Stumbling across a Highland Clearance site is my idea of a good time
Did I mention my interest in Scottish-Canadian connections? Today we stumbled on the ruins of a tacksman’s house in Upper Bornish Clearance Village. This brought us face to face with a well-documented Highland Clearance that sent thousands to Canada. We were rambling around on South Uist, roughly ten kilometres north of Lochboisdale, where the ferry…
Read MoreBonnie Prince Charlie points the way forward for the 21st century
They call this The Prince’s Shore. It’s on the tiny island of Eriskay in the Outer Hebrides, linked to South Uist by a two-lane causeway and to the Isle of Barra by ferry. This is where, on July 23, 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie first set foot on Scottish soil. A hubristic twit with an astonishing…
Read MoreA cairn marks site of the most famous of all Highland Clearances
The pointing arrow said 3.2 kilometres. Already we had driven 5.7 kilometres along a winding, pot-holed, one-lane road that hugged the side of the small mountain. Happily, we had encountered no vehicles, no cyclists — in fact, nothing but recalcitrant sheep who frequently stood defiant in the middle of the road until we beeped our…
Read MoreSpontaneous dash to Orkney produces lost images and a whirlwind tour
We made a spontaneous dash to Orkney to visit Tom and Rhonda Muir. Then we contrived to banish them to the wrong camera (hence no pix of them!) and ended up with shots of a hotel, a statue and a charming young couple on the steps of a classic edifice in urgent need of refurbishment…
Read MoreDunrobin Castle is the most politically incorrect edifice in the UK
Here we have the splendiferous Dunrobin Castle, the most politically incorrect edifice in all of the United Kingdom. In the early to mid-1800s, the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland ordered (though they did not personally orchestrate) the infamous Sutherland Clearances. This entailed forcibly evicting thousands of tenant farmers from the lands of their forefathers. Many…
Read MoreRambling around Scottish Highlands? Canada is always in your face
Here we have the church at Kildonan, Scotland, in the heart of the Highlands. Most of the Selkirk settlers who emigrated to the Red River Settlement in Canada in 1812 and 1813 had attended this church. Among those who sailed to Churchill, Manitoba, was George Bannerman, a great-grandfather of once-prime minister John Diefenbaker. In 1968,…
Read MoreJohn Rae Centre will celebrate Orkney, the Arctic, and the Inuit
I do love this image created by Orcadian photographer James Grieve. He has combined photos of the Stromness statue of explorer John Rae and the Hall of Clestrain, where Rae was born in 1813. Having visited the Hall a few times over the years, I still most vividly remember the first time, in 1998, when…
Read MoreCreative nonfiction workshop is coming to U of T in July
So on the left we see the image that accompanies my all-time, second-most- popular blog posting: The night Leonard Cohen taught me that Magic Is Alive. And you know how some people can’t get over their own jokes? I still find this one pretty funny: ‘Obscure’ Canadian writer declines to don kilt for CTV appearance. My…
Read MoreBlast from the past (1985): Atwood talks about The Handmaid’s Tale
Wow, three decades and change: whoosh! Where did those 32 years go? Back in 1985, when Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid’s Tale, I interviewed her and wrote as follows. . . . then included the piece in Canada’s Undeclared War: Fighting Words from the Literary Trenches. Call it “a feminist 1984″ and Margaret Atwood won’t argue.…
Read More50 Canadians Who Changed the World: this really happened!
Hard to believe that four years have passed since we boarded a west-bound train called The Canadian in Toronto. We were celebrating 50 Canadians Who Changed the World – both the book and the individuals so designated, most of whom are alive and thriving — by following in the tracks of those who linked this nation…
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