Lyric: Father Pat
©2001 Wayne Krewski (SOCAN)  All rights reserved.

"Father Pat" can be found on the CD   "Stories From Rossland"

Father Pat was born Henry Irwin in Ireland in 1859.
A boxing championship and degree at Oxford; he became an Anglican priest.
His boyhood dream to be a missionary was realized in 1885.
He went to Kamloops to assist Vicar Horlock and there he met Francis, the love of his life.
Every 6 weeks he rode 1200 miles to the mining camps and preached where he could.
It was during that time that he first came to Rossland and became the miner's friend.
In 1887 he transferred to Donald, a busy railroad town in the Selkirks.
His circut was long it went down the Columbia and on down the Arrow Lakes,
Up the Kootenay to Nelson then Cranbrook, Golden then back to Donald.
In '89 he went to New Westminister, assistant to Bishop Sillitoe.
In January 1890 he and Francis were married.
Ten months later she died in childbirth and took their baby with her.
 
Refrain  And he never forgot her love; she was always in the back of his mind.
He threw himself into God's work but he never got over her death.
And the rest of his life he drove himself hard with never a thought for himself,
But his greatest desire was to finish his life and be with his true love again.
 
He stayed with Bishop Sillitoe and his wife until 1894.
His father got sick; he returned to Ireland and stayed 'til '96.
During that time both his father and the Bishop passed away, but Father Pat endured.
He asked to be transferred to Rossland; they appointed him Mission Priest in '96.
He found his true calling with the miners and prospectors; they said he'd recorded his claim in heaven.
His door was always open and more often than not he gave up his bed to someone needy or sick.
 
His services were held in bar rooms as often as in churches; he'd walk to Grand Forks in a day.
He once left his bishop standing in the street while he joined some miners in the bar.
His parishioners resolved to replace his green and threadbare coat, and got him something warm to wear.
A few days later the green one was back, the new one warming someone else.
One day while riding his circuit on his old horse, Tom, he was harassed by three newcomers.
As he revived the two he put down, he preached on the evils of hooliganism.
He layed out the crosscountry snowshoe races, carried sick miners from the mountains into town.
By 1900 Rossland got too civilized; he went to a post in the Okanagan.
 
In December, nineteen-one, worn out and needing a rest,
He boarded a train heading east, on his way home to Ireland.
A few miles from Montreal he left the train and decided to walk.
The next morning a farmer found him, feet frozen walking on the ice.
They took him to the hospital, Notre Dame; he smiled at the pain, wouldn't give his name.
The doctors and the sisters, his last congregation, watched him bear his pain with patience and grace.
On the 13th of January, nineteen-two, his journey finally came to an end.
He was taken back to New Westminister and buried in the same grave as Francis.
 
And he never forgot her love; she was always in the back of his mind.
He threw himself into God's work but he never got over her death.