Ireland: president and Paris

In the winter of 2002 I took my family on an academic exchange to the west coast of Ireland. We traded jobs, houses, and cars with a family in Galway. This letter is part of that story . . .

At the end of my last missive I left you with a teaser. I promised to tell you about how I met the president of Ireland. Now, you probably had a good chuckle over that. That Paul, what a kidder. The president indeed. He couldn’t meet the president of a Backstreet Boys Fan Club, much less the president of a European country. Har de har. Whadda schmuck. I’m gonna go back to cruising porn sites.

No guff. I met and shook hands with the president of Ireland, Mrs. Mary McAleese. To nderstand how this happened, we have to back up and talk about the Irish educational system.
Now, when we decided that we were indeed going to come to this country for six months, our first concern was the schooling of our boys, ages 9 and 13. We parents are portable, but the kidlits need to be tutored, they need to be nurtured, they need to be kept out of our hair for 8 hours a day. So we asked our Irish exchangee, Lionel, to look into it for us. He ended up arranging for Max, the youngest, to attend St. Nicholas Parochial School, and for Christian to attend The Jesuit middle school, known around town simply as the Jes.

Now, do you notice anything about the names of those schools? Don’t they seem different, somehow, from Riverdale Highschool or Toller Cranston Memorial? And that difference just might be the fact that the names are, well, religious. Christian. Holy. And this brings us to the first major difference between schools in Canada and in Ireland. In Canada, the vast majority of the schools are public. They’re run, ultimately, by the government. Sure, there are private schools and denominational schools, but they are for rich kids and religious wackos. Most of us, and most of our children, went to a public institution. The reverse is true in Ireland. There are a few public schools, but the vast majority are religious. They are run by, ultimately, a church. Why is that?

Well, it may come as a shock to you, but religion has occasionally been a bone of contention in this country. This country (I’m only talking about the Republic here, not Northern Ireland) survived the Protestant Reformation almost 100% Catholic. England, on the other hand, after some fits and starts, bought into the Reformation and even invented its own form of Protestantism, Anglicanism. This gave the English, who had been exploiting the Irish for centuries, a new improved excuse to exploit the Irish: they were Catholics! They hadn’t seen the light! They could not conceive the wisdom of abandoning a 1,500 year old church for a new one invented by a drunken German monk! We better take all their land that we haven’t taken already, enact a series of brutal laws that will reduce them to starvation and nakedness, and lord our superiority and money over them by building manor homes on the land that used to feed their families. That is sure to bring them around to our vision of Christ.

One of the enlightened laws that the English enforced concerned education. It was simple, really: Catholics were not allowed to be educated. At all. Period. No schools, no teachers, no books for Catholics. None. Only the English landlords and their children could go to school. The Irish were forced to invent “hedge schools.” These were secretive meetings of students and teachers in fields and ditches, under rocks, at the bottom of lakes, away from the righteous eyes of the English. That was the only education an Irish Catholic child could receive, and it was illegal. The English Protestants in the country could not only send their children to school, but to university. Trinity College Dublin, the most famous university in the country, was founded in 1592 with a clear admission policy: no Catholics allowed.

As you might guess, education has been a bone of contention in this country ever since. And when the Catholics won the right to education, they did the truly Christian thing and slapped up a bunch of schools that would not admit Protestants. They went further. In the 19th century when an attempt was made to create a national school board that was ecumenical, Bishop MacEvilly (real name) decreed that sending children to any of the non-denominational schools run by this board was not only a sin, but a “reserved sin,” that is a sin that could only be absolved by confession to the Bishop himself. You think you’re going to get off with a couple of Hail Marys from the Bishop? I don’t think so. Anyway, that was the end of non-denominational schooling around here. So now even schools that are officially run by the state are, in practice, run by one of the churches.

So our oldest boy is going to a Catholic school, a school founded by the Jesuit order. Now, I personally think that is rather cool. I’ve always thought that if you’re going to be a priest, be a Jesuit. As we know, the Jesuit order was founded in 1540 by Ignatius Loyola, a Spanish nobleman, as a sort of theological SWAT team to fight the Protestant threat, and ever since it has had a reputation for producing hard-nosed priests with razor-sharp intellects. What is less well known is that the Jesuit order contains the special squads of priests that specialize in killing vampires, re-interring zombies, and battling the anti-christ. Housed in a secret war-room deep beneath the Vatican, the Jesuit God-Squad monitors the planet 24-7 for outbursts of demonic activity and can dispatch an elite combat unit of priests, armed to the teeth with silver bullets, barbed crucifixes, and holy water cannons, to anywhere in the world in spiritually armored “holy-copters” in fifteen minutes. Do not mess with the Jesuits.

