It may only be a month of child's play in Saint John but to inner-city kids from Belfast, it makes a world of difference-far from their alienated neighbourhoods at home.
Atlantic Canadians enjoy a way of life where religious differences are tolerated and generally respected-and the right of our children to grow up without fear of religious reprisals is more or less taken for granted. Admittedly, the historical path getting us to this social condition has not been all sweetness and light; however most of us recognize that what we have is indeed precious, especially when compared to many other parts of the world.
Conscious of their own good fortune in this regard, some folks from Saint John, NB, have been reaching across the Atlantic to touch the lives of children who, in contrast, are victims of deep-rooted sectarian hatred and violence. For the past 18 years (except for the year following 9/11) the New Brunswick group has invited children from Belfast, Northern Ireland, to spend a peaceful, month-long, all-expenses-paid summer vacation in Saint John. To the surprise of the participants, the experience turns out to be more than a vacation for the visitors or a hospitality stint for the host families.
Belfast Children's Vacation-Saint John Inc., as the group is officially known, was founded in the winter of 1987-88 and they had their first program the following summer. It was modelled on the organization Irish Canadian Children's Vacations, which had started two years earlier in the Halifax area, developing objectives, an organizational framework and protocols that could be duplicated or modified as needed. Irish Canadian Children's Vacations operated for six years, during which time close to 90 children from Belfast enjoyed a carefree summer in Nova Scotia.
This wasn't the only regional precedent to the Saint John initiative. Around the time the Halifax-area program got started, Linda and Ben Rodgers, who had a coffee shop in downtown Charlottetown, decided to get involved. They formed a small committee and, in co-operation with the Halifax organization, invited a group of 20 North Irish children along with their Nova Scotia counterparts-40 kids in all-for a week-long camping trip on PEI. The following year Ben and Linda's committee independently hosted a dozen young visitors from Belfast, along with chaperones. They continued the undertaking each summer for 13 years, and by 1999 some 180 Protestant and Catholic children had enjoyed each other's company on neutral territory.
For various reasons, largely related to the increasing difficulty of raising funds, both the Nova Scotia and PEI projects eventually came to an end, but the Saint John project is still going strong.
Like its predecessor in Nova Scotia, the Saint John organization works closely with youth clubs in a couple of the ghettoized, low-income neighbourhoods of Belfast. Each year six boys and six girls, half of them Roman Catholic, half Protestant, are selected by youth club leaders on the basis of economic and social need. The children are between ages 10 and 12, an impressionable age; old enough to cope with being temporarily separated from their parents though not yet into their teens, when a different type of behavioural issues tend to emerge. Two chaperones, one from each neighbourhood, accompany them to provide emotional and administrative support.
The children are matched with Canadian children of similar ages ahead of time, and written communication ensues. The volunteer host families are carefully screened by a selection committee composed of social science professionals and parents who have been hosts in previous years. A full program of activities is organized, but for much of the time the visiting child simply fits into the normal day-to-day routine of the host family-which usually means a turn at dishwashing and other chores, as well as play. The emotional bond that gradually develops between visitor and host can be profound, and while it doesn't happen in every case, a close relationship often continues for years.
Amanda McAleer, for example, came to New Brunswick as a child in 1988, staying with Erin Maloney and her family. The Maloneys then invited their little visitor to spend the whole summer with them the following year outside of the program. Amanda has been a guest at the Maloney home on several occasions throughout the years, and the Maloneys in turn have travelled to Northern Ireland to meet the McAleer family. Ten years after her initial visit, Amanda returned to Saint John as a chaperone, staying on to attend Erin's wedding. Amanda is now a teacher in Belfast; Erin is a pharmacist in Saint John. The two are still close friends despite the geographical and cultural distance separating them.
Providing opportunity for this kind of bonding is one of the project's objectives, especially for children who would not feel safe visiting each other's neighbourhoods at home in Belfast. "We are not attempting to solve all the political problems in Northern Ireland," says Carey Ryan who, along with her husband, Fran McHugh, has been the driving and co-ordinating force of the Saint John project since its inception. "We are simply giving these children a break from the violence and stress of life in Belfast's inner city. We also enable them to form bonds of friendship across sectarian lines in a way that would be virtually impossible back home."
