The inside story of Canadian PM Mark Carney's visit to Aughagower
Wanting to find out what went on behind the scenes, The Mayo News has pieced together how Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s historic visit to Aughagower came about.
“You are responsible for all of this,” the Canadian Prime Minister said as he warmly greeted Colette Sheridan, the Chairperson of the Aughagower Community Council, outside St Patrick’s Church on Sunday.
It was in the aftermath of Mark Carney’s stunning victory to become the Canadian Prime Minister that locals first made the connection. Carney's Mayo roots — traced through his paternal grandparents — were highlighted in Irish media coverage of his election, and it started conversations at community council meetings.
“They were all saying, you know, he's from here, and they were all talking about being related to him,” Aughagower Community Council member Lisa McNamara said. “And then they just wondered, well, we should invite him to come sometime.”
The community council wasted little time. An invitation was sent to Canadian Ambassador to Ireland Denis King, who made a quiet, low-key visit to the village last year. “There was only a very intimate kind of thing in Aughagower,” recalled Colette Sheridan, Chairperson of the Aughagower Community Council. “We went around to all the different historical places, went to the school, and then after that we had a lovely visit.”
They kept in contact with the embassy throughout the year and presented a book on Aughagower to the Ambassador as well. This book is available to view in the Aughagower Community Centre, which has an exhibition of both the Carney and Moran family links to Mark Carney.
“From the very first time that I arrived in this post, people were writing from Aughagower after the election of Prime Minister Carney, saying we would like our son to come home,” Ambassador King recalled. “It really planted the seed.”
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Those letters, combined with a formal follow-up email from Sheridan and a subsequent meeting between Sheridan, McNamara and the Ambassador in Dublin, began to build something neither side had quite anticipated. “We gave proposals of different things we thought he might be interested in, and then we'd leave it up to them to say yes or no,” Sheridan said. What she didn't expect was how quickly it would all materialise. “We never thought that it would ever happen, really.”
The Diplomatic push
While the community was working from the ground up, political momentum was building from above.
The Canadian Ambassador to Ireland, Denis King, explains to The Mayo News that “the visit first and foremost came about when the Taoiseach went to Ottawa last September.”
Minister for Rural and Community Development Dara Calleary, TD, had also been working to make the visit a reality, particularly once it became clear that Carney would be in Europe for the G7 summit and travelling to France.
Taking advantage of the Saint Patrick’s Day visit to Ottawa, he suggested that Joanne Grehan, Director of Services with Mayo County Council and Cllr Sean Carey, Cathaoirleach Mayo County Council, join him on the trip.
“We were able to make the introductions at a prominent government level and then once we came back it started ticking off that we wanted this to happen this year, this summer ideally,” the Ballina politician said.
“Our team, led by Ambassador John Concannon, had been working on it,” Calleary said. “So we drove it home — both in my public speech at the reception but privately — that there would be a great welcome here.”
Calleary had met Carney in Ottawa and came away convinced the Prime Minister's connection to Mayo was genuine, not ceremonial. “He wasn't just ticking a box here — he is connected to this,” the Minister said. “I knew from being that night in Norway that the Prime Minister is very serious and very connected.”
Further connections were made when Harry Hughes met the Canadian Prime Minister as part of a business delegation to Canada last month and presented a copy of the commemorative history booklet to him.
Groundwork
Careful groundwork had also been laid by the Westport Historical Society, which had made contact with Carney's sister and pieced together the family's roots in detail, while a wider network of Irish-Canadian connections helped consolidate the relationship between both sides.
'We couldn’t say anything'
The final confirmation came together rapidly around Easter, though for security and logistical reasons, nothing could be announced publicly. “We couldn't say anything,” Calleary acknowledged. For Sheridan and McNamara, the wait was nail-biting — but when the news came, it came decisively.
“We got the great news that he was definitely coming, and then the initial planning started,” Sheridan said. “It did happen very quickly. In the space of maybe two or three weeks, everything filtered out — a busy two or three weeks, but well worth it.”
The visit itself included the planting of an Irish oak tree, a species that, as Sheridan noted with delight, holds special personal significance — Carney's wife Diana told her it was her favourite tree. A commemorative plaque will mark the spot. “That oak tree is going to grow,” said McNamara, “and it commemorates his family roots in Aughagower, and signifies the friendship between Ireland and Canada.”
As the Irish Times’ Frank McNally quipped the visit was all about MAGA - “Make Aughagower Great Again.”
For Ambassador King, the relationship that grew from those early community letters had become something far more personal than protocol. “The people of Aughagower and I have just developed a friendship and a kinship from that initial visit,” he said. “They welcomed me in like an adopted son, and it's just been really, really special. How this has culminated has been even more than anyone could have anticipated.”
Reflecting on the visit, Harry Hughes from The Westport Historical Society described the Prime Minister's attendance at Mass as ‘simple and exceptional.’
“The warmth of the reception was humbling and enthusiastic. The visit to his great grandparents grave of Patrick and Bridget Carney was a private and a moment of deep reflection for the visiting Carney family.
“He took his time with everyone he met but particularly with his father's first cousins Pat Carney and Maureen O'Malley. The Westport Historical Society were delighted to record the family tree and history,” he said.
“I met the Prime Minister, Monday morning at the Grace hotel, just as he departed and he said Aughagower was the highlight of his trip to Ireland. We hope it will not be so long until he returns again.”
Ultimately, it is the people that make a place and there’s no doubt that in that sense Aughagower is blessed.
The community council, the pastoral council and the tidy towns all work together to make the village the best it could be.
Free copies of the Commemorative history of the Carney and Moran families, produced by The Westport Historical Society, will be available from The Clew Bay Heritage Centre, Westport Town Hall Theatre and The Bookshop in Westport.