John A. Murphy

John A. Murphy (born 17 January 1927) is an Irish historian and a former senator. He is currently Emeritus Professor of history at University College Cork (UCC).

Murphy was born in Macroom, County Cork, and in 1945 he won a County Council scholarship to study history at UCC. He graduated in 1948 with a first-class honours degree and first place in both History and Latin, then took an MA in Cork before taking up a teaching post at the diocesan seminary at Farranferris in Cork city.

In 1960 he became an assistant lecturer at UCC, and was appointed Professor of Irish History in 1971, holding that chair until his early retirement in 1990. His 1975 book Ireland in the twentieth century was one of the first surveys of contemporary Irish history.

From 1977 to 1982, and from 1987 to 1992, Murphy represented the National University of Ireland constituency as an independent member of Seanad Éireann. As a senator, he was noted for his advocacy of political and cultural pluralism. He was regarded as being politically close to The Workers Party.

John A. Macdonald

Sir John Alexander Macdonald GCB KCMG PC PC QC (11 January 1815 – 6 June 1891) was a Canadian politician and Father of Confederation who was the first Prime Minister of Canada (1867–1873, 1878–1891). The dominant figure of Canadian Confederation, he had a political career which spanned almost half a century. He drank heavily, and in 1873 was voted out during the Pacific Scandal, in which his party took bribes from businessmen seeking the contract to build the Pacific Railway. Macdonald's greatest achievements were building and guiding a successful national government for the new Dominion, using patronage to forge a strong Conservative Party, promoting the protective tariff of the National Policy, and building the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway. Economic growth was slow during his years in office, as Canada verged on stagnation; many residents migrated to the fast-growing United States. He fought to block provincial efforts to take power back from Ottawa. His most controversial move was to approve the execution of Métis leader Louis Riel for treason in 1885; it permanently alienated the Francophones who saw themselves humiliated.