Celebrating Irish heritage

Saturday sees Ottawa's annual St Patrick's Day parade enjoyed by those with Irish ancestry as well as those who just like a celebration.
Today the ranks of those of us with Irish ancestry, one of my great-grandfathers found on the 1911 census in Wales appears to have left County Down although I've no Irish record to confirm that, are being swelled by a new wave of emigration from Ireland. An item in Generation Emigration in the Irish Times reports that:

"People have been sleeping in their cars overnight outside the Silver Springs Hotel in Cork where a jobs and emigration fair takes place today. More than 12,000 people attended the Working Abroad Expo at the RDS in Dublin at the weekend, with organisers having to turn those who had not pre-registered away."

If your Irish origins are rather more remote, and you struggle with the records, or lack of them, you'll welcome the new 544 page edition of  John Grenham's Tracing Your Irish Ancestors due for publication at the end of the month and available for pre-order at Amazon.ca.

UPDATE: GenealogyinTime magazine has a roundup on their recent postings about Irish family history resources.