National Post (National Edition)
Vickers sparks spirited debate on Irish ghosts
I THINK WE ARE ENTERING THE REALM OF FANTASY! IN ALL MY 30 YEARS PLUS OF REAL ESTATE IN DUBLIN I HAVE NEVER COME ACROSS A BUYER OR SELLER COMPLAINING OF A HOUSE BEING HAUNTED SO EXCUSE ME WHEN I LAUGH A LITTLE. — KEITH LOWE, IRISH REAL ESTATE AGENT I NEVER BELIEVED IN GHOSTS...’TIL I ARRIVED HERE.
Kevin Vickers, Canada’s ambassador to Ireland, was hearing strange sounds at his official residence in Dublin. Lying in his bedroom, he heard “laboured breathing” and footsteps coming up the stairs. He checked and no one was there. Watching television, he heard a chain hit the floor in the dining room. Again he checked, and nothing was there.
The peculiarities at Glanmire House, it seems, had got to the point that a maid often refused to venture upstairs.
“Ghosts,” Vickers wrote in a Facebook post, obtained by CTV News. “I never believed in ghosts. Until I arrived here.” In that post, Vickers wondered if the ghost “who walks the halls of this residence” was Patrick Pearse, one of the architects of the 1916 Easter Rising that preluded Ireland’s independence. Pearse, Vickers has learned, lived in Glanmire House in the early 20th century.
But at least one other ambassador to live in the handsome manor on Oakley Road says he never noticed any supernatural presence. Nor did the real estate agent who sold it in 2005. So the question becomes, if the ghost of an Irish republican hero has visited Glanmire, is he haunting the house or is he haunting Kevin Vickers?
It was Vickers — the former sergeant-atarms made famous for his role in shooting dead a gunman on Parliament Hill — who last year intervened when a republican protester disrupted a memorial for British soldiers killed while, ultimately, putting down the 1916 rebellion. Vickers took hold of the man by both arms and dragged him across the lawn before handing him to authorities. The move earned Vickers critics in Canada. It’s not clear if that move also earned him critics on another spiritual plane.
“We don’t recall anything out of the ordinary,” said Pat Binns, a former premier of Prince Edward Island who served as Canada’s ambassador in Ireland from 2007 to 2010. In 2008, he and his wife moved into Glanmire after the government sold its dilapidated ambassador’s residence outside Dublin. Glanmire, Binns said, was a welcome upgrade, without any unexplainable disturbances. “All I can say is the place seemed pretty normal when we were there.”
The only other ambassador to live at the residence, Loyola Hearn, could not be reached on Friday.
Irish real estate agent Keith Lowe, who sold Glanmire in 2005 after its longtime residents died, had also never heard of anything strange there. “I think we are entering the realm of fantasy!!!” Lowe said in an email on Friday. “In all my 30 years plus of real estate in Dublin I have never come across a buyer or seller complaining of a house being haunted so excuse me when I laugh a little.”
Lowe said prior to 2005, the family who lived at Glanmire had been there “for generations.” It was a stunning place, he said, with a greenhouse and gardens front and back. Asked again, for good measure, whether he’d heard anything odd during his tours of the house, Lowe said he hadn’t.
“I think you are losing the run of yourself altogether. Stay off the brandy.”
It’s likely that the distant prospect of Patrick Pearse choosing to haunt a man, rather than a house, would be distressing for Vickers, who has been fascinated by Pearse and his connection to Glanmire. But neither Vickers, nor Global Affairs Canada, would comment.
Last year, however, Vickers told Maclean’s that he “put the old Mountie hat on” and investigated local rumours about Pearse and Glanmire.
Vickers, as the magazine noted, has Irish heritage and grew up with knowledge of Pearse, the man who stood on the steps of the Dublin General Post office on Easter Monday, 1916, and announced an Irish Republic. He was executed by a British firing squad when the rising ended.
Vickers summoned all documents on the house from the embassy’s lawyer and found an original lease proving Pearse had, in fact, lived in the house. He had it framed and put on display in the residence. “I’ve had people come in here and start crying when they see it,” he told Maclean’s.
The melee with the protester at the 2016 memorial has evidently weighed on Vickers. In emails he wrote in the aftermath, he feared his job was in jeopardy. “I would not be surprised if my great gig is up. And if so, it has been a hell of a ride and nothing like going out with a bang,” he wrote in the emails, obtained by the National Post.