I have decided to re-post some edited journal entries in a more formal manner. It may take a while - as I must learn to handle format options in this Blog. I'm putting together 'memoirs' for the family - tentatively titled "End Game" - and I have already released "Version 1.0" two Christmases ago. Since then, I've been using a journal to collect anecdotes from each of my 'decades' without paying much attention to style. We'll see if I can do better here.

The following is a test -

'Another ‘Homecoming’ - Ireland - and its Chilean Connection

Dublin, July 12, 1998

B’jaysus - a ‘soft day’ in Dublin - meaning a soft rain, less than a drizzle, but more than a mist - somewhat like Vancouver. An interesting week in this Emerald Isle - when I have had a strange feeling of being ‘home’. It must be my Irish ancestors speaking to me, softly calling me to pay attention to the little things around me, reminding me of my grandmother’s stories, and urging me north - to Ballyshannon in Donegal, where some of my roots are.

Not this trip, Granny, - but soon.

Once before, I had this strange feeling of ‘returning’ - in 1955, when I first wandered the streets of the Tyneside, my father’s streets in England. It’s my fate to feel at home in these two feuding nations. I understood the sense of a ‘homecoming’ in England as an 18-year-old son of an Englishman, but I am surprised at these stirrings of belonging to these Dublin streets - 43 years later. Natural enough, I guess - since the ‘family’ in Montreal and St. John were all ‘Micks’ - with the exception of my father - the lone Englishman to marry into the Gallaghers, Grannans, Hogans, Doherties, and McGoverns who were the ‘family’ of my youth in Montreal.

Between the family, the Church (Fathers Johnnie O’Rourke and Jimmy O’Toole) and even my high school (D’Arcy McGee), I was surrounded by Irish influences as far back as I can remember. And I remember that there were ‘subjects not discussed’ in our house - the ‘troubles’, the Easter Rising, the ‘Black and Tans’, the ‘famine’. Oh, they were discussed in the family all right, but the room would hush if my father walked in.

Despite his being an Englishman - and proud of it - he was completely accepted by the Irish Catholic family I was raised in. However, my father took singular delight in sending me to study in England - a small triumph over the rest of the family. But my English roots are tightly entangled with my Irish ones - and it is these roots that have been pulling on me this week as I walk the streets of Dublin and drive through County Wicklow.

And I suspect that this Ireland will become a new passion in my ‘end game’ years. There are other coincidences (although I’m beginning to think that nothing is coincidental) involved with my rising interest here - strangely enough - Chile! The country at the other side of the world which has become my second home for the past ten years - and the fact that I am a ‘Comendador de la Orden de Bernardo O’Higgins’, the Order of Chile.

Ambrosio O’Higgins, Bernardo’s father, was a ‘barefoot gossoon’ from County Meath, a few miles west of here. His name was really Ambrose Higgins, and the “O’s” were later embellishments, along with several other stories that Ambrose dreamed up to establish aristocratic credentials to impress his chosen Spanish superiors as he plotted his rise to Governor of Chile and, eventually, to being appointed as the Viceroy of Peru and all of Spanish America.

Ambrose dug back a generation or two and claimed he was born in 1720 in County Sligo - where the Higgins family originated. His humble origin would be looked down on by the Creole aristocrats of Santiago and Lima (who had bought their own titles), so he determined to even the scales and improve his social standing with the colonial snobs by inventing a link to a noble Irish family. He claimed he was born in Ballinary, Co. Sligo, and was a descendent of a Shean Duff O’Higgins, Baron of Ballinary.

Eventually, the gullible Spanish granted him the title of his invented ‘ancestor’, and he became “El Baron Vallenar”. Vallenar is as close as the Spanish could get to Ballinary - and to this day, there’s a Chilean town called Vallenar, named of course for this great servant of the Spanish colonial system - and whose bastard son, Bernardo, became its ultimate enemy - as Chile’s ‘Libertador’ and first President – the “George Washington of Chile”.

So, I have some researching to do in this Emerald Isle - Hey! Maybe WE are related to the Creole revolutionary who became Chile’s first President! The Gallaghers of Donegal and the Higgins’s of Sligo! (Donegal and Sligo are adjoining Counties, and Ballinary and Ballyshannon – where my family originated - are only a few miles apart). Just think, if Don Bernardo or Don Ambrosio were alive today, they could boast of real aristocratic family ties - to the Routledges of Vancouver!!

Incidentally, I was reading in the Trinity College Library today that O’Higgins met with and liked George Vancouver several times. Why was I surprised ?

I always knew that there must have been a reason for my Chilean passion - the leprechauns were whispering into my ear all along, leading me back to Ballyshannon - whose most famous son is the poet William Allingham who penned: -

“Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of LITTLE MEN”

Maybe the ‘little men’ of Donegal will lead me to some new interests in this autumn of my life.

Another Irish link to my various ‘cities’ involves Bristol - where Edmund Burke was the famed Whig M.P. in the 1770’s. An Irishman, Burke was born in Dublin - and today I stared up at his statue in front of his alma mater - Trinity College. I began reading Burke’s stuff in Bristol in 1955 - where I was impressed by his stature and his statue in the Bristol Centre. This Irishman was once Bristol’s Member of Parliament – the man who coined the political term “conservative”.

I have a Burke biography that was given to me by Brendan’s father in Seattle in the 70’s - bringing me back to the reason why I find myself here in Ireland this week. Brendan wants me to join him in his new venture here - and in the U.S. The chances are good that I will spend the next five years (LAST five years!?) of my working life in a combination of Dublin, Seattle and London - hopefully building the Technology Division of Brendan’s new company - probably to be called “Human Capital Management” – or “HCM”.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, for me to turn the page and shift gears (mixing my metaphors) in most of life’s important components - but I finally feel that I can put SCI (my own company) behind me at last. I’m not so sure about Vancouver, though. However, the ‘anchor’ has been lifted on my life’s voyage - and maybe it’s time to set new sails - sails “across the Irish Sea” - to this place that seems like home to me - in quiet whispering ways.

(The rest of the story is that I did, in fact, accept Brendan’s offer and worked from 1998-2002 in Seattle, London and Dublin – before retiring to Vancouver)