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SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER OF MENSTRIE, KT., EARL OF STIRLING AND VISCOUNT CANADA.
(Founder of Nova Scotia.)

In the making of this volume my chief object has been to produce a work which will be of use to those desiring a knowledge of the origin of the early Scottish settlements or community-centres of Canada.

Keeping this idea steadily in view, I have in this volume, which covers all Eastern Canada, dealt, first of all, with the many settlements which were essentially Scottish, and have laid stress on the other chief centres of Scottish life and influence in some of the leading cities, commencing with Nova Scotia and concluding with the later but scarcely less important immigration into Huron and Bruce in the Upper Lake region of Ontario. I have also in this connection given, where I was able to do so, lists of the founders and pioneers of such settlements, hoping that they might be of value to students in future individual research.

Following this, I have endeavoured to deal with the Scottish influence in religion, education, politics, and other important questions connected with the national life. If I have paid a good deal of attention to the part played by the Scotsman in our higher education, it is because I am convinced that in this direction, more than in any other, he has performed his greatest work toward the development of the Canadian nationality as a part of the Empire.

Throughout this work I have laid stress upon the Ulster Scotsman and the importance of his place in the Canadian community; and have pointed out that the movement into Ulster was the first great emigration of the Scottish people in their attempt at settlement outside of their own borders.

In dealing with Scotsmen as individuals in Eastern Canada, it would be utterly impossible to include all persons deserving of mention in the necessarily limited confines of such a work as this is. Those only are referred to who represent, or were connected with, the different movements in the many communities or colonies out of which the dominion has gradually grown.

In sending this volume out to the public, I feel that it is but an imperfect result of the ideal which prompted its making. There is much more that I would like to have included in the presentation of this important subject. Such, however, as it is, I send it forth, hoping that it may have its share in giving to the student of the history of the Scottish race some slight idea of the great part which has been played by that illustrious stock during the last three hundred years, in the founding, peopling, and upbuilding of Britain’s Western Empire.

It might be added, in conclusion, that in addressing the readers of Scottish extraction, one is appealing to a vast constituency; as in Canada alone, outside of purely French Quebec, there are few families which are without a strain of the old Scottish blood in their veins.

Ottawa.

THE SCOTTISH IDEAL IN SCOTLAND AND IN CANADA

In this introduction to a necessarily imperfect memoir of the exodus and wanderings of a great northern race, it will be my chief object to impress upon my readers the importance of the keeping alive of the dominant historic spirit which has in the past made noted our Scottish ancestors in their own land and throughout the world. I may say, at the start, that I am not going to indulge in any mere historical or literary retrospect. My object is neither to flatter nor to condemn. As regards success, the Scottish race speaks for itself the world over; and as for failure, the signs of this are also apparent.

It would be easy to catalogue Scottish virtues and Scottish vices, and clothe the list in a flippant dress or a false rhetoric, as has, alas! too often been done.

But this should be an age of few words and deep and serious thought, when great and vital subjects, such as this we are considering, should not be touched upon lightly or superficially. There never was a period in their history when our people needed all their sanity, all their ideals, all the aid that the spirit of the past can give them, more than they do to-day. We stand in great danger, and the keenest minds are too much engrossed in what one might call, to put it mildly, “the financial possibilities of the purely material.” So that we, who represent, and strive to maintain, the ethical and spiritual aspects of life, cannot afford to make light of any influences which may keep alive or inspire the greater imagination of our people; such as the splendid memories, the large and intense drama, the classic atmosphere of the history of Scotland.

Yet, sad to say, for so tragic and so subtle a race, no people has been dealt with so often, in so childish, so shallow, and so claptrap a manner as has Scotland at the hands of orators and writers innumerable throughout the world.

It is seemingly so easy to lecture on Burns or Scott, and these names are used as stalking-horses for all sorts of superficial efforts to acquire a patriotic or a literary reputation; and all the while the real Burns and the true Scott remain utterly unknown and unappreciated, buried beneath the volcanic irruption of cheap democracy, false patriotism, and pretence at religion and culture. The phrase “a man’s a man for a’ that” has been dinned into our ears, but how many who have quoted it know its real meaning and application? Burns was the first great founder of the true modern democracy, and, like all great reformers, he has been most shamefully misrepresented by those claiming to be his friends and disciples, who have interpreted him in a class, rather than in a human sense. Likewise has Sir Walter Scott been wrongly ignored by men claiming to be scholars and writers. Instead of being, as many would class him, merely a delightful romancer, he is, without doubt, one of the truest realists, and a remarkable student of humanity. It is marvellous how much of all Scotland is mirrored in his truly magic pages.

Indeed, men may rave of the heather, the hills, the pibroch, and the Brig of Ayr, and all the time the real Scotland and the true Scottish people are a mystery to themselves and to others as they, to a great extent, remain to this day.

As this essay is an attempt at some sort of explanation of the Scottish people, I may, in places, be seemingly harsh in pointing out what without doubt appear to be degeneracies and misrepresentations of the Scottish race and character as an historical entity.

