Gillian McAuley, president of the NI Chamber of Commerce, talks about how the Good Friday Agreement helped bring her home to Northern Ireland after emigrating to Canada as a child
Tearful embraces at the airport still remain a vivid memory in Gillian McAuley's mind as she recalls the moment she boarded a plane with her family to start a new life in Canada at the age of six.
Fast forward to today and Gillian is now the President of the NI Chamber of Commerce and happily settled in Ballyclare with her husband Lyle and their teenage sons Jacob, 17, and Elliott, 14. "I came back more in the later 90s and the Celtic Tiger was starting to take off in the Republic, so the economy was picking up a bit. I distinctly remember seeing my parents at Easter and going to church with them and hearing the minister praying because the Good Friday Agreement had just been signed and praying for peace and prosperity for Northern Ireland.
Her parents - Jean and Leslie Gardiner - had been bringing up Gillian and her younger brother Jonathan in Carrickfergus when they made the difficult decision to leave family behind and flee the Troubles for a better life in Canada. Gillian's mum, who was originally from Ballycastle, had family out there.
"I just was always really homesick, I loved Canada I am quite a proud Canadian but was always homesick for here somehow. I have one younger brother, he was four, so he is a very settled Canadian and still lives in British Colombia. So very strange I just kept coming back." "When I think about it, when I moved back here in May 2001 the Odyssey had just opened, you would never have gone out in Belfast and when I think now of the Cathedral Quarter, my brother comes on holiday every few years and he just can't believe the transformation every time he comes," she said.
Gillian's life story could certainly make for an interesting movie script, especially the tale of how she ended up married to her husband Lyle. "I actually just dropped in to see his parents, I had known them over the years, I just so happened to be back on holidays on one of my trips and dropped in to say hello, ran into him again.
"If you think about in 25 years where we have come from and then you think where we are now with this Windsor Framework and hopeful it can start to bed in, this dual market access. Rishi Sunak is calling us the world's most exciting economic zone, wow what potential have we got here if we can get this right."
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