When the fighting finally ended in 1998, Ireland was a divided island in search of healing. 
People needed something to bring them together, something to share. It was this urgent construct of social and civic rebuilding  that spawned the nonsectarian Belfast Giants Hockey Club in 2000.

Fitzpatrick, who has been involved with the team for the last 19 years and now serves as chairman, discussed the cathartic impact of the Belfast Giants recently during his talk at the Mount Carmel Auditorium. He was introduced by Sarah Fraser, the deputy director of athletics at Quinnipiac.

“This is an institution that’s very close to my heart,” Fitzpatrick told about 50 people in attendance. “It’s not my first rodeo on this campus, but it is the first time I’ve had the opportunity to speak about some of the values, some of the inspirations and some of the motivations that put me on this journey.”

When the Belfast Giants were founded shortly after “The Troubles,” Fitzpatrick said, the team’s leadership understood this wasn’t Belfast’s team. The Giants were Ireland’s team, whether you lived in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland.

While soccer, hurling, rugby, cricket and Gaelic football were deeply rooted traditions, ice hockey was virtually unknown in Ireland, which made it the perfect vessel to bring people together.

The club’s slogan became, “In the land of the Giants, everyone is equal.” What’s more, all of the Giants players have community outreach clauses built into their contracts.

The club’s colors also were carefully chosen. A palette of red, white, teal and gold was intentionally picked to avoid any connection to the UK’s Union Jack and the Republic of Ireland’s green, white and orange bars.

“Twenty-five, 30 years after the Good Friday Agreement ended the fighting, some people say sport is still sectarianized. The Giants changed that. In 2014 or so, Belfast was a city still trying to figure out what it was,” Fitzpatrick said. “We had stopped shooting at each other. There were no troops in the street. The police had been demilitarized.

“We were starting to figure out what it was like to be with each other. But cities don’t heal on a political timetable,” he said. “They heal through shared experience. They heal through moments when people stand in the same room and feel something together.”

Case in point: The Giants won their ninth Elite Ice Hockey League championship in March — their fifth title in six years — all while being cheered by fans all across Ireland. It was a testament to bringing people together, not pushing them further apart.

“The message that I'm trying to give you is that people hear the numbers and they think, great vision. I understand why they say that, but it’s not an honest answer,” Fitzpatrick said. “My greatest gift isn’t vision. I would argue my greatest gift is humanity because I’m not the smartest guy in the room.

“And, I’ve never been — nor will I ever be — the smartest guy in the room. But I am smart enough to let other people talk who are smarter than me, and I listen to them,” Fitzpatrick said. “I  don’t get in the way of them doing what they want to do because everybody wins."

Fitzpatrick also founded the Friendship Four in 2015 as the only NCAA Division I ice hockey tournament held outside the United States.

For Fraser, the Friendship Four is so much more than just a college hockey tournament.

“That tournament is built around creating lasting connections between sport, education and international partnership,” Fraser told the audience here. “Quinnipiac's women's and men's teams have both played in the event twice.

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