by CHRIS BARRY

Aye, St. Paddy's Day, when Irish eyes are bloodshot. It's no secret that Montreal is second to none - well, okay, maybe second to New York, but it ends there - when it comes to North American St. Patrick's Day celebrations. 'Tis the one day of the year, as they say, when everybody wants to be Irish. A rite of spring that inevitably takes place in sub-zero temperatures. A Sunday morning parade where the downtown core is littered with spatterings of green vomit, as opposed to the more traditional brownish grey variety. Sure, most people have no idea who St. Patrick was, other than he might have been some Irish saint at some time or other, but who cares? St. Patrick's is a day to get shitfaced and part-ay. And, according to lore, no culture holds a candle to the Irish when it comes to getting shitfaced in style. In honour of this year's festivities, the Mirror spoke to several prominent local Irish boozers and asked them for their thoughts on the joyous miracle that is St. Patrick's Day, what it is to be Irish, and for any prominent - if hazy - memories they might be able to recall from glorious St. Patrick's Days past. This is what they had to say.

Lauren McCann: parade marshal

Every year I'm a marshal in the parade. You know, those people who walk up and down the street during the parade with those big hats and stuff. I'm from a big Irish family and there's a bunch of us who act as marshals every year. But I've been the St. Patrick's Day princess a couple of times too. I was princess last year, actually. You can't drink during the parade if you're the princess. You have to wait until later. You know, some people get totally wasted, and last year there was an accident when somebody fell off a float. Imagine being a little kid at the parade and seeing a drunk princess falling off a float and breaking her leg or something. It wouldn't be good.

Paddy Walsh: musician

I used to drive a calèche and my stall was at this place in Griffintown where there were all these Irish guys who I'd sometimes go out drinking with. One time they took me to this traditional Irish pub in the Point, where they introduced me to this really gregarious, kind-hearted Irish guy who owned the place. We got along great and the guy, let's say his name was Brendan, upon learning I was a musician, asked me if I would do this little fundraiser they were having - which, when I went to do it, came to suspect was for the benefit of the IRA, although I can't be 100 per cent sure of this. Anyway, later that year I was driving my calèche in the St. Patrick's Day parade and these two marshals came over and hung two pots of shamrocks over my calèche, along with an Irish flag. You know, they were very nice flowers and I wanted to keep them for awhile. So I'm just about finished the parade route when I see Brendan, who comes running up to my calèche and starts teasing me about never coming down to his bar anymore and makes me promise that I'll come visit him there the next day - which, you know, I'm more than happy to do. Anyway, the next afternoon I'm packing up all my stuff at the stall in Griffintown, getting ready to go down to the bar, but you know, I've still got my shamrocks with me, along with my guitar, and as I'm walking down to the Point I start thinking, "Ah, fuck this, I'm hungover, everybody in the bar is still going to be drunk from the night before, the shamrocks are probably going to get destroyed, nah, I'm just going to go home and take a nap."

For some reason I just really didn't want to see these shamrocks ruined - which was actually kind of strange, that I cared so much. Later on that night I turn on the TV to find out that a gunman had walked into Brendan's bar that afternoon, killed Brendan and seriously wounded a few other people in the bar. The shooting occurred at exactly the same time that I would have been there, at Brendan's tabl with my shamrocks and guitar, and seriously, as corny as this sounds, if it weren't for those shamrocks I probably would not be here to tell this story today.

John Jordan: musician, man about town

It began, as trouble does, at Paddy Walsh's St. Patrick's Day brunch. The whiskey and stew were in plentiful supply and Paddy's two-year-old son Dylan was bashing a handmade Union Jack piñata with a sheleighle. There was also a petite red-headed angel named Andrea that Paddy encouraged me to get to know, an Irish matchmaker's gleam in his eye. Staggering down to the parade, Andrea and I drifted off from the group and met back up with them at Brutopia. Right before I had to leave for work, she grabbed me by the hand, took me upstairs, and the next thing I knew there was sweet drunk girl lips all over me. I had to run off for about an hour, but I promised to meet up with them later. In that hour, she picked a fight with the entire Black Watch and had to be carried kicking and scratching from the bar. Then my friends lost her. They found her barricaded inside the Bank of Montreal on Peel and Ste-Catherine, red-faced and tear-streaked. Apparently she had scared someone so much that they maced her. That should have been enough warning, but being St. Patrick's, it came off as charming. To me it is more than a day to celebrate being Irish. It is a day to practice the alchemy of turning alcohol into catharsis, which the Irish have mastered. Matchmaking, however, not so much.

