☘☘☘ March 11 at 19:30 – Irish Heritage Quebec will hold an activity in McMahon Hall, 1145 de Salaberry in Quebec City. Samantha Bilodeau, a graduate of Laval University and a Gaelic Football player with Les Patriotes de Québec will give a presentation entitled Between Memory and History: Connecting the Irish past between Shannon and Valcartier. Refreshments will be served and parking stubs for Îlot St-Patrick will be validated. For more information phone Irish Heritage Quebec at 418-704-3404. ☘☘☘

☘☘☘ A draw will be held for a 2019 Societé Historique de Quebec calendar among all paid up members. ☘☘☘

☘☘☘ Monday February 11 at 19:30 – Irish Heritage Quebec will hold an activity in McMahon Hall, 1145 de Salaberry in Quebec City. John O’Connor will give a presentation entitled Irish Heritage Quebec and Genealogical Assistance. Over the years Irish Heritage Quebec has answered requests from persons in Canada or the United States who seek assistance to complete their research into family members who once lived in Quebec City and vicinity. Several interesting dossiers will be presented with illustrations of what the research revealed. Refreshments will be served and parking stubs for Îlot St-Patrick will be validated. For more information phone Irish Heritage Quebec at 418-704-3404.

John O’Connor is a native of Quebec City. In 1966 he received a Bachelor of Arts from Laval University as a graduate of St. Lawrence College. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Laval University in 1969 and became a member of the Quebec Bar in 1970. He taught for 29 years in the Techniques juridiques Program of Rimouski College and Garneau College. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of Irish Heritage Quebec since 1999. ☘☘☘

☘☘☘ A draw will be held for a 2019 Societé Historique de Quebec calendar among all paid up members. ☘☘☘

☘☘☘ Monday January 14 at 19:30 – Irish Heritage Quebec will hold an activity in McMahon Hall, 1145 de Salaberry in Quebec City. Joe Lonergan will give a presentation entitled St. Patrick’s Church — A History of the Congregation of Catholics of Quebec City speaking the English language and Where They Worshipped. Refreshments will be served and parking stubs for Îlot St-Patrick will be validated. For more information phone Irish Heritage Quebec at 418-704-3404.

Joe Lonergan is a graduate of St Patrick’s High School. He received his B.A. from St. Lawrence College and holds his B.Ed. and M. A. in History from St. Mary’s University. Retired from a thirty-five year career in education at St. Patrick’s High School he currently serves as president of Irish Heritage Quebec.☘☘☘

Monday, November 12 at 7:30 p.m.- Gary O’Brien will give a presentation on the Irish settlements of Ste-Brigitte-de-Laval and Saint-Dunstan-du-Lac-Beauport. Once referred to as the Waterloo settlement, many of the settlers had to come to Québec during the great migration following the end of the Napoleonic wars.  Refreshments will be served and parking stubs for Îlot St. Patrick will be validated. Members and friends are invited to attend. For further information phone Irish Heritage Quebec at 418-704-3404.

Gary O’Brien graduated with an M. A. in Political Science from the University of Ottawa. In retirement he has spent much time doing genealogical and historical research

☘☘☘ Monday, October 15 at 19:30 – Steve Cameron of Coirneal Cealteach of Sainte-Agathe-de-Lotbinière will give a presentation entitled Irish Touchstones in the Hills of Lotbiniére. Steve Cameron will unveil memories and hard evidence of Irish immigrant stonewalled enclosures from 1820 to 1880 that indicate the old country savoir-faire they brought with them. Refreshments will be served and parking stubs for Îlot St-Patrick will be validated. For more information please phone Irish Heritage Quebec at 418-704-3404.

Steve Cameron, a graduate of Sir George Williams University, has published three books on the history of his locality. ☘☘☘

☘☘☘ Monday September 17 at 19:30 – Irish Heritage Quebec will hold an activity in McMahon Hall, 1145 de Salaberry in Quebec City. Joe Lonergan will give a presentation entitled In Search of St. Patrick’s School outlining his inquiry into the school’s past.  Refreshments will be served and parking stubs for Îlot St-Patrick will be validated. For more information please phone Irish Heritage Quebec at 418-704-3404

Joe Lonergan is a graduate of St Patrick’s High School. He received his B.A. from St. Lawrence College and holds his B.Ed. and M. A. in History from St. Mary’s University. Retired from a thirty-five year career in education at St. Patrick’s High School he currently serves as president of Irish Heritage Quebec.☘☘☘

Monday May 8, at 19:30 Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin will give an illustrated presentation based on ‘Ghost of the Carricks: An Irish Famine Odyssey in Rural Quebec’, a forthcoming documentary film which he produced and directed. The documentary profiles the coffin ship Carricks of Whitehaven that foundered off the Gaspé coast in April 1847.

