Today, we welcome back Ian Kinsella to the podcast. Ian is the first person to appear on the podcast for a second time and his story definitely justifies this distinction. In 2023, only a few months after Ian appeared on ‘Irish in Toronto’ and at the age of 41, he suffered a widowmaker heart attack. Following his heart attack in 2023, Ian underwent life-altering surgery. In November 2024, he set a Guinness world record for the fastest marathon with a coronary artery bypass graft, runnin...
Jun 5
1 hr 22 min
Today, I will be speaking with Seána Glennon. Seána loves Toronto so much, she didn’t move here just once, but twice. Seána and her husband, Jonny first began calling Toronto their home in 2018 before heading back to Dublin to allow Seána complete her PhD. They arrived back to Toronto in 2021 and have been putting down routes here ever since. They are both fantastic volunteers and can be seen at any Irish related event around the city. In this chat, we discuss the meaning of ‘home’ and Seána ...
Apr 30
40 min
Today, I will be speaking with Rory O’Shea. I first became aware of him when I attended a screening of the long-form biopic he created for his mother, The Peggy Delaney Way. Peggy was clearly a force to be reckoned with in the Irish community in Toronto and the love she had for her home country was passed down to her son, Rory. In this conversation, we discuss Rory’s understanding of being born to Irish parents while growing up in Toronto and how he often feels more Irish than Canadian....
Apr 2
36 min
Today, I will be speaking with Michael Boyle. Originally from Derry, Michael left the North of Ireland in the late 1960s, just as the Troubles were beginning to kick off. Bound for a teaching job in Fogo Island, his arrival in Canada did not go as smoothly as expected. But as Michael often says, ‘If you come to a fork in the road, take it.’ Michael took this fork and has ended up spending the rest of his life in Newfoundland. In this chat, we discuss how Newfoundland became his home away from...
Mar 12
51 min
Originally from Malahide in North County Dublin, Donal has been living in Toronto for the past eighteen years, after having spent four years outside of Ireland before then. This is a fascinating and intriguing conversation with a person who has got me thinking about a lot of things since our chat. We are both well able to talk and as a result, this episode is slightly longer than most but well worth a listen. We discuss everything from arriving in Toronto with a six-month-old baby to sports g...
Jan 29
1 hr 36 min
I first met Gerry at a Pop-Up Gaeltacht in PJ O’Brien’s just before Christmas last year. Gerry is a retired English teacher and we hit it off discussing some of our favourite Irish authors. In this chat, Gerry describes his experience moving to Toronto in the 1990s from his hometown of Athenry and what made him stay. We chat about his journey with the Irish language and we discuss the year he spent in Ireland in 2008 where he made a film in Galway and we discuss his children’s relationship wi...
Jan 15
34 min
Today, I will be speaking with Saffiya Ramhendar-Armogan, a student of mine here at the University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. Saffiya was raised in Dublin but chose to complete her undergraduate degree in Politics and Criminology at the University of Toronto. She waited until her fourth year here to dip her toes into Celtic Studies and is currently taking my Irish language class. In this conversation, we discuss the challenges of moving to a new country for u...
Dec 18, 2025
42 min
Having grown up in Nenagh, Carrick-on-Shannon and Dublin, John Doyle moved to Toronto in 1980 to pursue a PhD in English Literature at York University. Having done some student and freelance journalism in Ireland, John continued to write in Canada and eventually abandoned writing for academic reward to concentrate on writing as a career. He describes himself as a sometimes critic, columnist and soccer writer at the Globe and Mail for whom he wrote for nearly thirty years. He has also written ...
Dec 4, 2025
46 min
Originally from Montréal, Padraic now lives in Toronto where he is Associate Professor at the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies and the Centre for Industrial Relations and Human Resources at the University of Toronto. In this episode, Padraic discusses growing up with an Irish name in Montréal as well as his research on the Irish Famine. In 2025, he published his third book, titled Rot: An Imperial History of the Irish Famine. We discuss his research, his and his family’s relation...
Nov 21, 2025
34 min
Today, I will be speaking with Colleen Corbett. Any Irish person who has moved to Toronto is sure to have encountered the famous Colleen at some stage. She brings energy and enthusiasm to any conversation she is in and this is no exception. Colleen’s mother, the equally famous Maureen Mulvey O’Leary, winner of the 2024 Irish Person of the Year Award, was a previous guest on this podcast. Colleen talks about how her mother raised her as Irish in Toronto, attending Irish cultural events in the ...
Sep 11, 2025
50 min
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