Brian Brennan is a Calgary-based author and historian whose many previous books include 'Rascals and Scallywags', 'How the West was Written: The Life and Times of James H. Gray' and 'The Good Steward: The Ernest C. Manning Story'. His latest book 'Leaving Dublin' is sub-titled 'Writing My Way from Ireland to Canada'. It is the story of an Irish childhood, a successful immigrant experience, a career of work in entertainment and journalism in Canada, and a moving discourse on Brennan's relationship with his parents.
In the early chapters, Brennan describes coming of age in Ireland in the 50's and 60's, in family circumstances very different from those so harrowingly described by Frank McCourt. Brennan's father was a low-level civil servant and his mother a homemaker, who did remarkably well to feed, clothe and educate their four children on a very modest budget. Brennan describes quite vividly the Ireland of that era, where he and his friends managed to have fun and to derive intellectual stimulation from books, newspapers, movies and plays despite the repressive influences of church and state. But emigration was firmly embedded in Irish culture and Brennan was attracted by the possibility of living someplace other than the Emerald Isle. He describes his decision to leave Ireland as follows: 'Canada had an enticing aura of mystery and opportunity about it. I romanticized it as an exotic destination, thousands of miles away from people who knew me, where I could reinvent myself as, well, I didn't yet know'.
Bob Dylan's song 'I pity the poor immigrant' has the line: 'I pity the poor immigrant who wishes he would've stayed home'. Brennan's experience in Canada was the exact opposite. He landed on his feet, as the Irish say, and he describes how he almost immediately fulfilled a life ambition by becoming an entertainer, a musician and storyteller who traversed this mighty land and recorded two albums as one of the Irish duo 'The Dublin Rogues'. While on the road he met the girl of his dreams, married her and decided to switch careers so as to raise a family in a more settled occupation than itinerant musician. He trained - very briefly - as a journalist and then landed a succession of jobs simply by asking for them. He wound up spending 25 years with the Calgary Herald as a writer in many different capacities. His final and most personally rewarding position saw him launch and write a remarkably popular 'Tribute' column for which he researched the life stories of ordinary Albertans who had recently died.
Brennan is a born story teller and he livens up his narrative with many anecdotes of the people, famous and otherwise, that he met in the course of his career. 'Leaving Dublin' is engaging and humorous throughout but me the most gripping chapters are towards the end of the book. In 'Locked Out' he describes very powerfully the experience of the journalists at the Calgary Herald who tried to join a union in 1999 following the takeover of the Herald by Conrad Black's Hollinger group, the subsequent steep deterioration in the quality of that newspaper and the pressure on the journalists to adapt or leave. Brennan was one of the bargaining committee that tried in vain to negotiate a first collective agreement with the owners. That failed, the journalists spent six months on the picket line and eventually had to give up the struggle. Some of them returned to work but many others, including Brennan, had had enough and decided to move on. For him this meant becoming a full-time author and writing books about interesting and significant figures in Alberta's past, including 'Romancing the Rockies: Mountaineers, Missionaries, Marilyn & More' and 'Boondoggles, Bonanzas and Other Alberta stories'
The most emotional chapter is the final one, 'Moving to the Front of the Generational Train' where Brennan describes his relationships with his mother and father in the final years of their lives. His relationship with his mother was always very close but his father had a more distant relationship with Brennan and his three siblings. Brennan writes very honestly of his life-long search for his father's approval, of coming close on a few occasions and then of the relationship's reversion to distance and disappointment.
Brennan's story is of course unique but in a sense it is the story of many immigrants to Canada and of their successes and setbacks in adapting to a life in a new and vast country, while maintaining links with their birth countries. Perhaps this book will serve as a stimulus to other immigrants to tell their own stories and so contribute to the collective story that is Canada.
