How generations of Scots helped forge the Canada we know today
THERE is a story about government officials travelling round the Highlands and Islands in the 19th century and when they arrived in one particularly remote community asked locals where their leaders were.
“They are away running Canada,” came the reply.
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the act of the British Parliament coming into force, which effectively founded the country.
Although many provinces and territories were still to be added, The British North America Act of 1867 is held as the birth of the Canadian nation. To a large extent Scotland, particularly Gaelic Scotland, had acted as midwife.
The first Scots had arrived in Nova Scotia in the 1620s, but failed to flourish.
Men from Orkney arrived a century later, recruited by the fur traders from the Hudson’s Bay Company. However, in the wake of the Jacobite defeat at Culloden, more came.
Waves of emigration really accelerated as the Highland Clearances saw families forcibly evicted from their homes while other desperate Scots crossed the Atlantic Ocean to escape poverty and exploitation.
Their legacy has cemented in culture – Glengarry, dubbed “Ontario’s Celtic Heartland”, hosts one of the largest Highland Games in the world – but also in politics.
The first prime minister of the new country, John A Macdonald, was born in Glasgow, his father was cleared from Sutherland and his mother was a Shaw from Badenoch.
The great-grandfather of a later
Canadian premier, John Diefenbaker (who ran the country from 1957 to 1963), left his homeland of Strath of Kildonan in 1813 to make way for the “improvements” ordered by the soon-to-be First Duke of Sutherland for more sheep to graze.
The following year Diefenbaker’s ancestor, with others, undertook an epic 800-mile journey on foot through vast wilderness while carrying boats to use on rivers and lakes, from Hudson Bay to the Red River.
There they helped found the modern city of Winnipeg.
Twin statues now stand to their memory: one in Winnipeg – the capital of Manitoba province – and one in the Sutherland village of Helmsdale. They are respectively entitled Exiles and Emigrants.
Of Canada’s 23 prime ministers since confederation, 14 have had Scottish roots including the current incumbent, Justin Trudeau, whose maternal grandfather hailed from Banffshire.
John A Macdonald, with two other
Scots, George Stephen and Donald Smith (later Lord Stathcona), was largely responsible for the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway coast to coast, which more than anything else ensured the integrity of Canada.
In 1884 it looked as though that massive project might collapse because funding was running out. Stephen went to London to raise loans and sent a telegram to Smith telling him the railway was safe, using two words: “Standfast Craigellachie.”
It was the motto of the Clan Grant of Speyside, which both would claim as home.
Two explorers-cum-fur traders have been immortalised in two of Canada’s greatest rivers: Stornoway-born explorer Alexander Mackenize (buried at Avoch on the Black
Massed pipe bands gather at the Glengarry Highland Games, Ontario, one of the many interests Canadians share with Scots.
The Clearances depicted in The Last of the Clan.
Isle) who completed the first east to west crossing of North America; and Simon Fraser from Strathglass who also has a university in Vancouver named after him.
Macdonald founded the North West Mounted Police, in part to keep the Americans out of what are now the Prairie Provinces. An early commissioner was a Macleod from Skye.
The early Scots’ footprints can be traced through so much of Canadian life from education to banking and commerce
According to the Janice Charette, the current Canadian High Commissioner (Commonwealth countries’ equivalent of an ambassador) in London, the ties are lasting and robust:
“The most recent census survey, there were almost as many Canadians who said they had Scottish heritage as there are people in Scotland today, some 4.7 million.”
She does not have any Scottish forebears herself, but Ms Charette is married to a man whose grandfather was an Anderson.
“He came to Canada as an orphan from Scotland,” she explained. “One of the projects we have here while I am High Commissioner is to track down his roots in Scotland.”
On the calendars across Canada there
Justin Trudeau’s grandfather hailed from the north of Scotland.
John Diefenbaker was one of the prime ministers of Scots descent.
are Caledonian reminders, from Highland Games to Burns nights, some more exotic than others.
Mrs Charette said: “Canada prides itself on being a diverse, multi-cultural population.
“We see really that as one of strengths and in Vancouver they have combined Burns night and the Chinese New Year into a major event. It is called the Gung Haggis Fat Choy Festival so Scottish and Chinese Canadians and other Canadians of all origins come together for it.
“They eat haggis and dim sum, drink single malt whisky while watching a traditional Chinese dragon dance to the accompaniment of bagpipes.”
She will be attending the Edinburgh Festival this year as part of the country’s 150th celebrations while a Canada Day Ceilidh will take place in Princess Street Gardens.
“We have over 50 Canadian artists and acts and we are going to have a Canada Hub in the King’s Hall,” said the High Commissioner.
Alongside the Capital festivities, there will be major celebrations in Trafalgar Square, London. About 150 “after parties” will be also be held across Britain with 50 in Scotland. It should be well supported. There are estimates as many as 500,000 Canadian citizens now live in the UK, many with dual nationality.
Teacher Katie Van Exan from Ancaster near Hamilton, Ontario, is one. She married a Gaelic-speaking MacDonald from Skye and they live in Inverness with their two children who attend the Gaelic Primary.
She said: “It was only since I came to live in Scotland that I began to understand my own country’s story. We never really heard of emigration in Canada. Our society was built on immigration. But the heritage of the diaspora – the poetry, the songs, the literature – allows you to see through Scottish eyes and appreciate just how much this small country gave to Canada.”
One who will raising a glass to Canada Day is historian Professor Jim Hunter, many of whose books have told the story of those who had to leave Scotland for North America. He said: “Back in the 1950s, a Canadian novelist Hugh MacLennan, whose forebears came from Kintail, wrote that Canada, more than the Scotland from which so many Highlanders were evicted and expelled, was a place where Highland Scots could feel truly at home.
“I think there’s a great deal of truth in that – just as I think present-day Britain could learn a thing or two from modern Canada about how to respond positively, rather than with our standard mix of fear and hostility, when refugees and migrants come knocking at a country’s door.
“Canada’s a wonderful country, and Scots are entitled to feel at least bit of pride in what our people did to make it so.”