From Westmeath to the Maple Leaf
April 30, 2011So much of the survival of Gaelic games is down to a certain type of evangelism. It's the gospel, according to the GAA. And the good news is that the spread is not restricted by the oceans. Westmeath man Christy Whelehan emigrated to the west of Canada almost 40 years ago, and along with the rudimentary items packed in his suitcase perhaps the most important was unseen, intangible: all those years ago, he also brought with him an innate devotion to Gaelic games.
Alongside Armagh man Mick McKenna, Whelehan founded the Edmonton Wolfe Tones club, and Edmonton is still going strong four decades down the line. The GAA in Canada is flourishing too, as much as could ever be hoped given that competitions take place involving cities and clubs often hundreds of miles apart. The hurlers of Vancouver Harps became the first Canadian club to participate in the North American County Board finals last year, and proceeded to make it a hugely successful debut by landing the junior hurling championship crown with victory over San Francisco Naomh Padraig in the final.
It's all a far cry from 1972, when Christy Whelehan, a footballer with Killucan and hurler with Raharney in his teens, left Westmeath for a new life in distant western Canada. "There wasn't a soul playing it," he says. "Most people had never even heard of it. Myself and Mick McKenna founded the Edmonton Wolfe Tones club in 1974. Mick returned to Ireland in '79 - he's a big part of the Harps club in Armagh - and I kept it going after that."
Christy's commitment to the GAA in Edmonton extended to a level of sponsorship which has played a significant part in keeping the club ticking along for the best part of four decades. With his company Celtic Homes, established in 1997 and an employer of more than 30 staff, many of whom are Irish emigrants, continuing to go from strength to strength, Christy had the financial clout to make a difference. "I've probably spent the equivalent of three or four thousand dollars a year sponsoring the club, but I've got satisfaction of doing it," he says. "I was lucky enough to have the ability to contribute, it was my money, my choice and if I was starting out now I'd probably do the same again. It's for the love of the game, the mental emolument."
While those Irish men and women who have, either through choice or compulsion, left the old sod behind remain the lifeblood of the Wolfe Tones club, there has also been a commitment to developing and recruiting local talent in Edmonton through the years.
"Back in the late '80s, when there was no-one coming out from Ireland, we blended a lot of Canadian guys into it," says Christy. "I went to the university for a couple of hours twice a week coaching the university students how to play Gaelic football. We did that for about five years and we probably generated more than 30 regular players across men and women. There's a lot of action, it's an exciting game, so everybody likes it."
However, Christy is circumspect when pressed on the possibility of Gaelic games becoming genuine international sports at any stage in the future. "For it to become a profile sport is just never going to happen in North America," he says. "There are so many other sports for people to get involved in so what we offer is always going to be limited. If you want to play GAA here you're going to travel a long way - to play games you've got to go to Calgary, to Red Deer, to Vancouver. With soccer or rugby or hockey, there are 50 teams in the neighbourhood so you've got more competition, more structured leagues, more structured systems. You can't have a structured system with Gaelic because of the miles involved. Plus it's expensive. You're travelling thousands of miles, and all that has to be funded."
Christy makes it back to Ireland at least once a year - "there were some years when I managed to get home three times!" he laughs - and he generally takes in a few days with his family in Co Westmeath. As well as representing Killucan and Raharney, he also donned the Westmeath jersey at vocational schools level in his teens. All that should come as no real surprise, as the Whelehans were indoctrinated in all things GAA from an early age - Christy's father, Patrick, who sadly passed away in 2009, was president of the Killucan club for many years.
Raharney have enjoyed plenty of success on the hurling fields of the county, never more so than in 2010 when they claimed the scalp of Offaly kingpins Coolderry in the Leinster club hurling championship at the beginning of November. Reflecting on that result, Christy congratulated his old club, who he believes are an inspiration to all Westmeath people. "Our biggest problem is believing in ourselves," he says. "That's the biggest weakness Westmeath people have always had, but we have to just get it into our heads that we're the equal to anyone in Ireland."
While success on the Westmeath stage has been customary for Raharney, Killucan have found the glory days more difficult to come by - it is 100 years and more since the club's forefathers, 13-time county champions Riverstown Emmets, were the undisputed kingpins in the county - but 2010 saw the club go closer than ever to getting its hands on senior silverware.
