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www.celtic-connection.com
JULY-AUGUST 2005
In Loving Memory
Louisa Harrison
BETTY HARRISON is shown above (L) in a photo printed in The Vancouver Sun in March 1959 in honour of St. Patrick's Day and another (R) more recent photo.
THE EMERALD PLAYERS production of Home is the Hero with (clockwise L-R) Brenda Warren, Tom Byrne, Sally Butler, Babs McConville, Betty Harrison and Margaret Forbes. This play was produced in February 1962 and was the first play staged in the old Arts Club Theatre located at Seymour Street. It was a huge success for Emerald Players who couldn't find enough seats for the final night patrons.
THECELTIC CONNECTION
ISSUE NUMBER 138
#741 -916W. Broadway, Vancouver, B.C. V5Z 1K7 Tel: (604)434-3747 Fax: (604) 434-3749
Website: www.celtic-connection.com Maura McCay- Publisher •E-Mail: maura@telus.net Catholine Butler - Advertising •E-Mail: cbutler@telus.net Colleen Carpenter - Copy Editor • Christine Burke - Ad Production Miguel De Freitas - Accounting Distribution: Sisa Kumar • Paddy Connolly • Kevin Boggan • Mike Paul • Kathy Griffin in Surrey • James Carbin in Mission •Bill Duncan in Maple Ridge • Pat Warren in Delta • Bill Carracher in White Rock • Finian Rowland, Catherine Mitchell and Jane Sepede in Seattle • Oliver Grealish in Edmonton.
Published 10 timesperyear. Unsolicited submissions welcome but will not be returned. Please retain a copy for your files. Contents copyright 2005 The Celtic Connection.
Opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of the publisher but rather a reflection of voices within the community. All correspondence must include a name, address and telephone number. Canada PostCanadian Publications Agreement 40009398
This paper is dedicated to truth, the dignity of every person under God and the call to help one another to live out that dignity.
Gil
IN MEMORY OF Elizabeth Louisa Harrison. Betty was born on February 17, 1932 in London, England. She loved performing in the theatre and was a founding member of the Emerald Players Theatre Group in Vancouver who put on many a hit play during the Sixties and Seventies.
Betty was a dynamic, beautiful woman with a ready laugh and a playful spirit. "Boop" loved to sing and was the life of many a party. She got her start in London playing Vaudeville where she also studied theatre and toured around performing at local clubs. She eventually started her own dancing school. She left London for a new life in Canada in 1956, and along with a few other Irish newcomers, founded the very successful Emerald Players Theatre Group.
The Emerald Players was the hub of the Irish community during that time, and their talent, humor, and friendships connected and supported Vancouver's early Irish immigrants. It was through the group that Betty met her current husband Brian, who came from Waterford. They married and shared over 43 years of love and laughter.
Betty left this world on May 11, 8005, surrounded by all the love she created. She will be sorely missed by her loving husband Brian and her five daughters and sons-in-law; Christine (Ken); Carmel (Mark); Kim (Doug); Brenda (Greg); and Tracy (Dave). She leaves behind nine grandchildren, two greatgrandchildren and sister Chris (Ray) in Seattle.
Her passing leaves a huge hole in the hearts of those who loved her. Her legacy of a joyful spirit will live on. We feel her with us still and we know we will meet again. Till then...
APOLOGIES TO EIFION
Each month Eifion Williams keeps our readers informed about events related to the Welsh community. In last month's issue, his name was somehow published as Eifion Roberts. We deeply regret any inconvenience or embarrassment caused by this error and can only humbly apologize for this lapse.
Compensation for Survivors of Abuse in Irish Institutions
The Residential Institutions Redress Board was set up by the Irish Government underthe Residential Institutions Redress Act, 2002. The purpose of establishing this Board is to make fairand reasonable awards to people who, as children, were abused while residing in various institutions in Ireland, including industrial schools, reformatories and other institutions that were subject to State regulation or State inspection.
Compensation is offered under the Redress Board to residents who were subjected to sexual, physical or emotional abuse or serious neglect or who suffered physical, psychiatric or other injury consistent with that abuse.
All applications for redress are treated in the strictest confidence, and all hearings conducted by the Board are in private. All solicitors' professional fees are fully paid for by the Redress Board and settlement monies will not be reduced by legal fees when dealing with legal counsel.
Write to the Residential Institutions Redress Board at Belfield Office Park, Beech Hill Road, Clonskeagh, P.O. Box 9104, Dublin 4, Ireland. E-mail: info@rirb.ie., or call: (011) 353-1-268 0600. For more information regarding filing a claim, visit their website at: www.rirb.ie.
The closing date for applications to the Residential Institutions Redress Board is December 1,2005.
'Sometimes There are No Answers to All the Questions'
By RUTH JENNINGS My sister loved nature. She would walk the Wicklow hills for hours in wind and rain, sometimes without a coat and her red hair astray. As children, our favourite tree was a hawthorn, circled with daffodils and purple crocuses, and we called it the fairy tree, as many protective hawthorn are called in Ireland, and made up stories in its branches, our jeans streaked green and dun from wood and wet grass.
Our home was backed by an arc of fir and birch in a valley of rolling hills crowned with heather and bog. At night, from the living room window we watched distant tail-lights of planes skim into the orange band and mouth of Dublin city. Those lights seemed a world away to us.
My sister loved to laugh. I remember how much she loved music and to dance. I think about the way her lightness and humour moved people. Her presence in a room turned heads, and her fine taste and sense of style impressed men and women alike.
However, while she impressed people with her beauty and gentleness, with her brightness and laughter, few people ever saw her sadness, her despair locked behind closed doors. Few people knew how she longed for direction and meaning, and a sense of herself as vital to life.
Perhaps captured as we can be by the surface of things, and the appearances of life, few people notice how sad and tired others are, and how tired and empty my sister had become. And those who did notice could no longer reach her, so far from the present moment she seemed to have strayed.
She had a sharp mind and a love of knowledge, and she questioned life. She wanted to know why life dealt the blows it did, why women were jealous of her, and why the men she loved could not commit and return her love.
She questioned herself endlessly, so she might find one great thing to pour herself into, and become successful and strong in a new Ireland enamoured with the surface of things.
Perhaps as her own words failed her,
and the words she might speak to the surface of things eluded her, she stood still in a time and place where no-one could listen, or see, or be still long enough.
Perhaps, in a frantic search to understand the surface and appearance of things, my sister forgot to breathe it all in, and to simply live. On March 12, 2005, my sister Catherine died from suicide.
I think of her, and I think of what she loved. And while I turn questions over and over in my mind, I remember how easy it is to stray toward fear and self-doubt, so that I forget to simply look, and simply listen, and simply live.
Sometimes there are no answers to all the questions. They are uncertainties that come and go, come and go.
Sometimes, when I slow down enough, in the space between the "no more" of the past and the "not yet" of the future, there is an emptiness, and I thank God, because it is there I hold my sister. Tenderly the light and wind and rain in the tree above me is a reminder and it is enough.
St. Vincent de Paul Society Needs Volunteers
VANCOUVER - Volunteers are urgently required to help make sandwiches for the St. Vincent de Paul Society Outreach Program, particularly for the summer months when other volunteers are away on holidays. If you can volunteer a few hours each week, please call Tom O'Flynn at (604) 879-3485.
For more community notices, please turn to page 19