The Scotland Herald: "Scotland was The Midwife Of Canada's Birth"

From the Scotland Herald:

Here 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.

This Saturday sees the 150th anniversary of the act of the British Parliamentcoming into force, which effectively founded the country.

The British North America Act of 1867 said the provinces of Upper and lower Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick “shall form and be One Dominion, under the name of Canada.”

Athough many provinces and territories were still to be added, it 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. 

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.

The first Prime Minister of the new country John A Macdonald was born in Glasgow, his father was cleared from Sutherland and his mother a Shaw from Badenoch. The great-grandfather of a later Canadian premier, John Diefenbaker (who ran the country from 1957-1963), was among those who left their homeland in the Strath of Kildonan in 1813 to make way for the "improvements" ordered by the soon-to-be First Duke of Sutherland; displaced to make way for sheep.

Read the full article from the The Scotland Herald via the link below:

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15382592.Scotland_the_midwife_at_Cana...

https://www.transceltic.com/scottish/albannach-scottish-celtic-culture-w...