"Killucan were junior and intermediate for a long time but they went very close to making it to the senior final last year," says Christy. "I've a special relationship with all the Killucan boys. My father, Patrick, was president of the Killucan GAA club and he passed away last year and my uncle Christy, who passed away four or five months after him, had been with the Westmeath county board for 40 years. They were both great servants of the GAA. My brother Vincent and his wife Olive have also been involved for many years on the committee so it would have been a big thing for me if Killucan had got to a senior final. I'd definitely have been making the trip home fort that one, but unfortunately they were beaten in the semi-finals by Garrycastle."
Christy's day-to-day involvement in the running of the Edmonton Wolfe Tones club came to an end in 2007, after which the Western Canada GAA decided to name the championship trophy in his honour. "I had nothing to do with that," he insists with a laugh. "Usually that's only done for people who've passed on, so I thought I must've died!"
These days, with others having taken up the slack on the local GAA scene, Christy has a bit more time to concentrate on his Celtic Homes business, which he established in the late 1990s alongside business partner, Rathfriland, Co Down man Sean McGeown.
Celtic Homes specialise in the construction of modular homes, a common feature of the Canadian landscape which are constructed off-site - Celtic Homes has 48,000 sq ft of production facility at its disposal - in the space of approximately two months and erected on-site in a single day.
"We modulise maybe half a house at a time," says Christy. "When we're finished all walls are plastered, all painting is done, all cabinets and bathroom fixtures are installed and in most cases the flooring will be done. When you get it it's 90 per cent complete, so when you get on site you just join the modules together, complete the joints and finalise the plumbing, electrical and heating connections."
Things are going quite well again after the market in Canada recovered from the worst of the global recession, in 2008 and 2009. To that end, Christy has visa applications in place for 11 new Irish emigrants, having already smoothed the passage for almost 30 over the past five years. "I bring them in on a two-year visa, extend their visas when they're here if everything works out and after three years they can apply for landed immigrant permanent residency," he says. "I get at least five, six calls a week from people from all parts of Ireland. The recession at home has contributed to that but there are always people who want to move to another level, to emigrate and see the other side of the world, and there's no better way to do that than to get a visa and a job in a stable country like Canada."
One of those who has worked with Christy Whelehan's Celtic Homes in the recent past is Waterford hurling legend Tony Browne, who spent four months in Edmonton in 2007.
"Tony was over in Vegas and Phoenix with the All-Stars in 2004 and I was down there at the time playing golf," says Christy, "so I went to the hurling exhibition game and met the guys afterwards. I had met Sean Kelly, the President of the GAA at the time, several times at functions in Canada and the States, and he introduced me to Tony. We just started talking and found we had a lot in common - he's a plasterer by trade which I was in my younger days, and I had seen him play all the big games down the years.
"I gave Tony my card and told him to call me if he was ever in Canada, and he called me up a couple of years later. That was on a Monday and he arrived on the Friday. Himself and his brother Mossy worked for me for four months. I still keep in touch with Tony, I talk to him on the phone fairly regularly and went home to the 2008 All-Ireland especially because he was playing in it. He's 37 now but he's an exceptional hurler and was still going strong for Waterford last year."
Among those who have worn the Edmonton Wolfe Tones colours with distinction is Christy's daughter Colleen, who represented the Canadian ladies football team at a tournament in Ireland in 2004. Colleen is one of four children raised in Edmonton by he and wife Bernadette, who is also ingrained in the GAA - she's a member of the famous Griffin family from Loughrea, six of whom played with the local club and two, Kevin and Andy, also pulled on the Galway jersey during their playing days. Nevertheless, for the Whelehans these days, solid family ties in western Canada ensure they will never leave the Maple Leaf country at this stage - even if Christy himself admits that he often thought about making the move home in the past.
"I was tempted lots of times to go back to Ireland but I've made so many connections in Canada," says Christy. "But you get attached to here just as easily as you get attached to home. All the children are grown up now, they're all professionals, and I've grand-kids here now too, so there's no chance I'd go home anymore. This is home now." Tweet
