Ads telling Irish people to 

leave Canada spotted in 

Toronto, everybody confused

Torontonians confused and angered by Dublin marketing agency's 

'anti-Irish' recruitment campaign

By Lauren O'Neil, CBC News Posted: Jul 13, 2015 7:37 PM ET Last Updated: Jul 13, 2015 7:51 PM ET

A photo of the controversial digital billboard, taken while it passed through Toronto's Liberty Village, spread quickly after being uploaded to Facebook on Thursday. (The Social House)

A large sign telling Irish people to "go home" was spotted on the back of a truck moving through downtown Toronto last week, leaving behind it a trail of very confused — if not downright angry — Canadians.

Containing only the words "GO HOME IRISH!" and the URL "PleaseLeaveCanada.com," the ad drew immediate criticism among those who saw it live and those who saw photos of it uploaded to Facebook Thursday.

"Can you imagine how heartbreaking it is for Irish people to see this when walking around Toronto?" tweeted a 21-year-old Irish man living in Canada, noting that his mother had emailed to inform him of the ad after seeing it online.

Others were confused by the presence of such a sign in Canada, where more than 4.5 million residents listed themselves as being of Irish ancestry during the most-recent National Household Survey.

Of course, it didn't take long for people to figure out the sign's actual purpose by visiting the URL it displayed.

PleaseLeaveCanada.com redirects to the homepage of a Dublin-based marketing agency called The Social House. An overlay currently in place on the site reveals that the billboards are part of a recruitment campaign aimed at attracting talented Irish workers who've been living abroad.

"We want you to come home," reads a corresponding blog post on the company's website, addressing the thousands of Irish citizens who've moved to Canada for work in recent years. "Not as much as your mum, but still."

In an interview with The Daily Edge, an agency employee elaborated on what his team was trying to achieve.

"We want to bring good people back from Canada, Australia and all over – so it was done to promote a bit of a reaction," he said. "People who get it think it's hilarious. We've got loads of people messaging us saying that it's smart and well done."

The campaign's humour and good intentions were lost on those who didn't care to investigate the link, however.

As one Torontonian Twitter user pointed out, "people often don't read the back story to ads."

Others called out the agency for making light of or trying to capitalize on the "anti-Irish sentiments that were rampant in Canada and the U.S. in the 19th and early 20th centuries."

Comment:

"When Irish eyes are smiling

I love the humour behind the Irish attempt to entice their workers back home.

Ireland’s gain will be Canada’s loss.

I’m partial to the Irish. I think it’s because, as a baby in Cornwall England, I was nursed by an Irish nanny .I still choke up with Irish lullabies. The hand that rocks the cradle does truly rule the world.

In any event, compare the Irish and Canadian approaches to building a country. They use loving humour to get back their young people. We use venomous abuse to drive well established workers back to Italy, Portugal and Poland.

Which gets us back to Jason Kenney. He did a good thing by opening the door for some unemployed Irishmen. Kenney said that the Irish shared our “values”. Unfortunately, as he was placing out the welcome mat for the Irish, Kenney was putting the boots to the Italians, Portuguese and Poles. This reminded me of the old days in Toronto when only whites could get government jobs. Italians, Portuguese, Poles, etc were not white enough. 

Jason Kenney panders to the white trash voters…those who accept and protect the Irish and other blue eyed folks but find it so easy to feel threatened by the work ethic of brown eyed Europeans.

We encourage the brown eyed inferiors to enter Canada as illegal workers. They get the job done on time and on budget.  We take their taxes. We steal their CPP and EI contributions. We don’t pay overtime. We take their private pension plan contributions. Then we kick them out. But we keep the money.

My own general assessment of the situation is that like Kenney, most Canadians are comfortable ripping off hundreds of thousands of brown eyed Europeans. Business is business. Lower wages. Better service. No medical or social service costs. No unfavourable voting. No uppity demands from the job sites.  

Jason Kenney goes along for the ride. He then throws in a few legal Irishmen in order to pander to the losers who worry about the Asians coming into the neighborhood.

Where does all this fit in with Kenney and his promotion of “shared values”? Well, Kenney is being honest when he says that he’s protecting our “shared values”. After all, ripping off brown eyed people is a shared Canadian value…even among brown eyed Canadians.       "

Richard Boraks, July 13 2015