Archive News
Plan for Salthill garden to honour organ donors
Date Published: 05-Jun-2012
By Cathy Donohue
Plans for a National Garden in Commemoration of Organ Donors to be located in Salthill Park are officially underway after the Strange Boat Donor Foundation presented their proposal to the City Council on Monday last.
“We are absolutely delighted to have the support of the City Council and it was a great opportunity to present our proposed national garden at the Strategic Policy Committee meeting last Monday,” said Martina Goggin.
Martina and her husband Denis set up Strange Boat Donor Foundation after the untimely death of their son Éamonn in a road accident in 2006. His wish was to have his organs donated and afterwards his parents became more aware than ever of the importance of this process.
“It is a great consolation to think that your loved one has helped other families. We set up the Strange Boat Donor Foundation specially dedicated to this cause and, as time went on, we saw there was a need for a tangible place associated with organ donation.”
And so the National Garden of Commemoration & Thanksgiving was born. “There was no such place in Ireland so we decided to set up a national garden. We looked all over the country but then decided, why not Galway? We live in Spiddal and believe Salthill is ideal; we were given the green light for the project in 2010 depending on various conditions. We are now in partnership with the Council as we work on the planning process.”
Director of Transport and Infrastructure at Galway City Council Ciarán Hayes supported the project fully, pointing out that the Council hopes to advance plans on the garden by the end of this year.
“We welcome the opportunity to work with the foundation in bringing the garden to fruition. It’s an innovative scheme to have a reflective garden concentrating on the circle of life and we certainly welcome the proposal.”
The garden will consist of a central stone area surrounded by vegetation, together creating the symbol of the hawthorn flower which is traditionally associated with healing of the heart. There will be pathways, stone seating and an elevated area overlooking the sea, all of which will provide room for rest and contemplation.
Another unique feature is that the garden will feature stones from each of the 32 counties of Ireland, thus representing donors from every corner of the country. The Strange Boat Donor Foundation hopes to source stone tablets from each of the five continents.
“We are actively involved with Ellis Island in New York at the moment and there will be an event in September symbolically presenting the stone tablet, hopefully this will raise awareness and much needed funds,” said Martina.
Funding is currently the biggest issue and although the foundation has a number of events in the pipeline they are encouraging anyone with any interest in the subject to get involved.
“The subject is relevant to so many and we would like people to get involved in any little way at all. Éamonn’s friends have planned a table quiz and dance night in Monroe’s next Friday, June 8. We also have a series of concerts planned and are open to the possibility of corporate sponsorship.”
As Salthill Park is open to the public the national garden is in a vulnerable position regarding the threat of vandalism, but Martina is hopeful that people will respect what the garden stands for.
“We want this garden to be accessible to the public, not locked away and only open at certain times. If you were to listen to your fears you wouldn’t do anything. This is a garden to represent everyone and we hope that because of the nature of the garden it will be quite inspirational to anyone who goes in there, a sanctuary for people.”
Like Mr Hayes, Martina is hopeful that work on the garden will either commence by the end of this year, or early 2013 at the latest.
“Put it this way, we hope that by this time next year the garden will be open,” she added.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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