Poetry and feeling are a boon, indeed necessary in their place, and belong to the finest instincts of a race. But where they degenerate into mere cheap sentimentality and vulgar melodrama, nothing is so nauseous and sickening in a community.

For this reason, the greatest evil which has inflicted Scotland of late has been the rise of the so-called Kail Yard School of Fiction. It is already virtually dead. But it has accomplished in its short reign immeasurable harm. Hypocrisy and hysterics are an abomination in religion, but when they enter popular literature they are even worse. Some races, like the Irish, can afford to open their minds freely. It seems natural to that often frank and genial race. But it does not become the Scot. The true characteristic of the latter is his secretiveness, his un-get-at-ableness, his control of his inner feelings. This, in the past, made him the strong force that he became, and rendered his religion such a power in his personality. It simply permeated him in the subtlest manner, and was only recognised outwardly through his character. What his inner feelings were he kept to himself. But in these later, seemingly more degenerate, days, when religion from this standpoint had decayed, and what might be called literary emotion took its place, there came a change over the Scotsman’s individuality which was not for the better; and when he began to spout cheap sentiment to his neighbours, he became an object of ridicule to the serious-minded. When he began to grow enthusiastic over and self-conscious of what he should simply have lived, namely, his religious beliefs and character, he came down from his unconscious dignity of centuries and became a very commonplace buffoon in the hands of Ian Maclaren and his ilk, who made a burlesque of what the Scotsman might have been at his worst. It may be difficult to realise this, but to the student who knows his Scott and Burns, and is in close touch with the real Scotland and the Scotsman of the past, it is very apparent.

The present-day habit of trading in the Scottish dialect and idiosyncrasy is not only harmful to the race, but it is virtually bearing false witness against the people before the world.

Of the Scotsman of to-day the least said the better. He is being weighed in the balance. But with regard to the Scotsman of the past, if he was a force, it was not because of his angularity, his dialect, his red hair, his so-called meanness, his poverty, his narrow “pig-headedness,” as some have called his determination, and for all of which virtues or defects he has had to stand in literature and journalism. But it was because, in spite of all these, he was, for some occult reason, a man, and as an individual became a power at home and wherever he adventured throughout the world.

It was not one of his special qualities to enjoy life and to give others pleasure, but it is through his ability for struggling with existence and overcoming obstacles that he has become famous. In short, the Scottish have been in the past a race of individual builders, a strenuous, adventurous, striving, ambitious folk.

They are not a people who can afford to descend from this level of existence. They are an angular, dour, silent race, who must maintain, through all their kindliness and humour, a stern dignity as one of their chief virtues, or else lose their influence and personality as a people.

Now I do not intend here merely to scratch the surface of the Scottish idiosyncrasy, but to endeavour to show wherein the Scottish ideal in Canada and in the motherland is worthy of our serious consideration.

If we let our minds go out so as to grasp a comprehensive view of Scottish history and the Scottish race, we will realise that in the past, in what might be called the golden age of the Scottish people, they were a force in the world because of two things, namely, their religion and their determination to be freemen and rule themselves.

Now these are two very important impulses in the life of any nation, and they mean a great deal more than appears on the surface of this statement. “Religious consciousness,” and “a determination to be freemen and self-ruling,” the one the natural result of the other, make a great combination in the life of any nation. But we must not be misled into thinking that religion, as Scotland realised it then, was the mere formalism that the Scotsman in Canada and the Old Land, in common with all Christians, makes of it to-day. Religion then meant much more than mere empty creed, mere class prejudice, mere observance of ceremony, mere hope of heaven or fear of hell. It was something divine, something vital in the very life of the people, which so affected their whole nature, their very character as a community, that they rose above the common and the mean, and moulded gradually, during half a thousand years, their national ideals; until out of these ideals grew, side by side with them, conceptions of life and sacred institutions as a part of the State, the Church, and the general fabric of society, and, with these, a highly ethical literature. It was essentially true of Scotland that her religion permeated her whole national life. It was not crystallised into an isolated institution, but was found in the State, the University, and the family. The family, that most sacred of all human institutions, and the oldest on earth, was especially revered in Scotland; and it was this, together with the rural and out-of-door character of her people, which was the real foundation of her national greatness.

In present-day religion there seems to be a far cry to the lives of the New Testament Apostles as alone worthy of consideration; whereas in old-time Scotland their own and all history was teeming with heroes, apostles and saints of God. I do not say that this was so of all Scotland. No country, no people is purely of one ideal. There was then, as now, the indifferent and the selfish, and added to these elements there were other conflicting influences for ever at work in the life of the people.

Roughly speaking, there were three Scotlands—the extreme wild, purely Celtic and Scandinavian west; the great middle Scotland, stretching from Berwick to Cape Wrath; and the purely Lowland folk and city dwellers. These three elements represented three distinct ideals, which fought for supremacy—namely, feudalism, intellectual religion, and practical materialism. Of these three, the religious and intellectual element largely dominated, but feudalism even down to this day has left its influence in the heredity of the best of the Scottish people.

