Chair of the Institute for Human Mary Robinson Foundation which aims to support Rights and Business and Chancellor of the University `Climate Justice ‘for those to secure global justice of Dublin and visits emigrants and people of Irish for victims of climate which are usually forgotten, descent. -the poor and the marginalized across the world. Dubliner Cornelius Ryan “ I was there” The Longest Day By Michael Shapiro The father of modern literary journalism is Cornelius Ryan from Dublin, whose massive “I was there” on the beach coverage of D-Day and its aftermath led to two incredible books and movies, The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far. He was an unlikely war correspondent. A Dublin native, he studied violin at the Irish Academy of Music and seemed destined for a high performing classical music career far from any theater of war. However, bored with a music career, he fled to London where he worked his way up to war correspondent for Cornelius Ryan, author of The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far. The Daily Telegraph. It was exquisite writing and research, and as Michael Ryan was on a boat that ditched on Normandy Beach on Shapiro wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review in June 6, 1944. He followed the Allied invasion attached 2010 it broke completely new ground. to General Patton’s army. Shapiro wrote, “In 1957, an expatriate Irish Years later he put together perhaps the best book newspaperman struggling to make a buck (had) a hazily about war ever written. Consider his description in formed idea about a fifteenth-anniversary retelling of The Longest Day of General Rommel on the day of the events of June 6, 1944: D-Day. the invasion: “In the ground-floor room he used as an office, Rommel was alone. He sat behind a massive “Here was the true, humble, and all-but-forgotten Renaissance desk, working by the light of a single desk beginning to the modern age of Journalism as literature. lamp. The room was large and high-ceilinged. “The book (The Longest Day) was a triumph, earning rave reviews and sales that, within a few years, would “Along one wall stretched a faded Gobelin tapestry. stretch into the tens of millions in eighteen different On another the haughty face of Duke Francois de la languages. Rochefoucauld -- a seventeenth-century writer... looked down out of a heavy gold frame. There were “I opened the book on the eve of a long weekend. I was a few chairs casually placed on the highly polished hooked after a single page.