If you don’t know Belfast, you don’t really know Ireland.
That thought always strikes me as I’m departing from Ireland’s second largest city. Through thick and thin, I’ve never lost my fascination with the place.
With the exception of the border counties, few people from the Republic of Ireland visited “The North” in my youth.
It was the odd diversity of the city that fired my imagination. In Wexford, pretty much everyone was Catholic. In Belfast I couldn’t even begin to count the number of sects, churches, kirks, and Pentecostal meeting halls that dotted the city.
Then again, I was just a visitor with little experience of the brooding sectarianism that periodically erupted in the state of Northern Ireland. Still, Yeats’ line “Great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start” often resonated when one crossed over the border.
But I also instinctively recognized that if there were ever to be a united Ireland the seed would spring from Belfast’s stony streets.
Though it’s unlikely to happen in my lifetime, yet I often wonder what such a union would be like.
While in the Crown Bar on Great Victoria Street some weeks back, I felt I finally got a glimpse of it: a full pub rocking to a hundred conversations - some even political - and little evidence of any divide between the revelers.
There’s an overall sophistication and a to-hell-with-it attitude in Belfast nowadays. I suppose it comes from foreign travel, Internet access, and the passage of 25 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.
No book I’ve read, or speech I’ve heard, compares to the raw impact of their thoughts. These tours around West Belfast, and in particular the Falls and Shankill Roads, are provided by Coiste (www.coiste.ie) and are not to be missed if you want to get to the heart of Ireland and its troubled history.
People just don’t have the time for division anymore. Life has accelerated, especially on the red brick, back streets where friction and memories of past hurts used to fester on damp and rainy nights.
There are still problems, an ongoing lack of a representative government, along with a Legacy Bill passed by an out-of-touch Conservative British government that outrages both communities.
The clientele of The Crown seemed more consumed with rugby and romance, with occasional gripes heard about better health care, education and economic opportunity – much the same as in every other country.
I accompany a tour group around Ireland annually and with a visit to Belfast every second year.
Before we even check into the ever-welcoming Europa (once Europe’s most bombed hotel) we make a stop for lunch at Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, an Irish language community center in the heart of the Belfast Gaeltacht.
It’s a unique cultural establishment and it tends to ground our North American visitors before we undertake a political tour escorted by ex-combatants from each community.
As you might imagine, these gentlemen give their unvarnished opinions about the origins of the conflict, their parts in it, and their hopes and fears for the future.
No book I’ve read, or speech I’ve heard, compares to the raw impact of their thoughts. These tours around West Belfast, and in particular the Falls and Shankill Roads, are provided by Coiste (www.coiste.ie) and are not to be missed if you want to get to the heart of Ireland and its troubled history.
Politics aside, Belfast is about the people, their humor, grace, and ability to pick themselves up and bounce back – no matter all the sledgehammer blows they’ve received.
That goes for their musicians too. From the first time I heard Them, with a teenage Van Morrison singing the Blues like he came from Mississippi rather than Hyndford Street, I was hooked.
How wonderful then to meet the legendary Terri Hooley once again. He’s the subject of the must-see film "Good Vibrations" and the musical of the same name that originated at the Lyric Theatre and recently played New York’s Irish Arts Center.
Terri, the effervescent Greg Cowan of The Outcasts, my old friend Aidan Murtagh of Protex, and Stuart Bailie, whose book "Trouble Songs" is a classic, not only charmed my group of 90, they allowed them an X-Ray view into Belfast’s lyrical, if stormy, soul.
20th Century Punk, its ideals and foibles, was resurrected in the Piano Lounge of the Europa that night. But then, it had never really died, had it? Long life to you Belfast and your devotion to music!
Make sure you visit - if you really want to know Ireland.