Against feudalism I bring no charge. It was one of the most ideal forms of organisation of society that was ever developed on earth, and nowhere else did it arrive at such a perfect condition of development as in the clan system of Scotland. It was aristocratic, but that was its virtue, as it made every man, from the highest to the humblest, a gentleman in blood; and I claim that to be the most divine condition of society which makes every man, no matter how poor in intellect or worldly goods, proud of his lineage and his race. It linked the peasant and the king on the throne in one vast common kinship in this mutual pride in the past, and stimulated, as no other influence has done, the whole community to uphold the ancestral honour of the race. It was not the sharp antagonistic division between the rich and the poor of the present much-boasted democratic age. In it lay the secret of the spirit of the great Scottish fighting clan-regiments, and to it is owing much of that strong sentiment for the motherland which animates the Scotsman throughout the world, even to the third and fourth generation.

The modern vulgar mind of a mongrel people, which has lost its race individuality, is inclined to sneer at the Celt’s pride in his lineage. The other day a newspaper contained the following: “The man who is no good is he who is always bragging of his ancestors.” This flippancy is as absurd as it is false. The truth is that to-day few men “brag” of their ancestors, for the simple reason that few can even tell who their grandparents were: a sad condition in a race having such a notable part in history and so long civilised. The influence that has brought this about, and which inspires the flippancy just quoted, is one not on the side of man’s best interests.

It is the trail of the serpent of a modern money-tyranny, which would gradually degrade and trample on and break the high spirit of a once great people. It is the same influence which has destroyed faith in Deity and a sense of responsibility, and is now attempting to throttle true culture and the intellect. It has striven to convince man that he is but a more capable ape, and that all of life is rolled up in the material possibilities of a bank cheque-book. The answer to this superficial cavil at what was once a part of religion, of Christianity itself, is, that for one person who is proud of his ancestors one hundred are ashamed of theirs, for some unholy and inconsistent reason; and others there are who impudently and blasphemously boast that they made themselves, and demand special privileges because they have done so. “He is a self-made man” is a common expression of praise. But, considered seriously, is it a worthy citizen who reflects on his own parents? Why should men vote for a man merely because he says his parents were humble any more than because they were lords or millionaires?

Is not this man also using his ancestry (only in a more contemptible manner) to his advantage? It should be the man alone and not his environment which should count. And this is the true application of Burns’s “A man’s a man for a’ that.” He is not a man merely because he is not rich, or not titled, or not otherwise favoured, any more than he is a man because he is all or any one of these. It is not the title or the obscurity, the rich apparel or the rags that make the man, but it is the man himself. There is too much pure flattery of and truckling to the poor to-day, and he is not the true friend of any class of men who flatters them for a base purpose. Every class should be educated to a stern sense of its own responsibilities. Therefore I would direct the sneerer at Celtic aristocracy to the instance of the Perfect Man, who, though in His generation said to be the son of a carpenter, is traced back through a line of kings to God Himself. I am not here making a plea for what is vulgarly called snobbery. I desire rather to carry the whole matter much deeper, to show a strong influence in certain races, and an influence for good, in spite of so much cant and hypocrisy concerning the whole matter. This side of the Scottish ideal, the feudal pride and sense of honour, is very much needed to-day on this continent, where society is altogether too much dominated by what Mr. Dooley sarcastically calls “the plain rich.”

The feudal system no doubt had its weaknesses, as all human systems have. But it never lied to the average man. It never flattered him into a false idea of life, as the democracy has done. It never pronounced that monstrous absurdity that all men are born free and equal. No! But it gave man high and austere ideals toward which to climb, and it recognised and fostered genius and all that genius has to give mankind. While it recognised the necessary social grades, into which all complex communities crystallise sooner or later, it dignified the humblest lot in life, a thing which the present-day democracy has signally failed to do.

The next element in the Scottish community, and closely associated with feudalism, for which it had some affiliation, was that of religion and the intellect. These two influences, religion and the intellect, dominated the race and made the aristocrat and the cottar as brothers. A stern, uncompromising sense of religious conviction permeated the people, and affected them more than religion, in the deeper sense, has influenced any other race outside of the Hebrews. I would like to point out a strong similarity, which is plainly manifest, between these two great races, a similarity that is almost next to identity. In both peoples the Old Testament is lived or re-lived in the life of the people; in both, religion is firm and unbending, and the sense of sin is sure and real; in both the theocratic idea in the nation is remarkably prominent and deep-seated; and in both the intense and almost undying feud between the Church and the State—or rather the fear of State interference on the part of the Church—is more than remarkable. Certainly no people in modern days has appreciated and absorbed the Jewish Scriptures as has the Scottish people. Then, in the poetical gift and temperament and their general nature they are singularly like the Hebrews; and, sad to say, in their weaknesses, especially in their almost fatal genius for material success, and subserviency of all their highest ideals to the slavery of mere gain, the Scots are almost world-brothers to the Jew.