They are also famous educators. Pierre Eliot Trudeau learned his rigorous logic and self-control from the Jesuits. I imagined that my son would come out of this school with conversational Latin, firm opinions on the doctrinal errors of Aquinas, and a burning desire to rid the world of tyranny. Unfortunately, the Jes now employs few actual priests. The extent of my son’s theological education has been a weekly assurance, by the one dottering ecclesiastic who actually still teaches, that God wants to be his friend, his buddy, his homie. My son has been told that he should get down with God. Perhaps just as well. I remember, in my brief flirtation with Sunday school, being told by a nun that the ashtray she was using was made, as was everything in the universe, by God. I turned the ashtray over and read “Made in USA.” She insisted it was made by God. I guess God worked in an ashtray factory. I hope he had a good union. Anyway, I never made it to first communion. Our son has been having a great time at the Jes, but there’s little danger of him becoming pope.

St. Nicholas Parochial School, the one our youngest goes to, is not Catholic. It’s run by the Church of Ireland. What the hell is that? It’s the Irish branch of the Anglican Church, but you’re not supposed to know that. The C of I does everything it can to hide the fact that a) it’s Anglican b) it is, therefore, Protestant c) that Anglicanism started in England. It calls itself a Catholic and Protestant Church. It subtly implies that it gives its practitioners the best of both religious traditions: they get the superstition and gore of the Catholic Church along with the guilt and repression of the Protestant. Because of this salad-bar approach to theology, its school is the choice of parents who are not religious or belong to some entirely non-Irish faith, like Baha’i.

Anyway, St. Nick’s just celebrated its 75th year. In preparation for this event, the parents’ council came up with the idea of inviting the president. And she came. I was there in the school hall with about 50 other parents and 40 or so students.

Now, before I tell you what it was like, let us imagine the Canadian Prime Minister visiting my son’s school back in Canada. What would happen? Well, first, the ever-competent RCMP would set up riot fences to give the protesters-de-jour something to knock over. When the PM’s car finally pulled up, the protestors would begin banging on their body jewelry and chanting some profound political slogan: “Hey hey, ho ho, mindless repetition has got to go. Hey hey, ho ho…” The RCMP would tear gas some people who “Appeared to be smirking in our direction” (a few years later a Royal Commission would find that the RCMP acted properly because the smirks might have verged into grimaces). Meanwhile the PM would be whisked in a side door so he could go into the school auditorium and deliver one of his eloquent and fiercely argued speeches: “Allo to you. I ham very glad to be ear in dis school today. You know, I was a school boy too, un petit gars, in Quebec many year ago. Now I ham prime minister for life, so you cannot have dat job, so you better study some ting to get an udder job, like to be da lawyer or cheese maker. Good bye to you.” And off he goes.

Here, there were no protestors. Security for the visit was one hung-over policeman sitting in a car near the school. He didn’t even look at me when I walked in the front door of the school. I think I could have be dressed like a mullah and pushing a wheelbarrow containing a metal drum covered in bio-hazard signs and he still wouldn’t have stopped me. The president showed up on time and gave a speech, off the top of her head, that was funny and eloquent. She played to the kids and they loved her for it, as did their parents. She unveiled a plaque, received some gifts from shy children, then hopped down to meet people. She talked to every kid who would stand still and to every single parent in the room. She asked me about Vancouver and my stay in Ireland. She was as charming as the Irish are reported in legend to be. I would vote for her in a minute.

On the other hand, the president’s role in the government of Ireland is more ceremonial than executive. The real head of the government is the Taoiseach, who is appointed by the President on the nomination of the Dáil (the parliament, divided, like ours, into two houses). The Taoiseach nominates one member of Government to be Tánaiste, who acts in the place of the Taoiseach if the Taoiseach is absent. That’s clear as mud, ain’t it? I say let Mary run the whole damn thing.

My other big recent adventure was a four-day trip to Paris. We booked this jaunt because of the irresistible ticket price offered by Ryan Air. Now, I don’t know if you’ve heard of this Irish company, but it is one of the big successes in commercial aviation in the world. While other airlines are chopping routes and staff, Ryan Air is buying planes. It may well be the largest carrier in the world in a few years. And its reaped this success by being a no-frills, super-budget airline.

