Tom, It was a nice visit. I hope the tone of my e-mails was not too confrontational. As you can see from meeting me, I am, much like you, a gentleman with an interest in the history of the Irish in and about Worcester. Last year, I was prepared to ruffle some feathers to attract the interest of the average reader of Dempsey's column. There is no such thing as bad publicity. Any objection to honoring Boland and his ilk would have drawn attention to the need to honor the canal. It may have failed to live up to expectations, it was unreliable, unprofitable, and brought wharf-rats and Irishes to the area, but it changed Worcester, from a town halfway between two navigable waters, into a commercial center...a seaport. With this waterway; bulk goods like agricultural lime and white wheat flour could, with less expense, travel inland; the natural resources of the interior could be exploited and exported; and the manufacture of goods in the region was more economically feasible. The Blackstone Canal also forced Boston merchants to expend some capital to try to regain the business lost to Providence. This brought the rails to Worcester, which reaffirmed her role as a commercial and transportation hub, and secured her a place as a major manufacturing center. At one time the Blackstone River was called the hardest working river in America and Worcester stood at its head. Little good that did her. The river moved waterwheels not boats, and Worcester was a little too north to benefit greatly from it. Though there were some manufactories and textile production in the town, Worcester never became a mill town, it lacked the substantial flow of water to power waterwheels that would, in turn, power textile machinery. Worcester didn't attract the eye of the Waltham Group, nor receive the attention that Lowell did. Worcester waited, waited for a connection to the world. The Blackstone Canal established that connection. The canal brought more than bulky good to the region, it brought change to Worcester, forced change on Worcester. Your ceremony will honor Tobias Boland and his 500 Irish workmen. Your speaker will praise the immigrants that dug and blasted, that toiled and died. The humble beginnings of the Irish in Worcester County will be eloquently retold. Someone may even broach the subject of prejudice, and remark upon the challenges faced by a young Irish Catholic laborer in 1820s America. Your speeches may address the ethnic changes that Worcester saw during the canal's two decades of operation. "The way was paved," they will say, "for the coming of the poor Irish souls, chased by hunger from their homeland, during the Great Famine." No one will mention that some of the Irish already settled in Worcester in the mid 1840s would have been happy to have blended into, or at least to have been left alone by, the greater community. Many would have been happy just to have a job. The Irish in Worcester paved the way for Nativists and Know-Nothings. Their in-fighting stifled them. It would be more than fifty years, two generations, before Worcester would see its first Irish mayor. No one will ask us to look too closely at the Irish that dug the canal, or worked the waterway, or lived in and around Worcester from 1828 to 1848. We will instead be asked to remember these "pioneers" that changed the face of Worcester. I think it is fitting to leave it to the people of Rhode Island to honor, with their own sign, John Brown and the other Providence money that built the canal. Let others memorialize the railroad builders that connected Providence and Worcester. With this sign let us remember the Blackstone Canal. A financial disaster, frozen for a quarter of the year, subject to idleness due to flood or drought, always loosing in court, and crawling with vermin, the Blackstone Canal could easily be dismissed as an idea who's time had passed by the time it was acted upon, but it was more than that. The Blackstone Canal succeeded in many ways. It help make Worcester an important city instead of the out of the way shire-town for an out of the way county. It helped make Worcester a culturally and religiously diverse community, and it connected Worcester, if only for a short while, to the ever shrinking world. I know I don't always site my sources in our e-mail exchanges, but I should have thrown in yhere somewhere an "According to Tom Kelleher's piece on the Blackstone Canal 1997 museum training document." In it he makes many valid points. Some I've already heard (unprofitable like most canals), some I had not heard made (did more for the public than the bondholders), and all without a mention of T. Boland. A real Yankee look at the realities of the canal. He of course has a bibliography (unlike my e-mails) and I have a copy for you. Powers, Meagher, Murphy, Kelleher, O'Flynn, et. al. they guide me. Please forward to anyone who might have read "another long note," John [I went to the unvailing, smiled a lot, applauded a little. Tom is now a friend of mine. John]