President Mary McAleese has paid tribute to the contribution made to the Northern peace process by Canadians Gen John de Chastelain and Judge Peter Cory, telling an audience in Toronto that the two men brought to Ireland a uniquely Canadian insight into issues of cultural diversity and reconciliation.
Speaking in Toronto at a lunch hosted by the Ireland-Canada Chamber of Commerce and Enterprise Ireland, Mrs McAleese said the experience of living in a country where dual and multiple identities were long established had informed the men's work in Ireland.
"They brought the Canadian way of doing things. They brought the Canadian ethic," she said.
The President is in Toronto to open Ireland Park, which commemorates the arrival in the city of more than 38,000 Famine victims, when Toronto had a population of only 20,000.
More than 1,100 people died, most of them immigrants but also local people who caught typhus while caring for the Irish refugees.
Mrs McAleese said the generosity of the people of Toronto 160 years ago should stand as an inspiration to today's prosperous Ireland. "They showed a level of human decency unequalled in any other Famine story," she said.
Irish trade to Canada grew by almost a quarter last year and 80 Canadian companies are present in Ireland while 30 Irish firms have operations in Canada, three times the number five years ago.
Among the Irish companies represented at yesterday's lunch were Iona Technologies, Wildwave, Fineos, Curam and Norkom.
Ireland's growing economic interest in Canada is reflected in the decision to open a new Enterprise Ireland office in Toronto, which follows the establishment of a Bio-Link Canada chapter and an agreement last year between Enterprise Ireland and Canada's National Research Council.
Mrs McAleese said the contrast between the Ireland the Famine victims left and the country of today could not be more dramatic.