Professor Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, a native of Clare, is an award-winning Irish musician, ethnomusicologist and cultural historian. Formerly Jefferson Smurfit Professor of Irish Studies and Professor of Music at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, he holds the bilingual Johnson Chair in Quebec and Canadian Irish Studies at Concordia University, Montreal. He has performed, broadcast, adjudicated and lectured on Irish music throughout Europe and North America. Funded by the Quebec government, his research focuses on cultural memory and Irish soundscapes in Quebec and Canada since the fall of New France.

Monday April 10 Irish Heritage Quebec will hold an activity in McMahon Hall, 1145 de Salaberry in Quebec City. Joe Lonergan will give a presentation entitled From Shamrock to Maple: The Evolution of St. Patrick’s Cadet Corps, Number 208. He will trace the transformation of the unit from one that initially fostered Irish nationalism to one that fostered a developing Canadian identity. Joe Lonergan graduated from St Patrick’s High School, received a B.A. from St. Lawrence College and received a B.Ed and a Master of Arts in History from St. Mary’s University. Now retired from St. Patrick’s High School having worked in education for thirty-five years, he is currently President of Irish Heritage Quebec. Refreshments will be served and parking stubs for Îlot St-Patrick will be validated. For more information phone Irish heritage Quebec at 418-704-3404

March Activity

Monday March 13 at 19:30 — Irish Heritage Quebec will hold an activity in McMahon Hall, 1145 De Salaberry, Quebec City.Members and friends are invited. Refreshments will be served and parking stubs for Îlot St-Patrick will be validated. All members who have renewed for 2017 will be eligible to win a 2017 calendar published by the Société historique de Québec. 

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MARY AUGUSTA WILSON

Mary Wilson’s travels to Québec took years and covered a wide territory ranging from Limerick across the broad Atlantic and through Chicago and Vero Beach.  War in Afghanistan, Green/Orange riots in Ireland, racial conflicts in the USA – she was close to all of these events and more. Her descendant, Wilson Price, tells her story with the aid of old photographs, documents, public records and the odd history book.  The presentation covers Mary Wilson’s quiet life, some would say luxury, in Ireland, immigration to the United States, new world discrimination against the Irish, a family alone on a deserted island and the move north to a new life

Wilson Price graduated from St Patrick’s High School in 1959.  St. Pat’s gave him the knowledge and work habits needed to obtain a B.ScA. in Engineering Physics at Université Laval as well as MSc and PhD degrees in industrial engineering at the University of Birmingham, England.

February Activity

Monday February 13 at 19:30 — Brad Kent will give a presentation entitled Sean O’Faolain, the Irish Public Intellectual, and European Culture. Sean O’Faolain remains one of the most contentious figures in modern Irish history. Despite having been a bomb-maker and propagandist for the IRA, a Commonwealth fellow at Harvard University and an internationally respected short story writer, novelist and biographer, his reputation has come to be defined by his role as the leading public intellectual and polemicist of the post-independence period. This lecture will introduce people to this fascinating and sometimes paradoxical figure, with a particular focus on his attempts to ensure that Ireland, at the time dominated by an isolationist ethos, recognized its historical links to European culture, a timely consideration in the wake of Brexit and populist movements against the EU.

Brad Kent is associate professor of British and Irish literatures at Université Laval. In 2013-14 he was visiting professor at Trinity College Dublin. Most recently, he has published George Bernard Shaw in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2015), The Selected Essays of Sean O’Faolain (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), and a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Theatre (Oxford University Press, 2016). He is currently working on an eight-volume series of the writings of Bernard Shaw for Oxford’s World Classics.  Click here is a link to a review on Brad Kent’s  anthology of O’Faolain’s essays.