My favourite story of 2011 - Ontario nursing home and an Ireland-mad Canadian girl

Tara Muzumdar and Edra Ferguson

2011, by any standards, has been an incredibly busy year. The first two months alone, where the government fell in the most chaotic manner possible before exploding at the ballot box on impact, felt like an aeon all of itself. But in spite of this, and the great state of geopolitical flux that has unfolded before our eyes this year, my favourite story of 2011 doesn’t involve revolution or summits. It involves an Ontario nursing home, and an Ireland-mad Canadian girl.

Edra Ferguson was 103 and living in Belmont House in Toronto when a member of staff who regularly spent time with her, Tara Muzumdar, started looking through some of her books. What she discovered came as some surprise. Edra, unknown to seemingly everyone, was one of the first women in Canada to go to law school, the first female judge in Ontario, the first woman elected to city council in her hometown, and also ran for Mayor. And she did all this in the 1920s and 30s.

Tara, a frequent and fervent visitor to Ireland, was struck by the pioneering achievements of the woman in her charge, and resolved to do something. So she nominated Edra for the Order of Canada and, in the word of Edra’s son, orchestrated a media interest that went first national, then global.

After a life of firsts that had over the years got buried, a couple of days before her 104th birthday, Edra then added another illustrious honor to the list: becoming the oldest ever recipient of the Order.

It’s been a news year with a disproportionate amount of challenge, tragedy and woe. And that’s why this marvelous story about the kindness and initiative of Tara, and the incredible woman she stood up for is my favorite of the year.
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What the Republican Presidential candidates can learn from Donegal teenagers

Rick Perry

The only thing that is preventing the Republican primary race from becoming a complete head bang is the sheer comicality of it. There’s Mitt Romney, who is only marginally more popular than smallpox; there’s Rick “EPA?” Perry, a man who is to memory and general regular behaviour what Mr Magoo is to eyesight; there’s Herman Cain, who I’m not sure could name any more than five other countries in the world; there’s Newt Gingrich, a man whose opinion of himself is in orbit, for no compelling reason. And then there’s the most hilarious of all, John Huntsman, the one sane man among them and the only one who could actually bring a fight to Obama, but his numbers are so low they can only be measured by the Kelvin Scale.

While the Republican base are amped up to stiff peaks of mental at the minute, the last two years in particular have not been good ones for political sanity in the States in general. Warped ideological fidelity has trumped practicality. Bloody-minded obstinacy is now apparently official policy. Every word spoken is either advancing or casting aspersions on some political agenda or other. It’s toxic in the extreme.

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Even at home, as election promises are still ringing in our sardonic ears, the feeling that we’ve driven down a dead end is pervasive.

Thank the baby Jesus and his farmyard ensemble cast, then, for the Donegal Youth Council.

Last Saturday I took twelve of the councillors for a politics day, a day where we’d discuss hot-button topics, moral dilemmas and discover what their opinions meant in the context of political groupings, parties and philosophies. The fact they were there on a Saturday morning/afternoon at all made sure I’d leave happy, but the manner in which they took to the issues left me elated.

They have previous form on this sort of thing, having asked questions of election candidates both in the general and Presidential elections earlier in the year questions you wouldn’t habitually expect from 13 to 18 year olds. But just as impressive as their grip on issues as varied as military intervention or economic policy was the method in which they had the conversation. They were measured, reasoned, and all their positions came from a basis in fact. In other words, several times more mature than 90% of the world’s elected representatives. When they disagreed, even on the contentious issues like abortion or drug legalisation, they took each other on earnestly and without animus. Nobody was out to win, or more to the point beat anyone.

I’m not sure what it is that makes so many candidates for high office the way they are, I’m not sure if the system moulds them a certain way or if the kind of people who run for those kind of things are just unusually venal, hysterical or straight-up bananas. But whatever the hell is the problem, maybe it should be young people running branches of government, while the Perrys and Newts of this world take a weekend class or two.

Ireland needs to get serious about mental health - Kate Fitzgerald and Gary Speed's untimely death starts conversations

Irish Examiner's artwork attempting to highlight this major issue in Ireland

At the tail end of last week I found myself struck dumb by two tragic deaths. On Saturday afternoon I read a touching tribute on the Irish Times website to Kate Fitzgerald, the 25-year-old who had helped make the Irish branch of the Democrats Abroad a formidable force in recent times.

And then, the following day, I heard of the passing of Gary Speed, a 42-year-old veteran Premier League footballer and manager of the Welsh International team. Both committed suicide.

It’s horrible enough when young people die, not least when those young people publicly embodied such admirable qualities as did Kate and Gary. But for them to take their own lives adds a whole other terrible dimension to the sadness.

The most heartbreaking thing of all is how suicide confounds conventional logic. “Why?” is a question the answer of which will always be out of reach. Both these people had so much to live for; Kate was a rising star in a number of fields, while Gary had a wife, two kids, a glittering playing career behind him and a promising management career ahead of him. On the face of it, there couldn’t possibly be a problem. But that’s not where problems lie.
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And that is why we have to get serious about mental health. Really, really serious. We’ve made great strides admittedly from the days where victims of suicide couldn’t even be buried on consecrated ground, but we still haven’t gone far enough. We still think of mental ill-health when we hear the phrase mental health. Stigma still exists, embarrassment still looms large, we’re only too happy to internalise. People who are suffering with mental health issues often want to spare their friends and family an awkward conversation or generally bothering them.

We’re still not talking enough, not nearly enough, about mental health.

A couple of months ago I was facilitating a workshop for the Donegal Youth Council at their AGM, the topic of which was mental health. One thing I found interesting was that while everyone was in favour of better services for people struggling with depression or anxiety, the number went down dramatically when I asked how many would avail of those same services.

To get to where we need to be with mental health, we need to do two vital things: we need first to get friends talking to friends about this subject comfortably. And when we’ve cracked that, hopefully people who need further help can avail of it with all the level of shame and stigma as going to buy a carton of milk.

But until then, we need to be open. We need to accept that this isn’t "Other People’s Problem". We need to accept that this can happen to anyone and that it’s as treatable as a physical ailment.

We need to look out for everyone, even the ones who seem the strongest of will or the life and soul of the party. They may the ones putting on the bravest face. We need to be subject to one another. We need to keep talking about this.