Letter from Frederick H. Boland to John J. Hearne (Ottawa)
(Personal and Confidential)

We were greatly interested in your report (14.F.45) of the 19th April about our friend Garland.¹

I am glad he is saying the things reported in your letter. I think he feels and means them. After a rather bad start here - he was rather too effusive and woolly at first - he became very popular in Dublin, and, in the dark days of the war, we always felt he was a helpful and well-intentioned influence. No departing diplomat ever got so many farewell parties. The Department here wanted to arrange a farewell dinner, but he was so booked-up that he could not fit it in.

We will be writing to you soon about the Nationality Conference. We have only just got the prints of the Report and Proceedings - weeks later than they were promised. When we are writing to you, we will probably be asking you to seek an official expression of the Canadian Government's attitude towards Irish citizens when the proposed new arrangements come into operation and our people cease to be regarded as British subjects in Britain and other Commonwealth countries.

Turgeon has created an excellent impression here. The Taoiseach likes him greatly and his wife is a very simple pleasant person. The Archbishop was also much impressed by him. I have not had much contact with him since he came, so I am not in a position to form any judgment, but it would not be surprising, I think, if, with Garland gone, the reports from the Canadian Legation to Ottawa are not quite as sympathetic and understanding now as they were. Turgeon is coming in to see me today and I hope to see more of him in future than has been possible up to now.