For the first time in more than 50 years, Jean Canavan walks the stretch of road under an enormous wall at the back of her Belfast home. Her sister, Patsy, is by her side when they turn a corner on to Cupar Way in the west of the city.
This is the ‘Protestant side’ of the so-called peace wall separating the Catholic Falls Road from the Protestant Shankill Road.
It is July and the height of marching season. To their left, a digger is on site at Lanark Way where an Eleventh Night bonfire was once lit.
Jean Canavan (71) touches a miraculous medal around her neck. “I’ll just hide my medal. You would have got into trouble when you were young with this on round here,” she says laughing, before tucking it away.
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Red double decker buses packed with tourists whizz past and there is a constant stream of black taxis pulling up. Passengers armed with markers jump out to sign the wall.
Reading the messages written there, Patsy Canavan (69) shakes her head in disbelief. Freshly painted flags representing the US, Brazil, Canada and Australia are visible at the far end of the wall covered in writing.
“‘Most people want to live in peace and freedom’ ... ‘love from Washington’. They’re from everywhere,” says Patsy.
“To be honest, this is the first time we’ve walked round here, ever. And it’s only because there’s four of us (nodding to The Irish Times). We’ve gone past it in a car.
“I’m fascinated by this wall – and the names on it.”
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The Canavan sisters have lived in Bombay Street beside the peace wall – or peace line – since it was built at the beginning of the Troubles.
In August 1969, they were teenagers when a loyalist mob set fire to the houses and burned an entire street to the ground. The family of seven spent a winter in a tiny caravan with no toilet or electricity.
“If I won a caravan in a ballot now, I wouldn’t take it,” says Patsy.
The burning of Bombay Street was an attack that became synonymous with the outbreak of the Troubles.
Within a year, the homes were rebuilt through an extraordinary community effort and the Canavans moved back. No 45, the home of Jean Canavan’s grandfather, is now No 25, where she lives.
Upstairs in the back bedroom, the retired care worker opens the blinds to show a large metal cage that covers the window.
Beyond it is the wall – it reaches 14 metres in height (45ft) at certain points and stretches for 650 metres – which is the highest and longest of the remaining interface structures that are mainly in Belfast.
In the back bedroom, clothes are folded neatly on a single bed; it is a room that’s barely used.
“We’re living here all our lives so we’ve got used to it. We don’t even realise the peace line is behind us sometimes,” says Jean.
“But if that wall came down you wouldn’t know what would happen. You feel safer with it up.”
She points to “our neighbours who we never see” on the Shankill side. “They’re not looking out on to cages like us, they look on to a road,” she says.
“We’ve never met anyone the other side of that peace wall; they don’t want it down either, I know that.
During the Troubles, it was bad, but it seems to have settled down a bit ... our houses still get stoned now and again. Some mornings you would wake up and find the stones lying outside your front door
— Jean Canavan
“It’s entirely different now across the road, there’s all new estates and new houses in those wee streets leading to the Shankill.”
The siblings have invited us to their homes – they live facing each other – on a small street which is filled with dozens of tourists by 11am. A third sister lives on the same street and a fourth is around the corner.
American accents and the rumbling of black taxi engines (the taxis do official tours of the communities) echo around a republican memorial garden at the entrance to Bombay Street. Overlooking it is a mural of the original street on the night it was set alight.
Under its shadow is the concrete wall, reinforced with green corrugated metal sheeting and topped with barbed wire.
Scorch marks beside their sister’s front door are a visible reminder of a petrol bomb hurled across from the “other side”, says Jean.
“There was no peace line before the Troubles. It went up as timber at first ... and then they kept building it higher with wire around the top.
“During the Troubles, it was bad, but it seems to have settled down a bit ... our houses still get stoned now and again. Some mornings you would wake up and find the stones lying outside your front door.”
The sisters say they know when it’s “only kids” throwing stones because they “just hit the wires”. “But we know when it’s bigger people because they come right over and smash the windows of these houses.”
To protect their cars, they park them on different sides of the street.
“My brother-in-law’s car sits at my front door because when we get hit, it’s our roofs get smashed. But on the opposite side (where Patsy lives), the cars get it,” says Jean. “There’s nothing you can do, really. We’ve learned to live with it.”
As a Malaysian tour bus pulls in, a little girl living on the street changes into a pair of heavy Irish dancing shoes and dances a jig for her grandfather at their front door.
There are cones outside homes to ensure residents keep their car parking spaces.
Tourist guides provide a running commentary on the history of the area.
“I’ve seen them coming in on New Year’s Eve. It’s constant,” says Jean. “Boycie (the late actor John Challis) from Only Fools and Horses even visited.”
For Patsy Canavan, there’s “too many people coming in, too many cars”. “I tell you, some of them look into your window,” she adds.
At the top of Cupar Way, the sisters point to a sign outside a new coffee shop advertising souvenirs. Jean is curious to know what they are selling.
“People have said to us: ‘Why don’t you open up a wee tea room?’” she says, giggling.
Inside the shop, owner Sandy McDermott points to a half-empty display of peace wall fridge magnets, one of their biggest sellers. Small glass jars of Belfast soil are given away “for free” with each purchase, he adds.
“It’s weird, coming to look at a wall ... but people love it. We take it for granted. Americans still can’t believe it’s in operation,” says McDermott, a builder who grew up on the Shankill Road and opened his shop a fortnight earlier.
“You want to see how many Brazilians come here, it’s unbelievable.”
In 2013, the Stormont Executive set a target to remove all peace walls by 2023. Jean says reaching that target was always going to be difficult.
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“I don’t think we’ll ever see it coming down in our days.”
But she believes there is progress. “Walking down past the other side of the wall today, I don’t feel as bad as I would have done 10 or 20 years ago. But it’s because we were all together. I wouldn’t do it on my own.
“This is the only scar it leaves us with; we have to watch and we’re afraid to go into certain places.
“My grandson doesn’t care walking past it – which is good. You say to yourself, if you went to live somewhere else, god knows what it would be like.
“We’ve witnessed a lot and our lives would have been very different if the Troubles hadn’t happened. But you just get on with it.”
Passing through the peace gates at Lanark Way – which have roads running through them but still close at 10.30pm each night and reopen at 6am – Patsy is also firm in her opposition to change.
Last month, Stormont’s Department of Justice leafleted the area about plans to “reimage” the steel gates.
While there has been relative stability in recent years, some of the worst sectarian violence in decades took place near the Lanark Way gates in 2021.
“They’re talking about them being replaced with see-through gates. I don’t know if that’s a good’s idea,” says Patsy.
She is aware of those who would like to see the walls demolished.
“If the peace wall wasn’t there, we wouldn’t be living here,” adds Patsy. “We wouldn’t want to see it coming down, it’s far too early.”
