James McVeigh (part 1)

James McVeigh was born into a Catholic family in Belfast in 1930. He recalls the poverty of life there in his early days, and explains that he was evacuated to a farm in Fermanagh during the war years. After the war he worked in England to save money for the fare to Canada, to where he emigrated in 1956. James set up a dancehall business with other Irish emigrant partners, and later opened his own dancehall in premises which had once been a picture house. He recounts many anecdotes about those days and recalls his involvement with the GAA in Toronto. He married Sheila O’Brien in 1960 and the couple opened a bar on the corner of Church Street in Toronto.