Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney returned to his family’s ancestral home in western Ireland on Sunday, meeting distant relatives in the village where his grandparents were born while calling for closer cooperation between Canada, Ireland and Europe in response to an increasingly unstable global order.
The visit to Aughagower, County Mayo, carried personal significance for Carney, whose grandfather Robert Carney and grandmother Nora Moran emigrated from the village to Canada in 1925 before marrying in Vancouver. Robert Carney later joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after first working with the Canadian Pacific Railway Police, while their son, Carney’s father, was born in 1933 and eventually became a professor at the University of Alberta.
Carney attended Mass at the village’s Catholic church, visited the family grave and planted a tree during the emotional homecoming. He also met members of his extended family, joking that he had discovered many more relatives than he had expected.
“I have a lot more cousins than I realised,” Carney told reporters after the church service.
The visit came as Carney traveled through Ireland en route to the Group of Seven summit in France, where world leaders are expected to address a range of geopolitical and economic challenges.
Speaking a day earlier at Trinity College Dublin, Carney argued that countries such as Canada and Ireland must strengthen partnerships as the international system undergoes profound change.
He said nations should build “a dense web of connections” and form flexible coalitions to navigate what he described as the breakdown of the post-Cold War rules-based international order.
“Ireland and Canada are navigating a global rupture, not a quiet transition,” Carney told students. “I suggest that amidst this change, amidst this disruption, Canada, Ireland and Europe can be pivotal, powerful, and purposeful, a force for good.”
Carney’s remarks reflected growing concern among Western leaders over shifting geopolitical dynamics and the need for closer cooperation among like-minded democracies.
Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin echoed that message, saying Ireland intended to strengthen ties between the European Union and Canada when it assumes the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union on July 1.
Martin said his government would work to “put flesh on the bone of an enhanced European Union-Canadian relationship,” signaling a commitment to expanding political and economic cooperation during Ireland’s six-month presidency.
Carney’s visit combined a personal journey through his family’s history with a broader diplomatic message, underscoring both his Irish heritage and Canada’s commitment to reinforcing partnerships with Europe during a period of growing global uncertainty.
