Origins
Ever since the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in 1884, and even prior to that, there is archival evidence that Gaelic football was played in Montreal. However there is more concrete evidence that, from 1945 and onwards, Irish immigrants gave exhibitions of their native games at Fletcher Fields and at the old MAA grounds.
In 1948 the Montreal branch of the GAA was officially convened under the presidency of Martin Greene. Greene applied for, and the next year received, official approbation from the president of the GAA in Dublin.
Subsequently the American County Board of the GAA was established to include Montreal and Toronto in separate divisions. Division IV saw Montreal in competition with teams from Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse. Both Montreal and Toronto fared well in international competition as the cities were equally enriched by an influx of young Irish immigrants. Each did in fact, on more than one occasion, win the American Championship in both football and hurling.
Read more about this topic: Montreal Shamrocks GAC
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Lucretius
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smiling carves dreams, bright cells
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—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)