By April I had learned she was on methadone and had a split personality named Angria, both her roommates had threatened me in public, and it all ended with me throwing rocks at her window at 4 a.m., calling her a demented harpy.

David Fennario: playwright

Well, it used to be the one time of the year that we would go uptown from Point St-Charles. Back then it was much more of a local thing, an Irish thing, but now the parade always has undercurrents of all this anglo rights crap. And then you have all these local "celebrities" trying to cash in on it. But I'm more of a traditionalist. I've always felt the parade needed more politics than it has, you know, support for the Catholics in Northern Ireland - who have never been allowed to march in the parade. And this is a disgrace. They say they don't want politics in the parade but, of course, that's a political statement in itself. These days I just see St. Patrick's Day as an excuse to get pissed with old friends. Fuck that cutesy shamrock crap.

Juliet Waters: journalist

Every year I get together with a bunch of friends and go to the parade, always with a mickey of gin or something equally horrible and get very drunk and wail enthusiastically at Mutsumi Takahashi every time the CFCF float goes by. That's our tradition. We wail at Mutsumi.

Nancy Kornechook: sales coordinator

My friend's father is a Shriner and every year the highlight of the parade for me is to watch these 50 or so men, all over the age of 60, get drunk and drive around on their mopeds, wobbling back and forth, driving into people in the crowd and falling off their bikes. We're always there encouraging them to make asses of themselves. I don't think they get drunk for other parades they drive in, like for the Lions Club or something - just for St. Patrick's Day. Oh, and I really like to yell at the local celebrities, like big fat Terry DiMonte.

Glen Collins aka TJ Plenty: musician

As a kid, my family didn't care much for St. Patrick's Day, but as I get older I've gotten more and more into it. My dad grew up in the Point and at that time being Irish was not really a great thing, you know, not something you wanted to advertise. Like you were something less for being Irish, whereas now it's kind of cool. The more I learn about the Irish and all the great writers, poets, musicians, the more I totally take pride in my heritage. I rarely go down to the parade but I do always get together with a bunch of friends, eat some Irish stew, get a really good bottle of Irish whiskey and, as they say, have a few.

Bill Gilmour: retired

I think it's great that everybody wants to be Irish on St. Patrick's Day. I've been walking in the parade for over 40 years now, representing St. Andrew's Parish. Every year we all meet in a downtown hotel, have a couple of drinks, decorate our top hats, and then get down to the parade. Our group always waits to march at the back of the parade, because there's a real nice little bar down there around Fort street where we can have a few drinks while we're waiting. We march, then go back to the parish for the party, and later meet back at the "wailing wall" downtown where we all go to take a leak. Then we head out to the bars for awhile and usually wind up at somebody's home for another party. It's a good time but now that I'm older I try not to overdo it. I usually only start celebrating on Friday night.

Brendan Murphy: student

I haven't really celebrated St. Patrick's for a couple of years now, though I'm definitely going out this year. Last year I was living in Vancouver, where nobody drinks, and the year before I was in Halifax, where maybe St. Patrick's doesn't mean that much because everybody is drunk every day of the year to begin with. I don't really remember too much about my last Montreal St. Patrick's Day, other than waking up alone the next day at 11 a.m. in the back seat of a car I didn't recognize. I was later told that I didn't want the night to end and simply refused to get out of the car - so the people just left me there. I can, ahem, get pretty obstinate after I've been drinking for awhile.

Dave McMillan: chef

I usually end up at Honey Martin's in NDG. I love Honey Martin's. It's a small little pub and St. Paddy's really feels like an Irish celebration there. You've got old drunk Irish ladies there, instead of all these stupid student types you find downtown. It feels more real. I mean, St. Patrick's is pretty well the same thing for everybody: beer, beer, beer, Jameson, Jameson, Jameson. You just keep on drinking. It's one day of the year where I don't stop when I'm drunk, I just keep on going.

