Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spent part of his Sunday in Aughagower, a village in western Ireland, where he connected with distant relatives and paid tribute to his family’s roots before heading to the G7 summit in France.
Carney’s grandparents, Robert Carney and Nora Moran, were both born in that village before emigrating to Canada in 1925. The couple married in Vancouver, where Robert took a position with the Canadian Pacific Railway Police and later joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Carney’s father was born in 1933 and eventually became a professor at the University of Alberta.
After attending Sunday Mass at the local Catholic church in Aughagower — the same church his grandparents would have known — Carney also visited the family grave and planted a tree in their honor. Speaking with reporters afterward, he joked about the unexpected size of his extended family: “I have a lot more cousins than I realised.”
The personal visit followed a more formal appearance on Saturday, when Carney addressed students at Trinity College Dublin. There, he called on nations like Canada and Ireland to build a “dense web of connections … ad hoc coalitions” as the global order established after the Cold War continues to unravel.
“Ireland and Canada are navigating a global rupture, not a quiet transition,” he told the students. He added, “I suggest that amidst this change, amidst this disruption, Canada, Ireland, and Europe can be pivotal, powerful, and purposeful, a force for good.”
Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin, whose country is set to assume the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union on July 1, echoed the sentiment. He told reporters that his government would work to “put flesh on the bone of an enhanced European Union-Canadian relationship.”
