A determined military officer is planning to build a 60-acre Gaeltacht in Ontario to help keep alive a centuries-old Irish language tradition, writes Seán O'Driscoll.
Capt Aralt Mac Giolla Chainnigh's answering-machine message is in Irish and French. He refers to Northern Ireland as "the Six Counties" and Queen Elizabeth as "Elizabeth Windsor".
It may sound incongruous from a uniformed officer of the Canadian defence forces, over which the very same Elizabeth Windsor sits as head of state.
"I don't want to come across as a maverick, just I think everyone should be treated with the same respect," he says in a soft Ontario accent, ending each sentence, as Canadians famously do, with an upwardly inflected "eh?".
Aralt, or Harold to his workmates, is an astronomy professor who specialises in the exchange of mass between binary white dwarf stars and red giant stars.
At the Royal Military College where he works, he is known for deep understanding of radio telescopes and for a contentious legal battle - last year he began a discrimination and harassment lawsuit against the Canadian military because of the "degrading and humiliating" policy of having to toast the queen at regiment dinners.
At one dinner, he stood up with his colleagues but refused to lift up his cup to salute the queen.
He also objects to saluting the Union Jack and is currently writing up final legal submissions, which have to be finished in the next two weeks. "It's something you can only do after 28 years of service," he says with a smile.
Mac Giolla Chainnigh is also set to deliver a new Gaeltacht on a 60-acre expanse about half an hour's drive from the military college. Here, Aralt and fellow Gaeilge enthusiasts hope to open a new language centre and 16 cabins for guests. Irish speakers will be able to gather any day of the year in this agreed meeting point for Canada's varying Irish dialects.
For years, Mac Giolla Chainnigh explains, Canadian Irish speakers have been confused by the various Irish dialects. The Irish for "how are you?" is "conas atá tú?" in Munster-influenced Ottawa, "cén chaoi a bhfuil tú?" in Connaught Irish-speaking Montreal and "cad é mar atá tú?" in Ulster-influenced Toronto.
The Ontario Irish-language group, Cumann na Gaeltachta, hopes to bring everyone together under one mini-state. "We try to play down the different dialects throughout Canada," says Mac Giolla Chainnigh. "It's really no different than calling your living room furniture a sofa, a Chesterfield or a Davenport."
The Ontario Gaeltacht will also be, he envisions, a holiday destination, allowing people from the Irish Gaeltachtaí to take their first Gaeilge-friendly foreign holiday.
"I could envision people coming from all the Irish Gaeltachts, meeting at our Gaeltacht and going on an Irish-language tour of the Niagara Falls. So much in our lives is restricted linguistically, this is a way for people to break out and enjoy life on their own terms," he says.
For decades, Ontario Irish speakers have struggled to find a home, often setting up summer camps under tents on supporters' farms. They have also relied on voluntary support in Ireland, such as Bard na nGleann in Cork which sent out a teacher at its own expense a few years ago to teach at an Irish summer programme.
The new, permanent Gaeltacht is a very ambitious project, admits Pat Scott, a Kerry-born creamery scientist now living in Ontario.
He speaks French and Irish at home with his daughter, a linguist who has become an expert on the relative clause in the Irish language.
He has, he says, a clear picture of what many people think of the language. He recalls that the former dean of St Patrick's College in Ottawa told him that studying Irish was "a complete waste of time" whereas learning French would open up high theology and greater learning.
"I was taken aback," recalls Scott. "I told him that Irish was the purist of the Indo-European languages, but he didn't listen."
Scott sees the Gaeltacht as a natural link to the Irish-speaking history of Newfoundland, where up to 10 native speakers still live, according to the 2001 Canadian census.
Canada once had the most active Gaeltacht outside of Ireland. It was estimated that in the late 19th century, 90 per cent of the inhabitants of St John's Island in eastern Newfoundland spoke Irish as their first language and surviving church documents show that all priests had to be fluent in the language.