Here we have something more than mere coincidence. We have, without doubt, a great ethnological study, which goes back into the remotest ages of human history. But the lesson we learn from both peoples is that the abnormal individual passion for gain on the part of the Jew destroyed the national fabric and alienated and scattered the race, and that such a disintegration likewise threatens the Scottish nation and race to-day.

In likening the Scottish people to the Hebrew I am paying the highest, the very finest, compliment to the race to which I belong; because of all peoples in the annals of extant human history the Jewish is by far the greatest. Supposing we were to deny all belief in Christianity. Jesus Christ still remains without compare the ideal man, the highest type ever produced on earth, and unexplainable to the scientific mind; and the Jewish literature is the greatest, ethically and humanly, and the one having the most tremendous and lasting effect on earth’s greatest peoples. But if we accept the Divine idea, they are God’s chosen people; and if they have become in any sense inferior, it is not because of Christ, or their great literature, their mighty prophets, poets, rulers, and lofty ethics, but because they have allowed a material individualism to degrade and denationalise them; and—let the Scot and the average Briton, the Canadian and American take warning and beware!—I am to that extent a prophet. Give but another century to our peoples—over-material, over-cosmopolitan, over-fond of the present hour, and self-worshipping, self-indulgent and vulgar, with commonplace surroundings and the idea that they are but superior apes—and he who lives will see a spectacle beside which the Jew will appear colossal and noble.

But it may not be realised that the Scotsman has an affinity to another great people of the past, namely, the Greek; and it is the marvellous admixture of ethics and reason, of imagination and thought, of insight and feeling, that produced the Scottish interpretation of the Bible, and the Scottish quality or level of Christianity, with its ethical and yet purely human literature, in Scott, Burns, and Carlyle. And I would go even farther. I claim to be something of an ethnologist, and believe that not all Scotland is north of the Tweed, and that the man who produced that wonderful combination of the Greek drama and the Hebrew conscience, “Macbeth,” must have had some drop of the Scottish blood, somewhat of the northern heredity in his veins.

This whole subject which we are now considering, this historical and prehistorical personality of a people so subtle, so tragic, so spiritual, so heroic, and so intensely human as the Scottish personality, is almost a mystery to the historian and the ethnologist, but one which is well worth the study of the present-day thinker and philosopher.

The whole history of this people is a wonder—a seeming contradiction. Historians have been too narrow and dogmatic in classifying personality. To the man who gets beneath the surface, Knox, Carlyle, and James the Sixth have an affinity in temper; Burns and James the Fifth are brother-poets and individualistic men. It is only the superficial student, influenced by an ignorant class prejudice, who would separate them. The genius for thought, for scholarship, for poetry, for piety, the strong, intrinsic love of race, permeated all ranks and made them one. But through it all there ran the silver or golden thread of a fine sense of pride, a high ideal of honour in the man, a deep conviction that religion is in the life, that faith and conduct cannot be separated, and that the supreme blossom of all is character.

To-day, however, the religious element has been largely supplanted by a cold, clear tendency of the mind working in purely material channels, and we now come to the third influence which has largely usurped the place of the other two, namely, the purely monetary and mercantile element in the Scottish people. The genius of the Scotsman for business is notorious the world over. He has been in the past the principal pioneer in commerce and mercantile pursuits. He has shown in this respect a single-mindedness and an indomitable force of character that has challenged the admiration of all peoples. Now, the combination of these three elements or influences in Scottish life, namely, feudalism, the religious intellect, and the genius for material advancement and acquirement, produced a wonderfully unique, forceful, and picturesque people. But the degeneration came when the more commonplace and material element crushed out the other two. The importance of the other elements may not appear to the average man in this age of “Does it pay?” “What is it to me?” “It will last our time,” and many other expressions of a similar spirit or tone. But when religious ethics and ideals depart from a people that people is surely doomed. Some races cannot afford to practise even what others have thrived upon. The Saxon can safely be much more material than the Scot. But the Celt cannot risk the loss of his ideals and the vast dreams of his sensitive and subtle imagination.

It was while the Scotsman was at his best in the influences of religion and feudalism that he pushed forth into the world. It was then that he came to Canada and founded this country for Britain. It was he who discovered her wilds, named her rivers, her mountains, and her lonely outposts. It was he who planted religion, founded institutions of learning, and placed on them the seal of his ideals of culture and piety of that day. It was the Scot who largely peopled the wilds, and gave a thorough, honest, careful, and conservative character to Canadian business and financial life. He had much to do with the framing of laws, the fostering of legislation and education. This, in short, is the story of the sturdy Scotsman of the past who came to Canada and accomplished so much in the building-up of this country.

