A private pilgrimage in Aughagower revealed unexpected relatives and set the stage for Carney’s call for tighter Canada EU cooperation amid rising global tensions.
AUGHAGOWER, Ireland, June 14 – Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Sunday met with distant relatives at the home of his grandparents in the western part of Ireland during a visit to celebrate his Irish roots and call for closer cooperation in light of the global geopolitical rift.
Grandfather Robert Carney and Nora Moran emigrated to Canada in 1925 and were married in Vancouver, where Robert took a job with the Canadian Pacific Railway Police and later joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Carney’s father was born in 1933 and later became a professor at the University of Alberta.
I have many more cousins than I realized. After attending Mass at the Catholic church in Aughagower, where his grandfather and grandmother were born, Carney also visited the family graveyard and planted a tree.
– Mark Carney
Carney, who was in Ireland en route to the G7 meeting in France, said on Saturday that countries such as Canada and Ireland should join a ‘dense network of ties … ad-hoc coalitions’ for survival and prosperity in a world where post-Cold War rules aimed at order are breaking down.
dense network of ties … ad-hoc coalitions
– Mark Carney
‘Ireland and Canada are now moving through a global rupture, not through a quiet transition,’ he said during a day of lectures at Trinity College Dublin.
Ireland and Canada are currently going through a global rupture, not a quiet transition.
– Mark Carney
‘I believe that amid these changes, amid this rupture, Canada, Ireland, and Europe can become defining, influential, and purposeful – a force for good,’ he said.
I believe that amid these changes, amid this rupture, Canada, Ireland, and Europe can become defining, influential, and purposeful – a force for good.
– Mark Carney
Ireland’s Prime Minister Micheál Martin, whose country will take over the six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union from July 1, said to reporters that his government would work on the “embodiment” of deeper EU-Canada ties.
This trip underscores both countries’ interest in further developing economic and political ties in the context of global challenges and new formats for international cooperation.