Newfoundland, Irish-language enthusiasts say, is the only place outside of Europe that has a non-derivative Irish language name. It's known as Talamh an Éisc, meaning place of the fish, a name given by the tens of thousands of Irish who left to work in the thriving Newfoundland fishing trade.
As populations dispersed, Mac Giolla Chainnigh says, the need for a central Gaeltacht increased. "It's not like in America where there is a strong Irish American identity. We never really escaped the British empire and there isn't a globally defined Irish-Canadian identity."
THE DESIRE TO assert that identity has led 17-year-old Kingston high-school student Madison Scott to volunteer to clear away brambles at the Gaeltacht site and cut out a path to the bordering river, where young Gaelgeoirí go swimming in the summer.
She has been studying Irish since she was aged 13, finding the addition of extra words before a noun the most confusing part.
She speaks Irish at home with her Galway-born grandmother and Dublin-born grandfather, both of whom are fluent speakers.
When she goes to college, she says, she wants to study architecture and volunteer with the design at the new cultural centre on the site.
She intends to take Celtic studies and will be "absolutely committed" to the Gaeltacht when it gets started.
Before I speak to her, I hear concern from some speakers that the site is heavy with mosquitoes in the summer.
"People from the Gaeltacht in Ireland like their comfort when they go abroad - I don't know if they're going to put up with that," said one fluent speaker.
Madison laughs if off. "I worked to clear the site over there - there's a few mosquitoes and bees but it's really nothing much."
One person who definitely won't be making a trip to the Gaeltacht is Pat Clarke, a Dublin-born insurance clerk who hangs out at the Black Sheep pub in Toronto.
"No bloody way," he says when asked if he would attend the Gaeltacht. "I wish them well but I had enough Irish in school."
He describes Irish speakers as "Peigers", (a reference to Peig Sayers) but emphasises again that he has nothing against them.
"I envy them in some ways," he says. "I'd love to be able to say something that Canadians don't understand because they have French and English licked."
The Gaeltacht site, funded generously by a Galway-born construction magnate living in Ottawa, is 100 miles from the New York state border. Organisers hope it will attract US-based Irish-language enthusiasts when it opens in the next five years.
Tom Abernethy, a New York-born lawyer and gaelgeoir, met his Cork-born wife, Mary, at an Irish-language weekend in Montreal and had an Irish-language wedding in west Cork. The couple now live in Queens, New York and speak Irish regularly at home.
"If it's a success, we'd definitely travel over the border to visit the Gaeltacht," said Abernethy. "It would be great to see a Gaeltacht in a major tourist area like Vegas, but I don't think that's going to happen."
Mac Giolla Chainnigh sees a major cultural difference between the US and Canada that allows Canadians to learn a purer form of Irish. Canadians, he said, appear to attract more native Irish speakers and have developed a greater admiration for fluency and native speech.
The Gaeltacht, he said, will be "a place where you don't have to be embarrassed or feel rude for speaking Irish, as some Canadian speakers think".
He is conscious of the special meaning the word "Gaeltacht" has in Ireland. "We don't have that long oral traditional stretching back before (modern) times but we absolutely want a Gaeltacht in the true sense of the word," he says.
Despite his legal run-ins with Elizabeth Windsor, he is confident that the Irish language can be a unifying force between Irish Catholics and Protestants, pointing to an Ordinance Survey of Parishes of Londonderry II, 1833-85, which found that Protestants were eager to learn Irish to help improve commerce in the city and in other counties.
"If the Irish language is to survive long term," he says, "then it must gain vitality in the wider Irish and Canadian economy and must be able to pay for itself."
Until it can reach that point of critical mass, Cumann na Gaeltachta wants to approach the Canadian and Irish governments for funding.
"We don't have any reservations in going to the Irish Government. This is an opportunity to bring the Irish language to a new international audience," he says. "The Irish language has been in Canada for centuries. Now it finally has a home."