From a tenant farm in County Tipperary, a young man in a family with 700-year-old ties to the land had picked up in the 1780s and sailed for Newfoundland. The big island of broken rock and blistering winds off the east coast of the North American mainland was England’s oldest colony, but it offered the Irish a degree of respect unknown to them at home. They gave their adopted land a Gaelic name that meant “land of the fish.” In 1788, Newfoundland was host to the first recorded game of hurling in the New World.
