What it took to end a 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland

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anywhere else. So if YouTube is your go-to source for podcasts, just search CBC Podcasts and hit subscribe and you'll never miss the latest update. This is a CBC Podcast. When history, emotion and politics feed into violent conflict,

the road to peace can seem impossible. Yet the impossible has at times been achieved. Some of the most unyielding and bloody disputes in recent world history have reached a negotiated end.

How do peace agreements come about? Do they simply end bloodshed? Or actually establish the conditions for a lasting peace? These were the questions on the table during a week of events

that Ideas recorded at Ontario's annual Stratford Festival. Welcome to Ideas and to our series, Inventing Peace. I'm Nala Ayyad. In upcoming episodes, we'll consider several famous peace agreements of the 1990s.

The Bosnian Peace Agreement, known as the Dayton Accord, the Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accord, and South Africa's National Peace Accord. In each case, long and complex histories are involved. A wide array of views and interpretations exist. So our aim isn't to be comprehensive.

It's simply to learn something about what it took to invent peace then and what might help us now in our own time. Right now, the first episode in the series, The Good Friday Agreement. Starting with a little about the political history of the island, which was once entirely part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Here's a short explainer from RTE News, Ireland's public broadcaster.

In 1921, Ireland was partitioned. A new state called Northern Ireland remained in the UK, while the rest of Ireland became an independent state. This created a split among the population. Nationalists wanted the whole island of Ireland to be unified, while unionists wanted things to stay the same, to keep the union with the rest of the UK. By the late 60s, the tension

had exploded into violence. More than three and a half thousand people lost their lives. They were mostly killed by armed groups on both sides, like the IRA and the UVF, but also the British Army and security forces. Tens of thousands of people still bear the physical and mental scars to this day. In the 1990s, peace talks took off. The agreement focuses on cooperation between both

communities. It created a new government for Northern Ireland with nationalists and unionists sharing power. It says that Northern Ireland will remain part of the UK until a majority of people in Northern Ireland decide to join the rest of Ireland. If you're born in Northern Ireland, you can decide to be British or Irish or both. Armed groups agreed to give up their weapons.

Controversially, people involved in violence were released from prison. The UK government agreed to aim for peacetime security arrangements. Reporter Una Kelly of RTE News in 2023. To learn more about what it took to get to the Good Friday Agreement,

three panellists joined me at a public discussion at the Stratford Festival. David A. Wilson is a professor of history and of Celtic studies at the University of Toronto. He's also a prize-winning author.

Branka Marien is a senior researcher at Project Plowshares and a lecturer at the University of Toronto's Monk School. Toronto lawyer Alan McConnell spent his childhood in Northern Ireland. He led Canadian contingents to Ireland during the 1990s

in a bid to build support for the peace process. He is now president of Friends of Sinn Féin Canada. From the Stratford Festival in July 2025, here's our conversation about inventing peace in Northern Ireland.

So perhaps we can begin the way we love to begin these conversations, and that is to just get a small snapshot from each of you. And Alan, I'd like to start with you. Can you tell us about a moment in your life that informs how you think about what peace means?

Well, I've thought about this a little, and I've settled on an event in 1997. And I was in the north of Ireland with the late Warren Ullman, former Solicitor General of Canada, the late Chris Axworthy, NDP MP and Liberal MP Roger Galloway at the time. And we were there to monitor and observe controversial orange marches through a small Catholic neighbourhood in Portadown. And in 1997, the potential for great violence was there if the police and the army forced those orangemen through that little Catholic enclave.

And we had these Canadian politicians there to observe and monitor and encourage dialogue and peace. And we didn't know what was going to happen. We were billeted out. It was 3 o'clock in the morning, and we didn't know whether the march would go through the next day or not.

and the host ran upstairs and she woke us up and says the army has come in the army has come in and we rushed out onto the street and our three canadian mps were in the other end of the town i was desperate to get to them there were soldiers everywhere there was the sound of riots on the nearby street the sound of plastic bullets being fired and a particularly horrid night and i

tried to get through the police lines to find our canadian mps what have i brought them to what's going to happen to them. And I finally got to the house and they couldn't find them. And I turned around and I heard the rioting

and I heard the noise and the kerfuffle. And I said to myself, what hope do we have for this peace process? The IRA ceasefire had broken down. The Orangemen were going to be forced through a Catholic neighborhood.

And this is from a new labor government, Tony Blair. And I said to myself, what hope is there? It was very down. I was also a wee bit angry.

And that was July of 1997. Eight months later, we had the Good Friday Agreement.