Organizing group activities that bring children from the two Belfast communities together is one way of promoting this particular goal. For example in Northern Ireland, even soccer or "football," as it is known, tends to lead to fierce sectarian rivalry. Celtic (Catholic/green) versus Linfield (Protestant/blue) is always more than a mere football game in Belfast; whereas in Saint John, a friendly soccer tournament unites Catholic and Protestant kids on a Belfast team to play against Canadians. A Protestant kid passes the ball to a Catholic who shoots and scores a goal for their side; the two throw their arms around each other in jubilation. "A few experiences like that and they are a lot less likely to automatically hate one another," says one of the organizers.
Inevitably, the visiting children are exposed to subtle yet significant influences. It's not uncommon for host families to be "mixed"-one partner Catholic and the other Protestant, an extremely unlikely situation in a country where whole neighbourhoods tend to be one or the other. Here neighbourhoods tend to be integrated and most people are indifferent to other people's religious affiliations-assuming they're even aware of them. It's a relaxed situation compared with the tense environments in which the young visitors have been raised.
Another important event is the fun-filled sports day and picnic organized by Rothesay firefighters and police. Firefighter Scott Dunbar donates his summer vacation, "just to help out," he says. He believes the event demonstrates to kids, whose experiences with civil authority have not always been happy, that grown-ups in uniform can be trusted, and even have fun with them.
The visiting children themselves, on the other hand, true to the nature of childhood generally, tend to be pretty understated about the whole thing. When 11-year-old Marie Braniff from Belfast's Newington district is asked what she likes about Canada, she replies: "Biking, football and swimming." Pushed to explain why she wanted to come, she elaborates: "Get a bit of a holiday! Just make more friends!" Thirteen-year-old David Ashe from Fort William was invited back a second year by the Driscoll family, who were his official hosts the first year. As a result he figures he's a bit of a veteran. "Sure I'm talking Canadian now," he lilts in his lively Ulster accent.
David agrees that life in Canada is indeed different. "The houses look different," he says. After more prompting and more thought he says: "There's different food. Bagels! Tim Hortons!" He's beaming from ear to ear at the very thought of a cream-filled donut. "It's a lot quieter," he says a moment later, and this is as close as he gets to comparing middle-class Saint John to a high-density Belfast housing estate. More telling was the remark of another lad when he was taken to a Saint John shopping mall. "There's nobody with a gun in here," he observed in wonder. For the first time in his young life he was seeing what "normal" community life could be like.
Fran McHugh, like his wife, Carey, is retired from a career in public education. "When I got involved initially I didn't look this far ahead," he says. "I've always been involved with children and young people and I just thought it was a nice idea to give the kids a vacation.
"Today we see people who participated as children back in the early years of the project; now they are grown up, many with families of their own. Based on the feedback we get we believe that they tend to be different parents than they might otherwise have been."
Michael McAllister, also from Newington district, has no hesitation telling people that a "summer vacation" in New Brunswick has meant a lot in his life. In 1989 he was placed in the home of Ann Steele, her son Christopher, and Ann's mother. He had a great time and although there was a fondness between Michael and the family, eventually he and his hosts lost contact after he returned to Belfast. Time passed. The toughness required for survival in a low-income housing development may have had something to do with Michael's early career choice: he got into boxing. He did pretty well at it, too. Fighting as Mickey Quinn he was the three-time winner of the Ulster Middleweight Senior Championship; Irish Intermediate Champion; Ulster Intermediate Champion; and a finalist in the all-Ireland Senior Championship.
His professional boxing career took him to several countries, but always in the back of his mind was the memory of his childhood visit to New Brunswick. One day, "out of the blue," as he puts it, he wrote a letter to Ann, "just to say hello." She was delighted to hear from him and invited him to come for a visit. Now aged 27, studying at Liverpool University and no longer boxing, Michael came back to Saint John last summer to renew friendships. Sitting in the home of Carey and Fran he paged through old clippings and snapshots, some of them of himself as a child, and he shook his head in wonder. "Sure living in Newington you never got out of Belfast," he said. "Coming to New Brunswick lifted my horizons big-time." The former boxing champion had tears in his eyes as he spoke.
So do most of the Saint John families as they bid farewell to their little visitors at the end of a summer vacation, having had their own horizons expanded-and enriched-as well.
Hugh McKervill is the founder Irish Canadian Children's Vacations, in Nova Scotia.