But how does the Scotsman stand to-day? What part does he play? Is he a force in the community—or only an absorbed unit? Have all of the ideals which he brought with him wholly disappeared? We have seen the force which he was in the past; but now, when things have changed, can and will the Scot still hold his own? Can he be successful under the new conditions? Will he, and does he, still hold his former ideals of creed, of the home, the family, the State, education and culture, with a sense of honour in public places and in commerce, and stability in business? Does he—will he—demand that these shall all be maintained? It is to be feared not. The signs are that he has let go many of these ideals. But if we seek the one great Scottish national weakness, we will discover the answer to all this—and that weakness is the over-development of the mere individual at the expense of the community. In short, the Scot has carried this now long-exploded democratic idea to an extreme. He has, both here and in the old land, perhaps fatally crystallised into an ultra-conservative antagonism to any ideal save what he calls the “individual good.” The community to him means nothing any more; and while he is sometimes narrow as regards things which do not really matter, he is often careless regarding the interests of his religion and faith, his ethics and his national ideals, which his fathers struggled and died for, and continually sacrifices these in his attempts at compromise.

Fifty years ago the Scottish faith and ideal were a power in this land, and its adherents were uncompromising in their determination to perpetuate them in the community. But to-day, what a change! A subtle influence has been at work (an influence which only he who has closely and patiently studied the life of our people can discover) to extinguish gradually this spirit and ideal in the interests of what has falsely been called toleration, but in which, sad to say, the Scotsman himself has taken a prominent part. It has been, in short, a distinct self-effacement as a community for the sake of personal interest and commercialism; and it is just the natural result—the virtual self-destruction of a race which has bartered its ideals and faith, its national dreams and ancestral pride, for the false favours of any community which demanded the sacrifice.

At home, in the beautiful old land, the Caledonia and Scotia of the past, the country of Bruce and Wallace, of Knox and Argyll, of Scott and Burns, and a thousand and one other heroes and saints, leaders of men and martyrs, sad to say, the conditions are much the same. The feudalism, Scotland’s glory, which Bruce lived and Scott sang is virtually dead; and with it has largely died Scotland’s faith, and with them both, it is to be feared, has perished the real spirit of that once great people. There they lie: a beautiful wreck of a former glory and power, buried under a confusion of infidelities and petty heresies, and all submerged in a vulgar muck of commercialism, which is not even true commercialism.

In Canada we seek for the old spirit, but we find it not. The ancient Church of Scotland no more acts as a community. To the individual pulpit alone is left the attempt to arouse, inspire, and anchor the people. The Church as an organisation no more stands for anything. It never dreams, as a body, of agitating or instituting reforms for the community. It has been gradually chained and muzzled, chiefly in the interests of party politics, and as it was never merely ornamental, it cannot live for ever. The Anglican Church, likewise leashed and manacled like the Scottish in the interests of party politics, may linger long in the twilight charm, the dim religious light of its cultured ritual and its appeal to formalism and refinement. But the Scottish Church has none of this outward attractiveness, and when it has lost its stern, aggressive Calvinistic personality, with its historic appeal to rugged truth and national and individual conduct, it is in danger of becoming merely a part of that vast element of the commonplace and dreary which dominates present-day life.

The other great ethical influence of the past was the University. But what power in national affairs does it wield to-day in Canada or Scotland? Is it really the same institution with the same ideals and objects for which it was founded? Has it not really abdicated its old place? Has it not drifted with the selfish tide in the direction of material success? Has not the word “success” replaced those of “ethics” and “culture” in the scrolls of its ideals? Has not the University, which originally stood side by side with religion for spirit and mind, for the soul and intellect, which demanded a place for character and genius in society, which really represented the middle, one-time ruling, classes, and which mothered the formerly dignified and cultured professions of law, the Church, medicine, and the higher education—has it not departed from its old-time place in the community? Has not this institution, this one-time tremendous force, which represented faith, scholarship, culture, literature, legislation, and justice, which provided for the dignity and impeccability of the courts of justice, and from which there radiated a general influence of learning and refinement, been given over to or metamorphosed into a gigantic technical or scientific institution, run not so much in the interests of human truth or knowledge as in that of the mighty dollar?

In the face of all this—in the face of the fact that in the Church and the University the only man wanted or encouraged is he who can touch men’s pockets, and not their hearts, minds, or imaginations; that the Universities no more contain the national prophets and thinkers; that in the legislative halls the conditions are similar and real freedom shackled and crushed—can you ask if it is well with the Scotsman here and in the old land?

THE SCOTSMAN IN SCOTLAND

Before dealing with the Scottish settlements in Ulster and the New World, we will take a short survey of the Old Land and its several communities, of the Lowlands and Highlands and their different characteristics, which have, through a thousand years, guided the fate and evolved the spirit of this great people whose migrations and settlements are the subject of this work.

It has been in the past, however, a weakness of many chroniclers of New World history to begin their account somewhere about the period of the Flood or the Roman Conquest of Britain, and devote so much of their volume to this ancient and much overdone portion of the story as to leave little or no room for the real subject supposed to be dealt with.

Now, no such mistaken course will mar or curtail this work, which will be solely an account, however imperfect, of the Scottish origins and settlements in Canada. But it will add much to the value of the story of these settlements if a brief picture of the people under consideration and their history and environment in the Old Land be given at the outset.

