Sometimes the least visible members of an organisation, those who work behind the scenes and whose presence only becomes apparent when a specific need arises, have the most significant impact on its success.
Such a man was Johnny Maguire Jr, the eldest of six children and the only boy born to Johnny Maguire Sr, a dock worker, and Mary Margaret Maguire, both originally from Fermanagh, Ireland, who had emigrated to Liverpool in the early 1900’s.
Johnny Jr worked in various nightclubs during the 1940’s and 50’s in Montreal, an era when Montreal was a wide open city, known as the Paris of North America.
It was a time when there was at least one nightclub on every downtown street – sometimes several, many of which would open or close on a daily basis, occasionally in the same location. Johnny Jr was a ‘bouncer’ whose job it was to take care of customers who became unruly, the term ‘bouncer’ reflecting the method they used to carry out their jobs by bouncing them out onto the street.
The Maguire clan had been the dominant Celtic tribe in Fermanagh until much of the country was seized and confiscated by England and Scotland. Resentment of the two countries ran deep and was typical of the Irish sentiment of the time. Even though centuries had passed, this grudge was never forgotten and on more than one occasion, Johnny Sr would remind his son that while you might want to forgive someone for what they did, you should never forget it. It was best, he would say, not to forgive either. Holding grudges was a national pastime.
Irish family names could be confusing as they reflected a long-standing Irish tradition of naming the first born son after their fathers. This meant adding Senior and Junior after their names. This was fine if there were only two generations of a family, but with three and occasionally four becoming more commonplace, it tended to become confusing, particularly on Sundays after church when the whole family would gather for a meal. Which Johnny Sr or Jr was being addressed?
In order to simplify matters, children were often called using both their names, so Johnny Jr became Johnny Richard Jr. This still didn’t solve the issue should there be more than one Johnny Sr around the table. So they began attaching the name of their wives. One of the Johnny Sr’s present might become ‘Helen’s Johnny’. Or in the case of Johnny Jr’s father, Margaret’s Johnny. Not having a living spouse posed no issue. The wife’s name remained in perpetuity. It often would have been engraved on the gravestones as well.
Johnny Jr’s grandfather had been the original Johnny Sr, even though the family had little information about him. He had emigrated to Australia in order to find his fortune when his family was quite young and, except for an initial postcard kept pinned to the icebox just so the family could remember how angry they were with him, was never heard from again.
