The Canada Ireland Foundation today announced that its Founder, Robert G. Kearns, has retired from his position as Chair of the Foundation’s Board of Directors and as a member of the Board. Mark Purdy, a Founding Director and long-standing Board member, has been elected by the Board to serve as the new Chair.

1n 1997, Mr. Kearns began discussions with the City of Toronto to realize his vision for an urban park to commemorate Irish migrants. In May of 2000, this vision led to the founding of Ireland Park Foundation and its namesake project, Ireland Park, located on Toronto’s waterfront. Under Mr. Kearns’ leadership, Canada Ireland Foundation (formerly Ireland Park Foundation) has grown into a leading organization for Irish arts, culture and heritage in Canada.

With the new leadership of Mark Purdy, the Foundation intends to continue to build on the work started by Mr. Kearns.  The next major milestone will be the 2026 opening of the Foundation’s arts and culture venue – the Corleck. The Foundation is grateful for all of the passion, time and effort Mr. Kearns has devoted to the Foundation over its long history and wishes him all the best on his well-earned retirement from this leadership role.

Reflecting on his time with the Foundation, Mr. Kearns noted, “For the past 45 years, I have indulged my passion and purpose towards promoting a more informed awareness of the deep and ancient bond of friendship that exists between Canada and Ireland.” He added, “I am incredibly proud of all we have accomplished in that time, from Ireland Park to Grasett Park and soon the Corleck – a shining jewel on Toronto’s waterfront where everyone can celebrate and share in Irish and Canadian history, heritage, arts and culture. So, it seems to me that this is the right time for me to step down from my position as Chair of the Board and to transition the role to Mark, who has served the Board and been alongside me from the beginning and throughout this journey. I am incredibly excited to see where his and the Board’s vision will take us”

“It is an absolute honour and privilege to succeed Robert as the next Chair of Canada Ireland Foundation.  I look forward to working closely with my fellow board members, our key stakeholders and the broader community to fulfill the mission and vision of the Foundation,” stated Mr. Purdy.

 

About Robert G. Kearns

After emigrating to Toronto from Dublin in 1979, Mr. Kearns established his career in the Canadian Life Insurance industry one year later. In 1983, Robert founded Kearns Insurance Corporation and continues to serve his clients today.  Mr. Kearns also became passionate about fostering Canada – Ireland historical connections, inspired by his academic background in Archeology and Greek and Roman Civilization.  In 1997, on the 150th anniversary of the Great Irish Famine, Mr. Kearns began negotiations to secure a site on the south east corner of Bathurst Quay as the site for Ireland Park. The award-winning park opened in 2007, to commemorate the Irish famine migrants who came to Canada in 1847. Under Robert’s leadership the Foundation has expanded into an organization which has surpassed all of his early expectations, now delivering a wide range of programming as well as a physical presence with Ireland Park, Grasett Park and the impending 2026 opening of the Corleck, located next to Ireland Park on Toronto’s waterfront.

 

About Mark Purdy

Mr. Purdy emigrated to Toronto from Belfast with his family in 1971. He has always been passionate about his Irish roots and strengthened his connections to the Irish community, initially, as a Director of the Ireland Fund of Canada with Robert Kearns. As part of that organization, he enjoyed being the Committee Chair of the St Patrick’s Day Lunch for three years. Mark is a Founding Director of Canada Ireland Foundation and a member of the Foundation’s Corleck Construction Committee, Fundraising Committee and a former member of its Governance Compliance Committee.  He is also an advisory member of the Northern Ireland Business Advisory Council, supporting Northern Ireland’s trade and FDI strategy to help local Irish businesses expand their presence in the Canadian market.

Mr. Purdy has spent the last 25 years in the investment industry, becoming a founding partner and chief investment officer at Arrow Capital Management Inc.  Prior to his role at Arrow Capital, Mr. Purdy held senior roles at BPI Financial Corporation and IBM Canada Ltd. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Commerce and Economics degrees.  He was captain of the Varsity Blues Soccer team and was inducted into the University of Toronto Sports Hall of Fame in 2007. After graduation, Mark continued to play professional soccer for five years in the Canadian Soccer League with the Toronto Blizzard and Hamilton Steelers and spent time with two professional teams in England before returning to begin a business career at IBM Canada.

Mark is married to Emma Purdy, partner at Ernst & Young and PwC.  They have three children: Connor, Cameron and Alexis.

