Canadians keeping an eye on separation vote
Pub in Toronto offers live-streaming results as well as a whisky tasting
Scots in Canada don’t have a vote in next week’s historic referendum on Scottish independence, but many are cheering on their side from afar as the race between Yes and No gets tighter.
At the Caledonian pub in Toronto, Donna Wolff, the Scottish-born owner and ardent Yes supporter, is gearing up to hold a big celebration party next Thursday night, complete with whisky-tasting and live-streaming of the referendum results.
“It’s going to happen,” says Wolff, who is just back from a trip to the homeland.
“You feel it. You feel the change in the air. Scottish people are actually standing up and it’s going to happen, for sure.”
Wolff says that among the Caledonian’s loyal patrons, Yes is the overwhelming sentiment.
“They’re all Yes, pretty much, people who live abroad because you’ve got this romantic notion of Scotland, you know, winning and coming back,” Wolff says.
But Rory Sinclair, first vice-president of the St. Andrew’s Society of Toronto, is on the No side, even if the society is officially neutral.
“Scotland is a country that has survived very well in the union (with Great Britain),” says Sinclair.
For him, much of what’s going on in Scotland right now feels a lot like the 1995 Quebec referendum, in which he was staunchly on the federalist side.
“If I believe that Quebec is better off within Canada, and I do, who the heck am I to say that Scotland should separate?” Sinclair says. At the Caledonian on Thursday night, the pub was getting a sevenday start on next week’s expected festivities. James McEwan, a noted Scottish Highlands distiller, was in Toronto to do a tasting of his whiskies and his “Botanist” brand of gin. Wolff was expecting the looming referendum to be a hot topic at the pub during the tasting. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has been speaking out increasingly in favour of a united Scotland and Britain in recent days — a not-entirely-welcome intervention, in Wolff’s view.
“Everyone’s entitled to their opinion but I think unless you’re Scottish, I don’t think it’s your say.”
Only people who are residents of Scotland are entitled to vote in the Sept. 18 referendum.