Bringing Westport to the world through YouTube

Four-hundred hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and the video sharing website has a billion users.

One of these is Mayo GP Dr Oliver Whyte. His YouTube channel (Dr Oliver Snr Whyte) has been charting the goings-on in his hometown of Westport for the past six years; as the “about” section of his channel explains, it focuses on: “people, places and events around Westport, Co Mayo, Ireland plus a few more videos of general interest. Hopefully the content is interesting and enjoyable.”

And people do find it interesting. With almost 1,000 subscribers, and more than one million views in total, the 72-year-old has got a social media presence of which the vast majority of young ‘YouTubers’ would be envious.

The GP, well known to attendees of the IMO AGM for his spirited contributions from the floor, uses his phone or camera to record videos and photographs of everyday life in Westport.

Dr Whyte told IMT how the idea for the channel originally struck him. He explained that back when the Western Greenway was being constructed, no one knew how phenomenally successful the 42km cycling and walking path between Achill and Westport would be. But Dr Whyte said he immediately thought it was a superb idea, and a much-needed boost for tourism in the area.

“I thought the Greenway was a great idea, and I was speaking to some people about it at the time. I asked them if they’d ever seen the last train going through Achill, which was in 1937. It had 10 dead bodies on it which was from a fire incident in Scotland. They were brought back to Westport from Dublin by train, and there was a special train put on. Then they were brought from Westport to Achill by train and that was the last train to Achill.”

The incident Dr Whyte speaks of was a tragic fire in which 10 young Irish potato pickers, all from Achill Island, lost their lives.

The boys and young men, aged between 13 and 23, died when fire ripped through their bothy in Kirkintilloch on September 16, 1937.

The bodies were due to be buried in the Old Aisle Cemetery in Kirkintilloch until a poignant telegram from Ireland arrived, bearing the words ‘Beir Abhaile Ar Marbh’ – Bring Home Our Dead.

But somebody had told Dr Whyte that the last person to see the last train had in fact died a few months previously. “I thought it was an awful pity that people pass on, and don’t tell their stories. But a couple of weeks later, I was up beside the track and there was a man there, in his late 80s. And I asked him had he seen the last train going to Achill. He said he had, so I asked him would he say a few words about it, whipped out my phone and we recorded it.”

American wake
That became the first video on the YouTube channel. Dr Whyte then began to speak to older people in the area about their lives in the West of Ireland.

The channel has a distinct ‘Humans of New York’ edge; face-to-face interviews with elderly locals allow viewers to gain an insight into the people of Westport, their lives and their history in the West of Ireland.

One such video, featuring Westport woman Delia Ruddy discussing the reality of emigration to the US in the 1940s, is quietly compelling, as she casts her mind back 60 or 70 years to the heartbreak of a small town losing its young to the promise of a better life Stateside. She recalls the house being full of visitors the night before an Atlantic boat crossing for her older brother: “We had to have a bottle of stout for all the neighbours that would call in.”

“The American Wake,” offers Dr Whyte. She nods: “’Twas very lonely. I cried all day, the day before… and cried and cried the day he went.” They draw parallels with the Australian and New Zealand emigration of the present day, and discuss how plane journeys and the promise of visits home have made such partings more bearable.

The videos now chronicle all aspects of daily life in Westport, and no one is safe from Dr Whyte and his camera. “I have interviewed Enda Kenny on his bike as he cycled the Greenway, Michael Ring on the bike too. I interviewed John Bruton on the bridge in Westport as he waited to do an interview for Sky. A while ago I interviewed [Irish nationalist] Ernie O’Malley’s son at an event.”

The videos are an eclectic mix, ranging from footage of the annual Tidy Towns clean-up, to an Easter message from the local priest, to local musicians playing traditional and not-so traditional tunes.

Global village
The good doctor also has more than 4,100 ‘friends’ on Facebook, where he shares the videos, as well as any photographs he takes of Westport.

“One time I was recording a group of cyclists coming through the town, and a guy shouts out ‘are you Oliver Whyte’, and it was a guy from Chicago — he knew me and I knew him, just from Facebook.”

The videos have even served to boost the photogenic town’s population, with Dr Whyte saying people have told him they had come to live in Westport on the strength of the videos.

The YouTube channel is social media at its best, connecting Westport to the whole world, as well as archiving and documenting the people that make it what it is. The GP says it is a fantastic medium, if used correctly.

Dr Whyte always asks for consent from his on-the-spot interviewees, and very few have refused in six years of recording. “I tell them if they don’t like it once it’s up then I will take it down — maybe five or six people have asked me to do that, out of 3,000-plus videos.”

Some successful YouTubers have made full-time careers out of their channel, benefiting from advertising revenue as views climb. Dr Whyte says he has never attempted to monetise the channel, and will never do so.

“Although once I accidentally monetised it… I had a video of Maureen O’Hara, back in Cong for the 50th anniversary of the film The Quiet Man. I think I got a cheque for $132.” That clip has had 64,000 views so far, and is the most watched clip of the late flame-haired actress on YouTube.

The Stephen Spielberg of the Wild Atlantic Way was recently recognised for his contribution to Westport tourism at a special event to mark his one million views milestone by Fáilte Ireland and the Mayo Chamber of Commerce, among others.

“I didn’t want it but they insisted… I will keep doing it regardless.”