Emigration – by Gabriel McCaffrey

The issues around immigration are big questions. I don’t think that total immersion in the new country or total failure to assimilate is a binary event. I think there are shades of grey here.

 

I am very at home in Canada. I became a senior executive in the technology field and I managed large teams of all types of individuals; These were Canadian born, including indigenous people, all sorts of Europeans (French, Croatians, Serbs, Arabs, Indians, Chinese, Vietnamese, English, Latin Americans, Africans, etc). All, like myself, immigrants to Canada.

 

With 3 daughters, (2 born in Dublin, and who were 6 and 3 years old when we emigrated) I got involved in the Irish Dance community here and was a founder committee member of “Capital Feis” in Ottawa whereby we built to over 1,000 dancers (from Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, New York state etc) in our annual Feis. 

 

I was also a founder board member of ICCCOTT (Ireland Canada Chamber of Commerce, Ottawa chapter). Just as there are Chinese, Indian, Italian chambers here etc., we had the same. 

My working career was typically Canadian. Over the years, I built friendships through work and though the communities I have lived in, with workmates and neighbours from Italian, Latin American, Russian, Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, and also North of Ireland, Protestant British backgrounds. These friendships are very important to me. They have enriched my life.

 

I have 6 grand-kids including the youngest, who lives in Luxembourg, as my youngest child (who was born in Canada) decided to emigrate there, having met her future husband while living in Shanghai, China (She did a year of her degree in Beijing university). The taste for travel is in our Irish DNA.

 

Yes, I have stayed aware of political developments in Ireland since I left in 1988. I worked in Dublin for 11 years, during the Hunger Strike period etc. I remember both the support for Bobby Sands and his comrades, and the antipathy by some partitionists. That used to really get to me. 

 

Should Italian immigrants forget their culture after assimilation? Should they stop eating their pasta dishes and drinking Chianti? They don’t seem to, Should my Dutch friends stop getting together to watch the Netherlands play in world cups etc? Should our Scottish and English friends forget their love for Celtic, Rangers, Man. United or Liverpool? They don’t seem to. And they pass this along to the next generations born here. It is all wonderful.

 

Thus, should the Irish forget their cultural heritage, their football and rugby teams, or their political aspirations for Irish Unity? I don’t see this happening any time soon. Let us remember that when DeValera was leading the struggle for Irish Unity, he wisited the US and Canada for an an extended period to raise awareness, political support and funds for that purpose. The current generation of our diaspora does the same work.

 

So it is today. Our community in Ottawa, like those other immigrant communities here, is well immersed in the rich cultural, social and political diversity of Canada but is still attached to, and involved in, the same threads in Ireland.

 

We have concerns. We feel that our diaspora is leveraged much by the Dublin government but we get little in return (unlike many emigrant groups we have no votes for our titular President, our Seanad or our parliament. This is an affront. We deserve a voice, even if we had TDs without a vote in the Dâil. Similarly, our Northern Irish deserve to have their elected representatives have speaking rights there too.