The northern half of the Island of Great Britain has been called North Britain, Scotland, and Caledonia. The latter was the ancient name of the country, when Scotia comprised what is now the province of Ulster in the North of Ireland. This

was the ancient home of the Caledonians who kept the Roman cohorts at bay. But when we go back to the kingdom of Dalriada in Northern Ireland, South-Western Scotland, and Northern England, we feel that the origins of these ancient peoples, who were the ancestors of the northern Celts, are wrapped in a mystery, out of which looms the certainty of a tremendous civilisation coeval with, if not anterior to, the greatest civilisation of remotest antiquity.

Without doubt, the history of the ancient Britons would show, if all the facts were known, that they had been one of the three or four great kindred races reaching back to Noah and the Deluge. The others are without doubt the Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, and Carthaginian peoples.

Those who in a superficial spirit sneer at the old British chroniclers, who assert this high origin, have no single proof upon which to base their doubts. If a study of all the evidence is carefully made, there is but one conclusion to arrive at with regard to this subject. Everything points to the fact that the so-called Darwinian theory of evolution is but a partial truth, and not the complete truth. That a portion of mankind evolved through the ape from the lower species may be true. But there is much stronger evidence to prove that a portion of mankind has come down a long way in the scale of human greatness. Indeed, the proof of the fall of man is as plainly written in the pages of human history as is that of the evolution from the primordial germ. Accepting this theory, which is here proclaimed for the first time in modern history as a solution of the mystery of the human origin, we can easily come to a conclusion as to the strong kinship in civilisation and ideal between the few great races already mentioned.

Not only is the evidence of the Fall, as it is plainly and tersely stated in the sacred Scriptures, deeply graven in the whole history and existence of mankind, but there is also, as all scientists admit, abundant evidence of the fact of the Deluge and the Garden of Eden. There is no space here to consider this important subject. Sufficient is it to assert, as a well-authenticated fact, the Divine origin of man, which the present writer hopes to deal with in a future volume.

That the ancient history of Britain goes away back coeval with that of the Jewish, and beyond, is without doubt; and that the four or five great stocks—such as the Egyptian, Jewish, Norse, Greek, Carthaginian, and British—are of a common ancestry and descended from colonies existing anterior to or at the time of the Deluge, is also, beyond dispute, verified by the facts.

Much harm to the truth has been caused by a wrong conception of what is called mythology, which is, after all, largely decadent history. The simpler an account, the greater proof there is that it goes a long way back in the annals of time.

It has been said of the old British historians that they dealt with their eras of a thousand years with a magnificent assurance, and marshalled kings and dynasties of kings in complete chronology and exact succession. They carried their genealogy so far beyond the Olympiads that, by the side of it, Greek and Roman history seem but a thing of yesterday. British antiquity is made to run parallel with Egypt’s ancient lore and with the prophets and kings and judges of Israel. It stops with the Deluge and is everything but antediluvian. The old Welsh-British pedigree goes back to Brute, who is the great-grandson of Æneas the Trojan—who lands on the shores of Albion in the time of the Prophets Eli and Samuel b.c. 1136.

The pedigree is as follows: Ap-Brutus, Ap-Silvius, Ap-Ascanius, Ap-Æneas, Ap-Anchises, Ap-Lapsius, Ap-Anarachus, Ap-Troas, Ap-Erichthonias, Ap-Darden, Ap-Jupiter, Ap-Saturnus, Ap-Cœlus, Ap-Ciprinus, Ap-Chetim, Ap-Javan, Ap-Japheth, Ap-Noachen, Ap-Lamech, Ap-Methusalem, Ap-Enos, Ap-Seth, Ap-Adda (Adam), Ap-Duw (God).

This tree agrees with that of Genesis, which records (chap. x. 2-5): “The sons of Japheth were Gomer and Javan, and the sons of Javan were Elishah and Tarshish, Kittim [Chetim], and Dodanim. By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; every one after his tongue, after their families, in their nations.”

From Brute to Chetim (Kittim) the manuscript follows and agrees with the accepted record of (so-called) mythological history, Silvius, or, as sometimes written, Iulus, being the son of Ascanius, the son of Æneas, the son of Anchises. Thus it goes on through Erichthonias and Darden to Ciprius, the father of Cœlus. Here what has been called sacred and profane history are inter-linked. In other words, they substantiate each other, and prove the great historical earthly line of the Divine race. To those old historians, to quote the words of a modern historian, Æneas the Trojan, from whom the Britons came, was no more the creation of Virgil than, to us, Richard III. is a mere fancy of Shakespeare. Also Dardan, Jupiter, and Saturn were not regarded as deities, but once living men, who were of Divine origin.

Surely the ancient traditions of a great people, like the British, are preferable to any mere modern speculation based upon baseless doubt.

In the face of this pedigree, it is clearly evident that nowhere in the history of any people is proof of a primal aristocracy in the race more plainly present or hinted at in a thousand witnesses to a great and tremendous past than in Northern Britain.

