Adventurer guided by justice and compassion
Lifestyle - Sailing friends who were shocked at John Hannan’s untimely death this year have joined forces to create an award in his honour. The adopted Barna man was also a keen mountaineer, kayaker, skier and musician who’d held down several jobs before finally opting to study law in Galway. As a barrister and later a judge, he had a reputation for wisdom and fairness as LORNA SIGGINS hears.
When Circuit Court Judge John Hannan passed away in late February, there was a sense of disbelief and shock among those who knew him in Galway and well beyond.
Not only was the Barna-based father of two known for his compassion and sense of fairness on the bench, but he was also an adventurer with a series of passions that extended from classical music to kayaking, mountaineering and, latterly, skiing.
That adventurous gene extended to nurturing the interests of a younger generation. He taught kayaking to the Galway Sea Scouts. His contribution and that of his family to sailing in An Spidéal was such that Cumann Seoltóireachta an Spidéil (CSS) has initiated a new memorial award which will be presented annually.
Several months before his death at the young age of 56, Hannan attended a special screening of a documentary on the first Irish kayaking expedition to the Himalaya in 1986. It was hosted by CSS and Furbo-based film-maker Billy Keady in Indreabhán.
The black and white film which Keady recorded was of Hannan and an Irish team of kayakers tackling the Trisulia and Marsyandi rivers in Nepal. Along with Hannan, Declan Gavin, Mick Feeney, Deirdre Fagan, Joe O’Connor, Humphrey Murphy, Ursula MacPherson and Scottish medical doctor Andy Watt navigated a 100-kilometre route along some of the roughest white water in the world.
The monsoon had not quite finished when they set out, and the rivers were still in flood with stopper waves big enough to “swallow a bus”, as MacPherson described it to the Sunday Tribune in August 1987. The team were totally self-reliant. Therefore, ability to perform a “bullet-proof Eskimo roll” – as a form of recovery in the event of a capsize – was essential.
The ‘textbook’ plan was to inspect rapids before shooting them, but as the 13-day expedition wore on this became more and more challenging. At one point, Andy Watt was trapped under a rock in the middle of a flow and it took the team two-and-a-half hours to rescue him – all caught on 16mm film by Keady.
Scrambling over rocks and through thick vegetation, Keady followed the kayakers through the lens of his Clockwork Bolex. The team lived on dal bhat or lentil curry, omelettes and Tibetan bread cooked up by their Nepalese porters. They camped out nightly, sometimes close to villages with terraces of paddy fields where they were invited to join community “festivals of lights”.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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