Mark Carney Family History

Overview

Mark Joseph Carney was born on March 16th, 1965 to Robert and Verlie Carney in Fort Smith, Canadian NW Territories.  He was the third of their four children.  When he was four, the family relocated first to Yellowknife and, two years later, to Edmonton in Alberta.

Mark’s parents, both educators and active in public service, influenced the path he would take.  He attended St. Francis Xavier High School in Edmonton and Harvard University in America, before leaving to undertake postgraduate work in economics at Oxford University in England.  That was where he met and married his wife Diana Fox.

Mark’s Banking Career.  Mark spent thirteen years at Goldman Sachs and worked in their Boston, London, New York, Tokyo and Toronto offices.  In 2003 he left Goldman Sachs to join the Bank of Canada as Deputy Governor.

Four years later he was appointed its Governor.  His immediate actions as Governor were said to have played a major role in helping Canada avoid the worst aspacts of the 2008 financial crisis.

His reputation enhanced, the Bank of England came calling in 2013.  He was to be the first non-Briton to hold the post of Governor.  There he led the Bank’s response to Brexit and to the early phases of COVID.

Mark’s Political Career.  After leaving the Bank of England in 2020, Mark worked as one of the informal advisors to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during COVID.  Later, he was made chair of the Liberal Party’s economic growth taskforce in September 2024.

In January 2025, following Trudeau’s resignation announcement, Mark made known his intention to seek the Liberal Party’s leadership.  He won in a landslide victory in March and became Canada’s Prime Minister.

Mark has earned plaudits in Canada for standing up to Donald Trump’s attacks on Canada’s political and economic status.

The Carney Name

The Carney surname is Irish.  It derives from the O’Cearnaigh sept and from the Gaelic word cearnach meaning “victorious.”  This sept had its base at Manulla in county Mayo on the west coast of Ireland.  The Carney spelling has generally been specific to Mayo.  Elsewhere the spelling has been Kearney.  Indeed, even in Mayo Kearneys have outnumbered Carneys.

Carneys in Ireland today number around 2,000.  The Carney numbers in America are more than eight times as many.

Mark’s Carneys in Ireland

Aughagower is a small rural village in western Mayo, some four miles southeast of Westport on the coast.  Today the village has around forty houses, a pub and a shop.  Much of its population had been lost at the time of the Great Famine.  Traces of the ruins of deserted houses can be seen in parts of the parish.

In the late 1800’s the Carneys and the Morans were closely related families there.  Patrick Carney married Bridget Moran in 1882; and three of their children married Morans.  By this time – the 1910’s and 1920’s – these Carneys had begun to spread.  Two left for Canada, another to America, and one to England.  In addition, all four of the Moran children left for Canada.

Some Carneys did remain.  When news spread to Ireland in 2025 that Mark Carney had become the next Prime Minister of Canada, Irish papers began to wonder if Mark Carney might make a “homecoming” return.  They even unearthed a great uncle of his, the ninety-five year old Patrick Carney, in Aughagower.  His son Tom operated Carney’s Quarry there.

The emigrant Robert had been back once.  As had his son Robert, Mark’s father.   Mark never.  But Mark, because of his family background, registered as an Irish citizen in 1980 and was said to have hung a small map of Mayo at his Bank of England office in honor of his grandfather.

Mark’s Carneys in Canada

Mary, Robert’s eldest child, was the first of these Carneys to make it to Canada.  She married Michael Moran from home in Vancouver in 1911.  Because of Mary’s presence there, her younger brother Robert must have been encouraged to go there too.  He arrived in Vancouver in 1925.  Sadly one year later Mary died.

It was said that Robert had left for Canada solo and asked that his girlfriend Nora (Michael Moran’s younger sister) wait and join him later.  This she did and they were married in Vancouver in 1926.  Robert subsequently joined up with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

The Canadian Mounties.  The RCMP had been established in 1920 with the amalgamation of the Royal North West Mounted Police (RNWMP) and the Dominion Police.

The RNWMP, founded in 1873, had been responsible for the colonial policing of the Canadian West.  The RCMP inherited its somewhat paramilitary, frontline policing-oriented culture.  As part of its national security and intelligence functions, the RCMP would infiltrate ethnic or political groups that were considered to be dangerous to Canada.

Robert J. Carney, Mark’s Father.  Robert J. Carney, born in 1933, grew up in this RCMP culture, in particular in its attitude towards the First Nation peoples.

In 1957 he married Verlie Kemper of Irish descent in Vancouver, with his elder brother Joseph officiating, his younger brother Fred as best man, and a Moran among the ushers.

From 1962 to 1971 Robert was the school principal and later the chief superintendent of schools at Fort Smith in Canada’s Northwest Territories.  Then from 1973 to 1976 he was the executive director of the Northern Development Council of Alberta, as well as being the acting director general for Indian Affairs there.

His assimilationist approach towards their childhood education probably reflected common Canadian views at the time.  But attitudes have since changed.  The Indian day school system is seen to have divided children from their families, denied them their heritage, and subjected many to physical, emotional and even sexual abuse.

In a 1991 church-commissioned study, Robert interviewed 240 former residential school students, eventually reporting allegations of extreme physical abuse and 15 alleged instances of sexual abuse at eight Western Arctic residential schools.

Robert would still defend the system.  In 1995 he wrote: “Those who came to teach European values and skills to aboriginal people during the colonial period often failed to achieve their objectives.  But their efforts in this regard cannot be viewed as being wholly destructive or ill-intended.”

Robert died in Nanaimo, British Colombia in 2009 after a long illness.  One eulogy at his funeral went as follows:

“Bob Carney was a gentle man and a gentleman who always saw the humour in every situation.  My fondest memory is of a three-day helicopter tour we took with his Minister, Boomer Adair, to all the provincial parks in Alberta.  During Happy Hour each day Bob would regale us with stories of the North, working on the railroad and teaching (for which he had a special passion).

Challenges were never a roadblock but an opportunity to try something different. He met failure – like an unsucessful bid to run for the Liberals in Tory Alberta in 1980 – with a smile and a chuckle.”

Mark Carney’s Family Tree

• Robert Carney departed for Canada in 1925 and m. Nora Moran in Vancouver in 1926
• – Rev. Joseph (Joe) Carney (1929-2014)
• – Robert J. (Bob) Carney (1933-2009)
• – Frederick (Fred) Carney m. Tanya Dournovo in 1965

• Robert J. (Bob) Carney m. Verlie Margaret Kemper (b. 1934) in Vancouver in 1957 (officiated by Robert’s elder brother Joseph)
• – Sean Carney (b. 1958) m. Mimi
• – Brenda Carney (b. 1960) m. David Sully
• – Mark Carney (b. 1965)
• – Brian Carney m. Julie, lives in Northern Ireland

• Robert Carney m. Diana Fox, economist from England (b. 1965) in Oxford in 1994.  They lived in Toronto and Ottawa before moving to London in 2013.  They moved back to Ottawa in 2020.
• – four daughters (Cleo, Tess, Amelia and Sasha)