Coming down to the more recent stages of the Scottish and Caledonian peoples, we find a region divided into two portions by a range of mountains called the Grampians. This vast natural rampart was a place where a great race at different periods stood for liberty and independence. It is broken by noted passes or glens, through which, at certain times, the tide of invasion flowed north or south in the stress of the force of the peoples upon either verge. North of this line, which stretches in a north-easterly direction diagonally across the country, was the region of the Gaelic speech and the wild imagination and almost lawless spirit of the Highlands, and south of it and east was the Lowland tongue and the more careful ways of men and communities. The northern localities—common to the Gaelic and the tartan—were Argyll, Bute, the Western Isles, or Hebrides, Nairn, Inverness, Ross, Cromarty, Caithness, and Sutherland, and portions of Moray, Stirling, Banff, Perthshire, Dunbarton, Aberdeen, and Angus. There is throughout all this region, especially in the west and north, a great strain of the Norse blood and influence, while even in Caithness and largely in the east the Lowland dialect is spoken by most of the inhabitants.

There is no space here to dwell upon the many attempts to unravel or explain the mystery of the Celtic peoples, or to explain the personality of the Picts and the Scots. But there is no doubt that from the ancient kingdom of Argyll there flowed out a civilisation that influenced the culture and ethics of all Europe. There at some remote period flourished the purest religion and the noblest poetry and arts, together with a type of human ideal towards life only dreamed of now in the twentieth century.

With such a great past, can we wonder that not only the people but also the very environs of Scotland are enfolded in a garment of mystery and lofty tradition, which have set the place and the race among the rarest and most hallowed in the history of the world?

It is a significant fact with regard to Scotland that the people still dwelling there, even down to the close of the eighteenth century, could look back to a tradition of occupancy and race association with the local glen and mountain through many centuries into the mists of antiquity.

Lost in this long vista of historic perspective is the origin of the various famous clan communities, with their noble and, in some cases, regal feudal rulers, whose claims to hereditary kingship went back to remote ages. Very significant are the famous earldoms of Ross, Mar, Fife, Orkney, Strathearn, and Caithness, which were in truth ab initio, or from the beginning of time. In the days of Queen Mary the Earls of Argyll lived in regality, and the Earls of Huntley and Orkney assumed regal state, while the chief of the Mackays, with 5,000 men behind him in the fastnesses of Strathnaver and Farr, forced even Queen Mary herself to make a treaty with him. No wonder that even to this day there is yet an atmosphere of an unconquered pride that permeates this country and its peoples, as it has no other land or race in modern times.

The present Castle of Inveraray, the seat of the Duke of Argyll, is but a model on a much smaller scale of the ancient Castle of Inverlochy, which in very early times was the centre of a great capital of Caledonian or Scottish civilisation.

Twenty-one Highland chiefs fought under Bruce at Bannockburn. They were—Stewart, Campbell, Macdonald, Mackay, MacIntosh, Cameron, MacPherson, Sinclair, Drummond, Menzie, Sutherland, McLean, Ross, McGregor, MacFarlane, Munro, McKenzie, Cuming, MacNab, McGuarrie, Macdougall, and Robertson. Other old families were those of Rose of Kilravock, Bannatyne of Kames, Buchanan of Buchanan, which were all of ancient lineage.

In 1745 a memorial was drawn up by the Lord President Forbes and transmitted to the Government, showing at that time the force of every clan, and the number of retainers the chieftains could bring into the field.

It was, in brief, as follows:—

Campbells—in Gaelic, Clan O-Duine; Chief, the Duke of Argyll; called in Highlands MacCallean Mor. And his kinsmen can raise 5,000 men; that is, Argyll, 3,000; Breadalbane, 1,000; and the Barons named Campbell, Arkinglas, Auchinbreck, Lochnell, Inverair, and others, 1,000. In addition, there is Campbell of Calder, and others of the name in Dunbarton, Stirling, and Perthshire. They are the richest and most numerous clan in Scotland.

Maclean—in Gaelic, Clan Lein; Chief, Sir Hector Maclean of Dewart, lands under Argyll; 500 men.

Maclachlan—Gaelic, Clan Lachlan; Chief, the Laird; 300 men.

Stewart of Appin—Chief, the Laird; 300 men.

Mcdougall of Lorn—Chief, the Laird; 200 men.

Macdonalds of Sleat—Chieftain, Sir Alexander Macdonald, in Skye and Uist; 700 men.

Macdonald of Clanronald—Captain of Clanronald, in Moidart and Arnaig and Uist, Benbecula and Rum; 700 men.

Macdonald of Glengarry—Chieftain, the Laird, in Glengarry and Knoidart; 500 men.

Macdonald of Keppoch—Chief, the Laird. He is a tacksman; 300 men his followers.

Macdonald of Glencoe—Chieftain, the Laird; 150 men.

These five chieftains of the Macdonalds all claim a lineal descent from Alexander Macdonald, Earl of Ross; but none of them have any clear document to vouch the same, so that that great and aspiring family, who waged frequent wars with our Scotch kings, and who acted as sovereigns themselves, and obliged most of the clans to swear fealty to them, is now utterly extinct. The last Earl of Ross had no sons, nor any near male relation to succeed him. (The female descent in several lines exists to-day in a north of Scotland family, and with it the right to the Earldom of Ross, both through, and anterior to, the Macdonald succession.)

