You would be forgiven for thinking Erin O’Toole is the name of a woman. In fact, Erin O’Toole is the name of a woman — a talk radio host in Northern Colorado, who hosts the program Colorado Edition . Canada’s own Erin O’Toole, the new leader of the federal Conservative party and the MP for Durham, has conceded that, though he has encountered several name-doppelgangers over the years, he seems “to be the only guy Erin O’Toole in the mix.”
Which does seem reasonable. Erin is “derived from the Gaelic Erinn, the dative case of Erie, which is the Irish name for Ireland,” reads the entry for the name on the website Baby Name Wizard . Wikipedia notes that the name “is principally used as a feminine forename.”
In any case, the U.S. female radio host and the Canadian male politician have lately found themselves mixed up, at least partly as a consequence of his “Make America Great Again”-esque campaign slogan “Take Back Canada.” Shortly after the latter O’Toole was announced as the Conservative Party of Canada leader in late August, the radio host, unaware that she shared a name with a national political leader, found her official Twitter account suddenly besieged by missives directed at her news-making namesake.
Amused by the coincidence, the female O’Toole played up the case of mistaken identity and joked to the “couple of new friends from Canada” that she wasn’t the one they were looking for.
This week, the two O’Tooles finally met, at least virtually, as the radio host invited the Conservative party leader to join her on her show. The interview touched on such riveting matters as the Canadian O’Toole’s difficulty in securing social media handles (including his domain name, to which he was beaten to the punch by a gallery owner and art curator in California, also a female), why most of the mail he receives is addressed to “Ms. O’Toole,” and how the Americans are dealing with a “very high profile and COVID-impacted election campaign” at the moment, whose winner he hopes to one day “work closely with,” whomever it may be.
Most intruiging, the two O’Toole’s discovered they shared something else in common. They have the same birthday — January 22, although the Canadian O’Toole admitted to being somewhat older. Of their politics, both O’Tooles said very little in the virtual interview, keeping it social and friendly. They did invite each to a future cross-border face-face meeting one day, to compare homeland craft beers.
The matter of the two names, at least, has been cleared up, until such time as yet another O’Toole enters the mix.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
