By Mike Mandarano
Pat Kelly sits comfortably in his seat, sipping Carlsberg Light and watching Champions League soccer on the big screen at the Heart and Crown Pub.
With his thick Irish accent, Kelly talks about his plans to construct an Irish cultural centre in downtown Ottawa, which would be the first of its kind in the city.
He stresses the need for a permanent location where the city’s Irish community can gather to keep their heritage alive.
“For the first time all the (Irish) groups are getting together with the realization that if we don’t have our own community centre, we’re very vulnerable. We’re at the whims of someone else,” he says.
Kelly says his plans are still preliminary, but are becoming concrete.
They include a 200-seat auditorium and a library where Irish history can be collected and displayed.
Kelly’s no stranger to business and construction. He owns the Heart and Crown and the Earl of Sussex pubs, and he’s also co-owner of a construction company. He says a new cultural centre would strengthen the city’s Irish community, which Statistics Canada reports at 183,000 in 2001.
“It’ll mean a closer connection between groups. Right now all the groups operate independently, but they’re all friendly, and they’re all getting together to do this,” says Kelly. “With a united force we can do much better.”
Until recently, St. Patrick’s Hall on Gloucester Street served as an Irish cultural centre of sorts. It was home to various Irish theatre and musical groups, and also included Gaelic-language lessons.
But the hall has been demolished because the building committee at St. Patrick’s Basilica decided it was not economically viable to keep it running.
One of the groups that called St. Patrick’s Hall home is the Tara Players, a theatre group that stages works by Irish playwrights. For the past 28 years, the Tara Players have performed in St. Patrick’s 200-seat auditorium, until they were forced to find a new place a month ago.
Padraig Finlay, Tara’s past president, says it’s disheartening to see the old hall gone.
“I just drove by there the other day, and it’s sad,” he says. “It was heavily utilized. In many ways it was a cultural centre; it was so central and it had the tradition.”
Because of the demolition of St. Patrick’s Hall, the groups that once played there have had to find a new venue. The Tara Players are now performing out of a 900-seat auditorium in the Bronson Centre.
Marie Gibson, head of publicity for the Tara Players, says it’s tough to adapt to the change in venue.
“We were at St. Pat’s Hall for 28 years. That was the only place we performed in, so we lost our home,” says Gibson, who cites the lack of storage as the biggest problem with the Bronson Centre.
Although Finlay says he appreciates the new facility, there are other problems facing the theatre group, namely the vast amounts of empty seats at each performance.
With an average attendance of 150 people per performance, the Tara Players are “like a minnow in a big pond”, says Kelly.
Gibson agrees. “Drama is an intimate way of entertaining, and the Bronson Centre is huge. It’s not like having our own home.”
Kelly says he hopes construction of the centre will begin in the next three to four years.