The transformation of Toronto’s waterfront from an industrial hub to a livable community has taken decades of planning and construction. Most traces of the heavy industries that once lined the lakefront have long been erased, with only a few monuments left that remind us of Toronto’s origins as a port city. Of the remaining structures, two monolithic silos bookending the downtown waterfront have yet to find a purpose in this new context, with the Victory Soya Mills Silos in the east and the Canada Malting Silos in the west still standing strong. These landmarks have been vacant and neglected for decades as the city has grown around them, but fortunately there is significant political will to reuse and revitalize both, and the rebirth of one of them is already underway.

The Canada Malting Silos stand on Bathurst Quay at the foot of Bathurst Street, where many travellers may recognize the hulking concrete mass on their way to and from Billy Bishop Airport. The property is also home to the Corleck Building, a unique Art Deco structure completed in the 1940s, which was originally the administrative offices of the Canada Malting Company. These two structures are what is left of the Canada Malting Company’s operations, who abandoned the site in the 1980s. The City has taken over the property since then, with the Corleck most recently serving as offices for PortsToronto, but the silos were left to decay and the remainder of the property left largely covered in asphalt.

Read the full article at Urban Toronto

Dear friends and supporters,

For the past 44 years, I have devoted my passion and purpose to promoting a more informed awareness of the deep and ancient bond of friendship that exists between Canada and Ireland.

As the Founder and Chair of Canada Ireland Foundation (CIF), I am incredibly proud of what we have accomplished.

Together, we have created Ireland Park, Grasett Park and very soon, the Corleck – our jewel on Toronto’s waterfront and a destination in which we will celebrate and share Irish history, heritage, arts and culture with wider audiences.

Canada Ireland Foundation has never been on a better financial footing, or held in higher regard amongst all of our constituents, on both sides of the Atlantic, than we are right now. Your support and generosity has made this possible and for that I am and shall always be eternally grateful.

Therefore, it seems to me that this is the right time for me to step down from my position as Chair of the CIF Board and to transition my role to become Founder and Chair Emeritus of the Foundation in June 2025. With this timing, my successor will have the honour and pleasure of presiding over the formal opening of the Corleck in 2026.

It was always my dream to inspire the worlds of government, business, academia and the arts, to join together to reach a shared goal.

With new energy and vision, I can see a time in the near future, when the Foundation will have a presence in major population centres all across Canada, as well as in Ireland.

Because of your support, kindness, generosity and enthusiasm, the best days of Canada Ireland Foundation are in the years to come.

Sincerely,
Robert G. Kearns
Chair and Founder

What will become an international trail of Irish famine victims began in St. John’s this week, a reflection of what the country’s ambassador calls the strength of the Irish diaspora in Newfoundland and Labrador.

A trail of bronze shoes, cast from real antique shoes discovered bundled in the thatch of a 19th-century cottage in Ireland, will stretch from Canada to as far away as Australia.

Ambassador Eamonn McKee says by the time it’s completed, it’ll be the longest heritage trail in the world, marking the journey of Irish famine victims as they dispersed around the globe.

“They were looking for new homes and new futures, essentially for survival,” McKee said. “It’s a really historic event.”

More than 100,000 Irish immigrants fled after a destructive mold ruined potato crops across the country. They crossed to St. John’s on ships over the Atlantic, often in crowded and unsanitary conditions.

Read the full article on CBC News

The Canada Ireland Foundation (CIF) is pleased to announce that Ms. Eileen Costello has been elected Vice Chair of the Foundation’s Board of Directors, effective May 1.

Eileen is a Partner in the Municipal and Land Use Planning Group at Aird & Berlis LLP. Eileen has provided invaluable expertise to the CIF as the Chair of the Corleck Construction Committee. The Corleck is a heritage building on Toronto’s waterfront which will become a vibrant new venue for arts, cultural and heritage programming for the Irish-Canadian community.

“Eileen’s talent and expertise provides the right leadership at the right time for the Canada Ireland Foundation,” said founder and Chair, Robert Kearns. Eileen was instrumental, as Chair of the Board of Governors at The Corporation of Massey Hall & Roy Thomson Hall, in shaping Toronto’s cultural landscape through a once-in-a-generation renovation of the historic Massey Hall. We are fortunate to have her guidance as we complete the Corleck.

At Aird & Berlis, Eileen assists clients with acquiring development approvals for a broad range of projects and advises municipalities on all aspects of the statutory and regulatory scheme which governs land development and regulation in the Province.

