Bernard Ignatius Keenan

Story

Bernard Ignatius Keenan was born in 1906 in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, the fourth of eight children of Bernard and Rebecca (nee Monaghan) Keenan. His father, born in Derry (Londonderry) in 1873, had retired with the rank of Regimental Sergeant Major in the 3rd Battallion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and then ran a local pub. His wife Rebecca was a resourceful woman who had managed to purchase their home in Eden Street, despite the difficulties of a Catholic owning property. The house had previously been a Protestant school and when the pub proved to be an unsuccessful venture, the family ran a little shop from there with a coal yard at the back.

In 1920 Bernard’s elder brother Colin, aged 26, died from wounds suffered at Archangel while part of the British Forces sent to Russia at the end of World War 1. Their father died on 9 October 1926. The Irish Civil War was still a very fresh memory and the general strike in 1926 convinced Bernard and his older sister Eileen their future prospects in Ireland were pretty bleak, so they decided to migrate elsewhere.

They had the option to go to America where a cousin, Peter Keenan, worked as a printer on the New York Times, however their mother decided this was a sinful, wicked place and would expose them to moral danger. They then decided to come to Australia where their mother\’s cousin, Brother Leo Monaghan, was with the Passionist Order at Mary’s Mount near Goulburn, NSW Ð needless to say, religion was a strong influence on their lives at this time.

On 7 November 1926 Bernard aged 20 and Eileen aged 22 set sail from Liverpool on the Demosthenes. It was only weeks after their father had died; it must have been a great wrench for their mother. Neither returned to Ireland, nor did their younger brother Frank who also migrated some years later. The voyage via Capetown must have been a very new experience for the two young travellers with the first part of the passage, to Teneriffe, very rough. They arrived in Sydney on 27 December 1926 Ð hot Sydney before going on to their final destination, dry Goulburn. Their new country was a far cry from the beautiful lakes of evergreen Fermanagh.

They lodged at Mrs Sarah Jane Maitland’s boarding house in Clifford Street Goulburn. There Bernard met his future wife Kathleen ‘Kitty’ Maitland, one of the landlady\’s daughters, and they were married in 1932. Eileen also met her future husband Harry Coleman, a World War I veteran, who was also a boarder. Harry was an engine driver with the NSW railway and they later settled in Kempsey NSW.

During a trip to Sydney in November 1927, not even a full year after his arrival, Bernie was a passenger on a Manly ferry on Sydney Harbour when he witnessed a tragic incident which left an indelible imprint on his mind. He saw the NZ mail steamer Tahiti collide with the Sydney harbour ferry, Greycliffe as it made its way to Watson\’s Bay, resulting in the loss of 40 lives (this was more than four years before the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932).

For a time, Bernie worked on the NSW railways before working with the Mulwarrie Shire Council in Goulburn repairing various roads in the district. This entailed using a horse and dray and necessitated camping out overnight for lengthy periods. Invariably, when possible, he camped near cemeteries because they usually had water. His wife objected to this but he maintained that ‘the dead one won\’t hurt you; it\’s the live one you need to worry about.’ Although times were tough during the depression years, Bernie always had a job and at the outbreak of World War II after being declared medically unfit for military service, he went to work in the steelworks at Port Kembla, contributing towards the war effort. It was during this time, in 1943 that they had the heart breaking experience of losing their 7 year old daughter Shirley. They had also lost their first-born child Colin in 1933 when he was only three days old.

They returned to Queanbeyan and then Canberra where Bernie worked as a labourer in the burgeoning post-war building industry. Interested in politics (as was his sister Eileen in Kempsey), Bernie was an early member of the local branch of the Queanbeyan Labor Party. He eventually became a truck driver with the Furniture Section of the Department of the Interior, where he remained until ill-health forced his retirement. He died on 6 June 1956 at the early age of 49 years and is buried in Woden Valley Cemetery. He was survived by his wife Kitty, sons John and Des and daughters Marilyn and Sharon. Kitty died in 2002. Most of the family and their descendants still live the Canberra region.

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