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 Founder

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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 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 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. Something was taking place parquet floor and thick draperies at the windows, but in the telling of this story that transcended (journalism).” little else.” The book was written when Ryan placed an ad in several newspapers in 1957 which went, “June 6th 1944 Were The description came from Rommell’s adjutant and You There?” One thousand, one hundred, and fifty puts the reader smack in the room with Hitler’s greatest people wrote back. And of that group, he interviewed general just as the Allied invasion is about to hasten his 172 alone or with his assistants. end.

4 Out of that came a book that puts you at the heart of the greatest invasion of all time. You are there as the invasion forces first gain the beaches and the Germans, taken by surprise, fight back furiously.

You are there on the long trek to Berlin, the fate of civilization in the hands of young soldiers, many of whom had never left home before.

Ryan died at just 54 from prostate cancer. On his gravestone in Connecticut is his name and one word: “Reporter.” No one has earned that title more. On this 75th anniversary of D-Day, he deserves to be remembered. D-Day, June 6 1944: Landing on the beaches of France.

Sir John Gorman Sir John Gorman, who has died aged 91, was a Northern Irish Roman Catholic Unionist with an unflinching sense of service, which he demonstrated in winning the ’ first Military Cross during a tank action in the Normandy campaign. Cornelius Ryan, author of The Longest Day and A Bridge Too Far. After the war he joined the Royal Ulster Constabulary before becoming a senior manager with British Overseas Airways Corporation, then head of the Housing Executive. Finally he was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly as the sole Roman Catholic member of the , and served as Deputy Speaker until the Assembly's suspension in 2002. John Reginald Gorman was born on February 1 1923 at Mullaghmore House, Co Tyrone. Both sides of his family were Catholics and Unionists. His father, an RUC district inspector, had won an MC while serving in Palestine during the First World War and, as a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary, had handed over the Phoenix Park barracks to Michael Collins after the 1921 Anglo-Irish treaty — after which he moved north.

Having been educated by Loretto nuns at , John was sent to the Imperial Service College at Windsor. After war broke out in 1939 he attended Portrora Royal School, Enniskillen, which was then a firmly Anglican establishment and the Province’s leading public school. Despite the school’s religious ethos, Gorman never found his Catholicism a source of trouble or comment. Sir John Gorman's autobiography, published in 2002 Commissioned into the Irish Guards in 1942, Gorman first experienced action as a tank commander during on July 18 1944.