Eileen is the author of The Ontario Heritage Act and Commentary and regularly advises private property owners and municipal governments in respect of property designations, Heritage Conservation, Districts and property standards bylaws to address designated properties.

Toronto’s waterfront is getting a new arts venue courtesy of the Canada Ireland Foundation, who is giving new purpose to what was once an administrative building for a malting company.

The designated heritage building used to belong to the Canada Malting Company, and will now be used for art, culture and heritage programming.

The foundation is dubbing it “the Corleck.” The Corleck is an Irish stone idol that was found by a farmer in the first or second century AD. The three-faced head is made of limestone, and is believed by many today to represent the trinity of the past, present and future.

Read the full article on CTV News Toronto

Blink, and you just might miss it, but a tiny new park in Toronto is offering a brief but rich lesson about the city’s history — a story that very much mirrors the world we live in today.

Officially opened this past July, Grasett Park is among the smallest public parks in Toronto, measuring just 130 square metres in area.

Grasett Park is the second collaboration between the city and Canada Ireland Foundation on a public space celebrating Toronto’s response to a wave of Irish migrants fleeing famine in the summer of 1847. Over 38,000 migrants almost tripled Toronto’s population of just 20,000 that year, many arriving sick and in desperate need of medical care.

Complementing the similar themes of Ireland Park on the waterfront, this park can be found at the corner of Adelaide Street West and Widmer Street, a site where temporary fever shacks were erected as Toronto’s first purpose-built General Hospital lacked the capacity to handle the influx of new arrivals suffering from typhus.

Read the full article on BlogTO

 

Imagine a hot night in the summer of 1847. Lantern light creeps out through the doorways of a shed where Irish refugees, newly arrived in Toronto, lie sick with “ship fever.” Curtains of cheesecloth, placed to keep out insects, billow in the breeze. And through the door walks a figure: George Robert Grasett, a local doctor who has volunteered to treat the new arrivals.

Many of those newcomers, who left home to escape the Irish Potato Famine, would not survive their time in hospital. Ship fever, now known as typhus, would take their lives – and also those of Dr. Grasett and a dozen other medical personnel. Now, 174 years after Dr. Grasett’s death, a downtown Toronto park is commemorating him and his colleagues – medical professionals who showed up to fight a deadly disease, and sacrificed themselves.

Grasett Park, which officially opens Friday on Adelaide Street West in Toronto, brings this history back into view. “It’s a story of incredibly courageous people who do the right things, notwithstanding the objections of people in their social milieu,” said Robert Kearns, head of the Canada Ireland Foundation, which helped create the park. “That is a fantastic story of the early history of our city: Of welcoming people and accepting people.”

Read the full article in the Globe and Mail

How one aging art deco building became an art exhibit

From the outside, The Corleck Building doesn’t look like much these days. The art deco building started life as the corporate offices for the Canada Malting silos — those enormous abandoned monoliths on Toronto’s waterfront, next to Billy Bishop Airport at the foot of Eireann Quay. After the silos ceased operations in the 1980s, it was taken over by the City of Toronto, and by the Parks and Recreation department. Then it was used by the airport, and in fact, one small corner of the building still houses the airport security break room. But for the most part, the Corleck Building has just been left to rot. Until now.

Earlier this year, the Canada Ireland Foundation signed a lease that will make the building both the foundation’s new headquarters and Toronto’s newest cultural space.

According to William Peat, the foundation’s executive director, the multi-million dollar rehabilitation of the building will start next month.  But in the meantime, Peat says, “We wanted to do something with the building while it was still in its raw form.”

What they did was turn it over to eight artists — four solo artists, two duos — to create an exhibit called Miotas/Myth. (Miotas is the Irish word for myth.) Each artist was given a room to interpret the theme.

Read the full article published by CBC Arts

A new park commemorates those who died helping the victims of a 19th-century epidemic.

When the Ireland Park Foundation began planning Dr. George Robert Grasett Park to honour the medical professionals who sacrificed their lives to treat the victims of the 1847 typhus epidemic, it would have been hard to imagine just how relevant their project would be to the present. “It’s extraordinary that the park will open in the latter stages of a pandemic or shortly thereafter,” observes Robert Kearns, founder and chair of the foundation.

From that time to the present, medical professionals have provided the frontline defence against outbreaks of illness, ranging from typhus to COVID-19. Often put- ting their own health at risk, doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers try to bring comfort, hope, and treatment to those facing life-threatening illnesses.

Download the full article, courtesy of Spacing Magazine