On my way home from work March 2, I heard a small but interesting segment of CBC Radio's “As it Happens” on the announcement earlier in the day that Northern Ireland Unionist and Protestant firebrand minister Ian Paisley, Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom for the constituency of North Antrim since 1970, would not seek re-election after holding the seat for 40 years.

When I attended a Catholic high school in Ontario way back in that decade when he was first elected, the name “Ian Paisley” was just a hair removed from being synonymous with the Antichrist.

Apparently the feelings were mutual because in 1988, when Pope John Paul II delivered a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, Paisley shouted "I denounce you as the Antichrist!" and held up a red poster reading "Pope John Paul II ANTICHRIST" in black letters.”

That Paisley, a Free Presbyterian, encouraged anti-Catholic sectarianism as three decades of “Troubles” began with the march in Derry on Oct. 5, 1968, organized by the newly formed Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, to protest discrimination against Catholics, and was met by a baton charge by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, is not in historical dispute.

What will be of lasting historical interest, however, is that in October 2006, in the twilight of his political career, he put the greater good of Northern Ireland first and endorsed the St. Andrews Agreement on the devolution of power, which led to the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly and a power sharing agreement between Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), after Sinn Féin pledged its loyalty and support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland, courts and rule of law. The Democratic Unionist Party had opposed the Good Friday Agreement of April 1998.

Almost four years later, the agreement is a bit tattered, but in large has held. For that Paisley rightly deserves his share of the credit.

Mind you, not everyone would agree and some might think I'm being naïve at worst or a bit too optimistic at best. I know Bernadette Devlin, Paisley's Catholic nemesis from the early 1970s, and no fan of either the St. Andrew's Agreement or the Good Friday Agreement, would think that. And that would only be if she was feeling unusually charitable.

Devlin was elected to the Mid Ulster seat in Parliament at Westminster in a 1969 byelection. At 21, she remains the youngest woman to ever have been elected to the United Kingdom Parliament. She was re-elected in 1970 and defeated in 1974, ending her political career. She was at the Battle of the Bogside in 1969 and Bloody Sunday in 1972.

As much as I respect Devlin's lifelong ideological commitment and my co-religionist's fiery Catholic passion for social justice, if hope is to finally triumph over history in Northern Ireland, it has been because pragmatism and compromise from politicians like Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness, the Catholic, and Ian Paisley, the Protestant, have lead the way.