At Cagny, five miles from Caen, Gorman’s troop was confronted by four enemy tanks, among them a King Tiger whose gun was aimed at one of Gorman’s tanks. He had previously told his driver, Corporal James Baron, that if they were to encounter any of the feared Tigers, “The only thing we can do is to use naval tactics — if the 88mm gun is pointing away from us, we shall have to use the speed of the Sherman and ram it.” 5 The Sherman duly crashed through a hedge and careered in the Catholic Cathedral, which led to the arrest of three down the slope at 40mph towards the King Tiger. With 75 armed gunmen hiding in the confessionals. yards to go before impact, the Sherman’s gunner, Guardsman Scholes, fired a high-explosive shell at the King Tiger, but it During the IRA’s border campaign in the 1950s Gorman acted failed to penetrate the armour. as a liaison officer with MI5 and MI6, and in 1960 his security contacts put his name forward for the position of chief of The British Tank struck the King Tiger hard on its right security at BOAC. One of his first duties was to supervise the track, and both crews bailed out. The Sherman’s front security arrangements for the royal tour of Pakistan, Nepal gunner, Guardsman Agnew, mistakenly took refuge in and Iran in 1961, at the end of which he was appointed CVO. a ditch with the German crew; on realising his error, he He was later promoted the airline’s head of personnel, with a saluted smartly and disappeared into a cornfield to rejoin seat on the board. In 1968 he moved to become the airline’s his comrades. manager in Canada, and, from 1975, in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Having led his men to safety behind a hedge, Gorman raced 400 yards to leap into a lone Firefly tank, where one In 1979 Gorman returned to his native province to become crew member had been decapitated and two others were in deputy chairman and chief executive of the Northern Ireland shock. The vehicle was still workable so, after removing the Housing Executive, the country’s largest owner of public body and wiping the blood from the gun sights, Gorman housing. He succeeded in cleaning up corruption and selling fired its gun to disable the Tiger and his own tank, before off council houses, and in 1986 became part-time director of driving behind three more Tigers to score two hits. He then the Institute of Directors in Northern Ireland, an office he carried three burning men from another Sherman to an aid held until 1995. post. In 1990, he aroused controversy when he invited the Irish For this action, Gorman was recommended for an Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, to address an IOD meeting in Immediate MC and Baron for a Military Medal. Both men Belfast, in Haughey’s capacity as President of the European were presented with their medals in the field by General Union. Prominent among opponents of the visit was the Montgomery. Unionist politician David Trimble. None the less, after Trimble’s election as Ulster Unionist leader in 1995, Gorman Outside Brussels the regiment was greeted by jubilant joined the UUP, and in 1996 was nominated by his party crowds, and an elderly woman presented Gorman with a as a member of the Northern Ireland Forum for Political copy of Some Experiences of an Irish RM, which had been Dialogue, a body which had been set up in parallel with inter- left at her parents’ house by another Irish Guardsman in party talks. He was subsequently chairman of the Forum, a 1914. But the war was not yet over, and Gorman, by now a position which he held until its last session in April 1998. captain, attended the briefing on the impending Arnhem campaign given by Lieutenant-General Sir Brian Horrocks, Following the Belfast Agreement of the same year, Gorman the Corps Commander. When Horrocks announced that the was elected as member for North Down in the new Northern “honour of leading this great dash which may end the war” Ireland Assembly, and served as a Deputy Speaker of the would be given to the Irish Guards, Gorman expostulated: assembly from 2000 until its suspension in 2002. As the “Oh, my God, not again!” Gorman and his troop crossed the lone Catholic in the Unionist camp, Gorman, with his neat Nijmegen bridge before the advance was called off. military moustache, cut a somewhat idiosyncratic figure (his opponents called him “Captain Mainwaring”). On one Having left the Army in the rank of captain in 1946, Gorman occasion television viewers in the Province were entertained joined the RUC and became a district inspector in Antrim. by the astonishing spectacle of him urging the bemused There, in 1947, he came into conflict with the young Ian Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness to blow up IRA arms Paisley, who had objected to a proposed Roman Catholic in “one big bang”. pilgrimage to a holy well at Rasharkin. Gorman gave the procession an RUC guard on the Feast of the Assumption. In 2002 Gorman published an autobiography, The Times of My Life. In 1955 he was moved, as district inspector, to Armagh where, shortly after his arrival, he and an Army officer, John Gorman was appointed MBE in 1959, CBE in 1974 and Major Brian Clark, helped to disarm a young fusilier who was knighted in 1998. In 2005 he was appointed a Chevalier had gone berserk. Gorman suggested to Clark that their of the Légion d’honneur. He served as High Sheriff of Belfast exploit was worth a medal — but only one. They tossed a in 1987-88. coin for the honour and in due course Clark, on Gorman’s recommendation, was awarded the George Medal. Later, He married, in 1948, Heather Caruth, who survives him with with the approval of the Archbishop of Armagh, Cardinal two daughters and a son. Another son predeceased him. D’Alton, Gorman uncovered an IRA bomb-making factory 6 Hennessey, the Cognac Founder

Background and early life

Growing up an Irish Catholic to a family of some ambition, in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1688, whereby Anglo-Protestant hegemony was operative in Ireland, the young Richard Hennessy at the age of 19 elected to leave the country for Bourbon France. Here he joined the Clare Regiment of the in the French Army, serving as an officer. This was in the service of king Louis XV of France. Shortly after the in 1745 he became familiar with the region, famous for its cognacproduction. Using money he had earned in his military career, he decided to become involved in cognac investment from afar, without much success initially.

