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THURSDAY REPORT ONLINE

November 22, 2001 Irishman of the Year will chair research foundation

 

  

Brian Gallery

Brian Gallery, when he was “Irishman of the Year” at the annual parade.

Brian Gallery has been elected chair of the Canadian Irish Studies Foundation. The former mayor of Westmount and chairman of CN has been a great supporter of this project since its inception, and promises to continue to promote it with enthusiasm.

He replaces Peter O’Brien, who headed the Foundation since its creation in 1995 and will stay on as a trustee. Brian Casey has been named vice-chair.

Named as new trustees are Jack Brennan, Sean Finn, André Gervais, Philip O’Brien, Dean Martin Singer and William Wilson. Other trustees based in Montreal are Daniel Johnson, Brian O’Neill, Susan Kruger and Michelle Tisseyre. The honorary patrons are Paul Martin, Jean Charest and Martin Burke, Ireland’s recently appointed ambassador to Canada.

The Canadian Irish Studies Foundation was established five years ago to work towards an Irish studies program at Concordia, and achieved a $3.3 million endowment, including substantial contributions from the Irish, Canadian and Quebec governments.

The Canadian Journal of Canadian Irish Studies is now based in Concordia’s Centre for Irish Studies. Students in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences are offered a curriculum cluster in Irish studies, and the number of courses related to Irish and Canadian Irish studies continues to grow.

The Irish Studies Foundation will institute an annual fundraising campaign to support new courses, scholarships, library acquisitions, community outreach and other projects.

Graduate student meets Gerry Adams

Master’s student Claire Delisle, who is doing her thesis on the republican movement in Northern Ireland, was pleased to have the opportunity to meet Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, when he was in Canada recently.

Adams launched the Friends of Sinn Fein (Canada) at a dinner in Toronto on Nov. 3, and Delisle attended as advisor to the secretary-general of the Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN).

As part of her research, which focuses on the role of the prison experience in the democratization of the republican movement in the North, Delisle also went to Belfast last spring to interview some of the principal players in the political conflict.