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One week after Kevin Vickers tackled a middle aged protester at a memorial ceremony, Ireland seems surprisingly fine with the whole affair.

No reprimands from the police or the Taoiseach (prime minister). An Irish Independent columnist called Vickers the “courageous Canadian ambassador.” An unscientific Irish Times online poll even had 50 per cent of respondents calling him a “hero.”

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“Pity our own police aren’t more like him,” wrote one Irish Vickers fan.

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But Canada-Ireland relations haven’t always been so rosy and understanding. In fact, Irish political myth holds that one of the major milestones of their modern history is owed entirely to Canadian obnoxiousness.

“There seemed to be no proper appreciation of our status,” John Costello, Ireland’s Taoiseach, would complain to Lord Rugby, Great Britain’s representative in Dublin.

In 1948, Costello had just been reluctantly sworn in as Ireland’s Prime Minister when he decided to make his first official foreign visit to Canada. There, he found a hostile governor general, a weirdo prime minister and an official dinner straight out of hell.