Hennessy cognac production

Richard Hennessy and his cousin James Hennessy went to Ostend in Flanders in 1757 to learn how to trade. Upon returning to France in 1765 he decided to settle in the Charente area permanently with his wife Ellen Barrett (an aunt of the political philosopher ) and their son Jacques Hennessy (11 October 1765 – 22 April 1843). With the assistance of some of the banking houses in Paris, he and two business partners by the name of Connelly and Richard Hennessy (Irish: Ristéard Arthur began trading in cognac from his house. Ó h-Aonghusa; 1724 — 8 October 1800) was an Irish military officer During this time the trade in alcoholic spirits were booming, popular not and businessman, best known for only with French customers, but also with foreigners, especially people from founding the Hennessy cognac the British Empire showing interest, leading to a massive boom in cognac in dynasty, which is today a luxury the 1760s. Indeed, in Hennessy's homeland, the , spirits brand and one of the most from the European Continent were popular, because customs duties were prominent in the world. Hennessy much lower than those imposed in the . As well as was from County Cork, Ireland, this there was a shortage of rum due to the Seven Years' War and "implied that and, due to his Jacobite political the growing taste for alcohol could only be satisfied by increased imports." tendencies, went into exile in Hennessy expanded his customer base by shipping the product from Cognac France, eventually serving in the to London, Dublin and Flanders. He also had clients at the Court of the French Army. King of France, such as the Prince of Soubise, familiar with the Charente. However, the Hennessy House was still of negligible importance in the 1770s, and Richard Hennessy left the city in 1776 to settle in , where he had associates, as a distiller, in association with alderman George Boyd. It was only in the context of the revolutionary decade that "the Hennessy, until then a minor house, reached the rank of great." Two marriage covenants with an older and firmly established house, the Martells, allowed and endorsed both this promotion in the last decade of the century.

6 7 Honorary Patrons His Excellency Jim Kelly The Jeanie Johnston Educational Foundation Irish Ambassador to Canada

Hon. Jean Charest Former Premier of Quebec

Hon. Daniel Johnson, Former Premier of Quebec.

Hon. Pierre Marc Johnson Former Premier of Quebec Dear members, Richard Pound, CC, OQ, QC, LLD Chancellor Emeritus McGill University It is my pleasure to introduce Ron Canuel as a new member of the Board. Ron has served in public education for the past 43 years, both in Quebec and Mohawk Council, Kahnawake in Canada. Ron’s extensive cv, demonstrates his commitment to the world of Peter Trent CD public education, in particular with his work with indigenous communities Former Mayor Westmount across Canada and the United States. Currently Ron is working with the Dr. Muiris O’Ceidigh, Inuit communities in northern Quebec as well as with the Confederated LLB. MBA, MSc Economics Salish and Kootenai tribes in Montana.

Ron has received numerous awards for his leadership in education as Director Directors General of the Eastern Townships School Board, as well as President and Chairman Chief Executive Officer for the Canadian Education Association ( now known Leo Delaney KH as the Edcan Network).

V. Chairman Noel Burke, M.Ed. Ron was a member of the Quebec Superior Council of Education (Secondary Commission) and is a highly sought speaker at conferences around the world. Ron Canuel B.Ed Former CEO. Canadian Education Assoc. Ron is currently working as an education strategist and works in both North Edcan Network. and South America, as well as in Europe. Glen P. Carlin. Eng. F CAE., F.EIC, Ron will certainly bring his insights and creativity to the Foundation and will Tino Bordonaro, M.A. English Montreal School Board be an important asset. We welcome Ron to the Jeannie Johnston Foundation.

Patrick Buckland Ph.D

Eileen Marcil Ph.D Leo Delaney KH Chair, Jeanie Johnston Educational Foundation Inc Chris Culpin M.A . Oxon, British & Irish Education Ministry

Brian Young, Emeritus History, McGill University THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS

Ben Walsh, B.A. British Educational Technology

Scott MacLeod, Educational films

Rob Lutes B.A. Dip. Journalism

Alan Hustak, Author

Victor Boyle, National Chair, Ancient Order Hibernians

Legal Counsel Francois Morin Borden, Ladner, Gervais, LLD

History Adviser Sam Allison, B.Sc.(LSE) M.A. (McGill)

Charitable Reg: 858579196RR001 and the MacDonald Stewart Foundation 8