BELFAST USES ITS PAST
The city that once drove people away is attracting visitors,
BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND—“H” was no ordinary consonant during the Troubles, the 30-year war between Catholic pro-Ireland republicans and Protestant pro-Britain loyalists.
Taxi driver and tour guide Billy Scott fibbed that he was a Jew to dodge beatings. “A Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?” youth gangs inquired.
Scott doesn’t strike me as a fighter. A professor or comedian, maybe.
Hoodlum tactics evolved. Pronounce the dreaded letter after “G,” they demanded.
“Prods (sic) say ate-ch, Catholics say hay-ch,” he explains phonetically. Scott’s father was loyalist, his mother republican. That upbringing explains his forthright honesty. He playfully describes harsh architecture as “post-brutalistic.”
Driving through Belfast, the history is more palpable than Berlin. The “peace” walls haven’t fallen. Every other street tells a tragedy.
In 2016, however, for possibly the first time, there was no violence at loyalist or republican parades.
The conflict that killed tourism now attracts it.
The number of hotel beds is increasing by 30 per cent annually, the Northern Ireland Hotels Federation says.
More than 80 cruise ships docked in Belfast Harbour in 2016, according to Cruise Belfast, up from 44 in 2012 and two in 1996.
“I never thought people would come here,” artist R.W. Young says of St. George’s Market, which buzzes like St. Lawrence Market invaded by emerald-clad bar patrons celebrating St. Patrick’s Day.
“My customers used to be only people who moved away.”
We pass the Lyric Theatre, where actor Liam Neeson started out, and Queen Elizabeth II shook hands with former IRA leader Martin McGuinness.
The most significant acronym is no longer IRA or UVF. It’s GoT, Game of Thrones, the HBO series filmed locally. To South Belfast, the leafy green roads and boutiques resemble Portland, Ore. Abundant trees show an area’s geniality, I say. “There’s about one tree on the Shankill road,” Scott replies.
Nothing green is welcome on the Protestant stronghold. It’s deathly quiet approaching rubbled lots near the Falls-Shankill peace wall, a euphemism for a towering barricade separating neighbours.
Signed tourist messages hope for peace. Murals picture Catholics and Protestants tearing the wall down together.
On the street opposite, Union Jack flags fly staunchly from two-up, twodown homes, “damper inside than outside,” Scott adds. I feel naive gawking. Similar to New Orleans’ Lower Ninth District, people’s lives are the attraction.
Departing, Scott recalls the morbid folktale of Shankill man William Bloat, who killed his wife, “the curse of his life,” with a knife. Scared of the consequences, he hangs himself. Scott smiles faintly and wryly. “He went to hell but his wife got well, and she’s still alive and sinnin,’ for the razor blade was German made, but the rope was Belfast linen.”
The city’s most famous export, linen aside, had been ships. One in particular has its own museum. Locals don’t dwell on the Titanic’s sinking, noting “it was fine when it left” the local shipyard.
Scott delights in revealing the ship’s physician, Dr. Simpson, was from Belfast. Suffering from bronchitis, fellow doctors recommended he work at sea. He boarded Titanic for his health.
Those tales appeal to Scott, and Belfast’s, attraction to irony. Tales like the founders of a Moravian Church coming here “fleeing religious persecution.”
Or my favourite, the true story of a hidden painting at Stormont Parliament showing Pope Innocent XI blessing King William. The Orange idol who established Protestant rule of Ireland had been supported by Catholics’ holy father. And their fol- lowers fight on.
Scott’s tour ends near the Europa, the “world’s most bombed hotel.” Ron Kenna grew up in its shadow. A builder, he moved away for 25 years. Today, he and his wife, Jennifer, operate Wee Toast Tours, their 15-person “beer bikes” aiding construction of Belfast’s new identity.
I hear their lumbering half-ton lucid orange party-on-wheels before I see it. A bachelorette party belts out Steve Earle’s lyrics, “And I lost my heart to a Galway Girl . . .”
Handed a beer, I pedal, now soundtracked by1996 dance hit Freed From Desire, a Northern Irish soccer favourite so catchy opposition fans embrace it.
Bus drivers wave. An elderly man points in disbelief, probably wondering if he’s senile. A little woman hastily unveils an iPhone and starts to film.
A striding shopper hears the silver bell clang and jumps aside, pulling a childish grin.
Alighting to Commercial Crt., high heels chap on cobbles and groups cackle. I pause and breathe in the moment, knowing I’ll retell the ensuing hours for months.
The city centre had once been surrounded by army checkpoints. Bars covered in bars, windows caged to stop drive-by bombs.
“The unintended consequence was cages around people’s minds and they’re much harder to pull down,” Scott says, adding a universal point. “Everyone should go work abroad. They’d view everything differently.”
Catholics, Protestants, people are busy enjoying themselves tonight where life’s preciousness is rarely more apparent.
And what’s best, those people find needles of comedy in haystacks of tragedy — religious migrants fleeing here, a ship sinking, even civil war.
“We’ve all got one common enemy now,” Scott says, pausing. “Uber.” David Bateman was hosted in part by Tourism Ireland and Wee Toast Tours, who did not review or approve any aspect of this story.