How budget is it? Would you believe 10 euro (that’s $14) one-way from Ireland to Paris. Hello? And even better deals can be had. Seriously. Check out the website: ryanair.com. How do they do this? Well, it’s really no-frills. And I don’t mean that they stiff you on the free cocktails, I mean there no in-flight service and no before-flight service. They don’t have ticket agents; you have to book the flights yourself on the web. They don’t reserve seats; everyone charges on the plane and grabs what he can. They don’t offer connections with other flights. But the main way this airline saves money is by avoiding the major airports. If you fly Air Canada to Paris you will land in one of two airports: Charles De Gaulle or Orly. Ryan Air lands in Beauvais. Have you ever heard of Beauvais airport? Of course not. Why? Because it really isn’t an airport at all. As far as I can tell, it’s a goat farm with a long driveway. As we were landing I saw a farmer desperately trying to get his herd off the tarmac before the plane hit them. The control tower at Beauvais is a guy in a beret sitting on a step ladder at the edge of the field. The “terminal” is a corrugated metal shed that was obviously designed for storing animal feed. The luggage carousel isn’t motorized. The luggage sits there and the passengers have to run around it.

The bus ride from Beauvais to Paris is advertised as taking 45 minutes, but those must be metric minutes, cause my watch said it took over an hour. But hey, who cares? We got off the bus and got onto Paris’s brilliant subway system, the Metro, and headed for our hotel. When we came up out of our Metro station we found ourselves staring at the Moulin Rouge. Kinda cool.

Then we turned around to face the direction of our hotel and saw before us every porno shop, adult cinema, and peep show you can imagine. We had arrived in the center of Paris’s sex strip, Pigalle. And the porno shops of Paris are not subtle. They have names like “Porno Shop,” “Sex Shop,” “Le Porno Sexy Shop,” or “Sex-o Porn Sexy Shop de Porn Sex.” And because it was Saturday evening, the touts were standing in the doorways of these fine establishments advertising their wares, with typical Gallic discretion, by bellowing, “Fucky sucky porno sexy fuck sex porno sex-o!” In case you still could not figure out what these shops were about (I guess if you were a deaf illiterate), there were large, and fairly explicit, posters beside the doorways. These drew the attention of my nine-year-old son.

Son: Daddy, look at all the pictures! Why is that naked lady lying on top of that other naked lady backwards?
Me: Well, uh, the lady on the bottom has, um, frostbite and so the lady on top is pressing her body against the frozen part to thaw it out. That’s how the Eskimos deal with frostbite.
Son: So all the naked ladies in the pictures are Eskimos?
Me: Yes. They’re blonde Eskimos with huge breasts.
Son: Why is that naked Eskimo lady hitting that man with the whip?
Me: Uh, she’s practicing her whipping technique for a dog sled race.
Son: Are there lots of Eskimos in Paris?
Me: Well, just this part of Paris.
Son: Why?
Me: Well, you know in Vancouver we have a Chinatown? This is Paris’s Eskimo-town. I think they call it Le Petite Alaska.
Son: Can we go in a shop and meet and Eskimo lady?
Me: No, son, you have to be 18 years old to go in the shop.
Son: Why?
Me: Shut up, that’s why.

The hotel, despite the neighborhood, was great and Paris, well, what can one say about Paris? If you’ve been there, I don’t have to tell you what it’s like. If you haven’t been there, call your travel agent. I had not been in Paris in fifteen years, but all the good stuff was still there. Beans on toast for brekkie? I don’t think so. Vandalized public benches? No sir. Sure, some people can be snooty (a quality that the Irish are incapable of), but they can also be gracious. But all in all, when you walk along the Siene on a brilliant Sunday in spring; when you grab a crepe from the best crepe stand (itself a brilliant idea) in Paris, the one near the Grands Boulevards Metro station; when you wander through the Egyptian wing of the Louvre; when you climb the Arc de Triumph and see the city radiating from that central monument; when you are the only person in the room at the Museum of Cluny that holds the Damsel and the Unicorn tapestries; when you have your second dinner in a row at Chartier, the oldest continuing operating restaurant in Paris, still decorated as it was at the turn of the century, where the waiters write your bill on the tablecloth and where you can order a fine three-course meal for four with wine for under $100; when you walk into a grocery store and smell real (!) cheeses, buy excellent wines for under $5, and exquisite pastries; then there are only two words that come to mind to express the depth of your satisfaction with what Western civilization can offer: I win.



Coming soon: I take on city hall.