Tim Burke: church caretaker

One year I was with my brother drinking in a bar on Ste-Catherine and we met these two girls there. I'd actually met one of them before but nothing much had happened. This was around 3 in the afternoon and we ended up getting very drunk, eventually closing down Hurley's. We were at the point where we couldn't even walk anymore, so we took a taxi to her place, and, um, consummated the relationship. And no, despite what you think, we were not copulating and each taking turns leaning over our respective sides of the bed barfing up green beer. But we did end up getting married two years later. And now we have two kids, one of them named after St. Patrick, but we spell his name the Gaelic way, Padraic.

Kirk MacGeachy: guitarist/vocalist in Celtic band Orealis

Most of my St. Patrick's Day memories are a blur, if you know what I mean. But I'd like to offer up a guide to any musician who might be playing their first St. Paddy's Day this year. Because as the party progresses and people get more inebriated and the dancing wilder, there are major chances of dangerous things happening. I remember one year at Thompson House when a full stack of PA speakers - big, big cabinets - were bowled over by a couple of dancers who had spun out of control. So my advice is to try to choose a place to play that has a barricade between you and the audience. Last year at Brutopia I nearly lost my front teeth when dancers started spinning out of control and hit the boom stand of the vocal mic, which promptly came smashing straight into my face. You've also got to watch out for all the beer drenchings - not so much for yourself but for your instruments and equipment. I strongly recommend to anyone that you set up as far from the front of the stage as possible.

Chris Stewart: drummer with hi-energy Celtic dynamos the Peelers

We're doing our annual St. Paddy's Day tour right now, which is always amazing. Savannah, Georgia, was great, everybody wants to be Irish there, but Montreal is always where you want to be playing on St. Patrick's Day. We're based in Kirkhill, Ontario, which is only about 45 minutes west of Montreal, and for myself, when I haven't been living in Montreal, I've always come down for the parade. It's just such a good party, so well done, and everyone is always so cool down on the street. You know, there's never any problems, and if there are, they are always minor.

It just doesn't get any better for an Irish band than to be playing Montreal on St. Patrick's Day. The audiences, the way the clubs receive you, it's just the best place to be by far. And we do pretty well. You know, most Celtic acts are only two or three people, whereas we're a seven-piece band with a full stage lineup with all the traditional instruments like tin whistle, fiddle, accordion, mandolin, but we also bring out the distorted electric guitars as well. This year in we'll be doing Grumpy's after the parade, and the Jupiter Room on Saturday night. Oh yeah, we'll be putting back our fair share of Guinness this weekend.

Wayne Burke: teacher

I come from Buckingham, Quebec, and in Buckingham people have always taken St. Patrick's Day very much to heart. There's a huge Irish population back home and for as long as anyone can remember, the place to go on St. Patrick's was the old Palace Hotel - which had been standing, just barely, for well over 100 years. When the Palace was finally scheduled to be torn down it was decided that Buckingham would celebrate one last St. Patrick's Day blowout at the place. The whole Irish community was going to come together to paint every inch of the Palace green - every piece of furniture, toilet, everything - and the morning after St. Patrick's Day those of us still standing would step outside to witness the very sad moment of the wrecking ball coming to destroy the place. It was quite profound. But not much of the Palace ended up being painted green though. Everybody got too drunk the night before and I guess just decided en masse to fuck it halfway through the job. And no, despite what you keep insisting, it wasn't because we all started drinking the turpentine after the booze ran out and got too sick. But it did turn out to be a memorable St. Patrick's Day, well worth going home for.

Ryan Dixon: legendary downtown boozer

I usually start celebrating Friday night and end up missing the parade. Sometimes I'll keep going for as long as a full week, depending on what day St. Patrick's falls upon that year.

St. Patrick's is such a kinship thing. I can't recall ever even seeing a fight on St. Patrick's Day - but then again, that might just be that I can't recall. I do, however, vaguely remember one year standing on a table on the terrasse of Hurley's yelling at all the people on the street. I kept screaming "I see you, baby" and they had to yell, "Shakin' that ass" back at me while shaking their asses. Anyway, it took me a few tries, but eventually I had the whole street participating. About 200 people, maybe more. I don't think I would have been able to pull something like this off on a regular Sunday afternoon. You know, if the entire street hadn't been drunk. :