Canadian prime minister Mark Carney has said retracing his roots to the west of Ireland has been a “great thrill”.
Carney, in Ireland for a two-day visit, flew to Co Mayo on Saturday morning after spending Saturday in Dublin city.
It is the first bilateral visit to Ireland by a Canadian prime minister in almost 10 years, and the first official visit to Co Mayo.
His itinerary includes a visit with President Catherine Connolly and engagements with Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
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Carney is the grandson of Irish emigrants who were born in Mayo and left the country more than 100 years ago for Canada.
He traces his heritage back to the village of Aughagower, where he met excited locals and some of his distant cousins, including his oldest living relatives Maureen and Pat Carney.
He visited graves of his ancestors after attending mass and planting a tree in the sun soaked village on Sunday.
Joking with the priest by asking “can we have mass outside?”, Carney also met excited locals young and old – as well as some Canadian citizens who came to see him.
Commenting that “no one noticed” the last time he was in Aughagower in 2017, he said it was “remarkable” to be with those gathered.
He said it was an “honour” to be back, adding it provided a “sense of purpose” to engagements on the Ireland-Canada relationship.
The main road to the town was adorned with Canadian flags, which the prime minister said felt like a welcome for Canada.
“It is the ties of many Irish people to Canada, its what Canada represents for many people around the world: A force for good, a place that welcomes immigrants and makes them their own – and it is reciprocated.”
Asked if he had any advice for the Mayo gaelic football team, Carney said his guidance would not be to take his opinion on that sport.
The prime minister’s itinerary included a meeting with President Catherine Connolly in the nearby Westport House, which he described as “wonderful”, and engagements with Taoiseach Micheál Martin in Westport.
Carney is the grandson of Irish emigrants Robert Carney and Nora Moran, from tenant farmer families, who were born in Mayo and left the country for Canada aboard the steamship Montnairn in July 1925.
Martin said Carney’s grandparents, who were born in Aughagower, would be “enormously proud” that their “sacrifices and hardships paved the way for his remarkable accomplishments and achievements”.
He said the day was significant Mr Carney to reconnect with his heritage, deepen Canadian-Irish ties, and for the Aughagower community who were “proud” to see a global figure come home.
“It’s wonderful for prime minister Carney that we’ve had these two days, and you could see he was beaming today because he was among his own.”
At an event at Dublin Castle on Saturday, the Taoiseach suggested that the prime minister’s historical ties to Ireland stretch back even further than 100 years.
He said that after visiting the Book of Kells in Trinity College, the two men saw a page in the Book of Armagh that linked Aughagower to the country’s patron saint.
Martin said: “The page opened for Tírechán’s account of St Patrick’s journey through Mayo and he visits – you won’t believe it – Aughagower before going to Croagh Patrick.
“In that paragraph, Patrick consecrates a church in that place, Aughagower, with the maiden Mathona, who’s clearly setting up, we think, a nunnery there.
“And Patrick said to the people gathered ‘there will be good bishops here, and from their seed, blessed people will come forth forever in this sea’.”
Martin went on to joke: “I knew he was a visionary, but I never quite knew that St Patrick was that visionary – and he clearly had Mark Carney in mind.”
[ Canadian prime minister Mark Carney’s grandfather’s heroics during the Civil WarOpens in new window ]
The Taoiseach also referenced the “extraordinary journey” of Carney’s grandparents in search of a better life across the Atlantic.
“They could scarcely have imagined that one day their grandson would return to Ireland as prime minister of Canada, welcomed by the people of the country they left behind.”
He told Carney that when he walks the roads his grandparents walked in Co Mayo, he would discover that “Ireland never forgets her own”.
Referencing the poem Thresholds by John O’Donohue, Carney told the same event: “My grandparents crossed their threshold in Mayo a century ago – into a life of a country that was still building itself, as Canada always has.
“And they were part of four and a half million Canadians who are the product of similar decisions.”
“Today, half a million people who travel between our countries every year cross thresholds.
“Now, there’s one other threshold that I’ll mention at which Canada, Ireland, Europe now stand – and that’s the rupture in the global system.
“From rules-based to arms-based, from right to might, from values to vanquished.
“Where will we go, and to what purpose? And I’d suggest that the thresholds that we have crossed and those before us have crossed, the shared values that have been forged in doing so, will bring us forward.”
On Saturday, the two leaders announced a new “bilateral co-operation framework” on trade and investment, life sciences, research and innovation, and security and defence. – PA
