The Canadian Gaeltacht has got noticed. In 2009, Ms. Scott and Mr. Mac Giolla Chainnigh travelled to Ireland to accept the Global Gaeilge Award, which honours groups that promote the Irish language outside the country. The prize came with 5,000 Euros, which has gone toward bringing teachers over from Ireland to help out with the language week every year.
“It gives great inspiration, the work that you are doing in Canada, to people in Ireland that are working to promote Irish culture,” the Iridh President Mary McAleese wrote to the community in a letter (in Gaelic, of course) on Canada Day this year.

In the shade of a large tent, Donall O Duill, a 24-year-old graduate of the Gaelic studies program at the University of Toronto, plays the Uillean pipes, a type of bagpipe with no mouthpiece that requires pumping air with both arms while manipulating the pipe’s keys. “We call it wrestling the octopus,” he says laughing.

Organizers are trying to raise enough money to build cabins and other buildings for lessons and gatherings (for now, they borrow some classrooms in a high school in nearby Erinsville for some classes, and rent out the legion hall in Tamworth for their closing-night céilí.) They hope to create something similar to the Gaelic College in Cape Breton, a community dedicated to the Scottish dialect.

It also allows those of Irish descent to foster a link with their own history.

“My bhean chéile over here, she got involved in trying to get back to her roots,” says 65-year-old Dan Anderson, looking fondly at his wife. They drove 10 hours from Rhode Island to be here. Even though he has no Irish heritage, Mr. Anderson is arguably the more effusive of the two.

“I call him my wild Irish wannabe,” says Jackie Anderson, who is clad in a neon-green t-shirt that reads An bhfuil tusa ag labhairt liomsa – or “Are you talking to me?”

Gaelic humour.

Ms. Anderson’s favourite relative, her grandmother, landed at Ellis Island in 1907 – part of the diaspora that has spread the language thinner and thinner across the globe. But communities like this strike back against the belief that Gaelic is a dead language, and help to keep that history alive, she says.

“If my Maimeo – my grandma – could only see me now.”

But it will be up to the younger members of the Gaeltacht to keep the movement alive. By the time Kian goes to college, will he want to keep speaking the Irish his parents fought to instill in him?

“The language, I don’t think it’s in danger of dying any more, but it needs some effort to keep it going,” Ms. Ely says. “There’s no better way than to teach the next generation.”

From: A tongue-twisting labour of love in Canada's Gaelic-speaking community
By: Susan Krashinsky
The Globe & Mail
September 2, 2011