Cameron—A very potent clan in Lochaber; Chief, the Laird of Lochiel; has a good estate, but most of it holds of the Duke of Argyll, and the rest of the Duke of Gordon; 800 men.

Macleods—Two distinct and very potent families of old, Macleod of Lewis and Macleod of Harris, both extinct and their lands possessed by the Mackenzie; Chief, the Laird of Macleod; he has a considerable estate in Glenelg and Skye; 700 men. (The representative of the Macleods of Lewis was living some years ago in the village of Inchnadamph, Assynt, Sutherland. He was in poor circumstances, but bore himself with the dignity of a gentleman, though living as a mere crofter. He is descended from a brother of Neil of Assynt.)

Mackinnons—The Laird is chief; lands in Skye and Mull, 200 men.

There are several persons of rank, and gentlemen who are chieftains, commanding many Highlanders in Argyll, Monteith, Dunbarton, Stirling, and Perthshire, such as the Duke of Montrose (Graham), the Earl of Moray (Murray), and Bute (Stewart); also the Macfarlane, McNeill of Barra, MacNab of MacNab, and Buchanan and Colquhouns of Luss, Macnaughtons, Lamont of Lamont, who can raise among them 5,000 men. There are Border families, Kilravock (Rose), Brodie of Brodie, Innis of Innis, Irvine of Drum, Lord Forbes and the Earl of Airlie, all loyal except the Ogilvie. Few or none have any followers except Lord Airlie from his Highland estate.

Duke of Perth—Is no clan family; the Duke is chief of the barons and gentlemen called Drummond in the Low Country; commands 300 Highlanders in Perthshire.

Robertsons—Strowan is chief; lands in Rannock and Braes of Athole, Perthshire; 200 men; 500 Robertsons follow the Duke of Athole.

Menzies—Sir Robert of Weem is chief; a handsome estate in Rannock and Appin, Dule, Athole; 300 men.

Stewart of Grandtully—Lands in Strathbane and Strathay in Athole; 300 men.

Clan Gregor—Name called down by Act of Parliament. Clan dispersed under name of Drummond, Murray, Graham, and Campbell, living in Perthshire, Stirlingshire, and Dunbartonshire; chief (none); 700 men.

Duke of Athole—The Murrays are no clan family; the Duke is chief, head of a number of barons and gentlemen of the name in the Lowlands; 3,000 men from his estate and other followings, such as, Stewarts of Athole, 1,000; Robertsons, 500, Fergusons, Smalls, Spaldings, Ratrays, Mackintoshes in Athole, and Maclarens in Balquidder.

Farquharsons—The only clan family in Aberdeenshire; chief, Laird of Invercauld; several barons of same name, such as Monaltrie, Inverey, Finzean; 500 men.

Duke of Gordon—No clan family; the Duke is chief of a powerful name in the Lowlands; following in Strathaven and Glenlivet; 300 men.

Grant—Chief, Laird of Grant; in Strathspey, 700 men; in Urquhart; 150 men.

Mackintoshes—Chief, Laird of Mackintosh; 800 men, including McQueens, McBeans, and McGillivrays.

Macphersons—Chief, Laird of Cluny; 400 men; has lands in Badenoch from the Duke of Gordon.

Frasers—Of Aird and Stratherrick in Inverness; chief is Lord Lovat; 900 men.

Grant of Glenmoriston—A chieftain of the Grants; 150 men.

Chisholms—Chief, Chisholm of Strathglass; 200 men.

Mackenzies—Next to Campbells one of the most considerable clans; Chief, the Earl of Seaforth; in Kintail, Lochbroom, Lochcarron, and in the Isle of Lewis, all in Ross-shire, 1,000 men; the Earl of Cromartie, with the Lairds of Gairloch, Scatwell, Killcowie, Redcastle, Comrie, 1,500 men more.

Monro—Sir Henry of Fowlis is chief; 300 men.

Rosses—Chief, Lord Ross; 500 men.

Sutherlands—Chief, Earl of Sutherland; 2,000 men.

Mackays—Chief, Lord Reay; 800 men. (Mackay of Strathy was a leading cadet.)

Sinclairs—Chief, Earl of Caithness; 1,000 men; many of them are under May, Dunbeath, Ulbster, Freswick, &c.

This was the condition of the Scottish clans at the middle of the eighteenth century. Since then many thousands of kilted children of strath and glen have been dispersed to the ends of the earth. To-day they are an important element in many of the great colonies of the Empire, and, as will be shown in this work, have been largely, with the United Empire Loyalists, the founders and makers of British Canada.

This short sketch of the Scottish race in the Old Land is given here to show from what a great stock the larger portion of our people have come, and through what iron strife of the centuries they have achieved their fame as a race.

With such a past, such an origin, such great traditions and ideals, the Scottish peoples in Canada, if they do not forget their high origin and their race responsibilities, should yet carry out in the New World the best ideals of the Old. This will be so if they are loyal to the Old Land, to the old Flag, to the Crown and the Constitution. This they must achieve as a community, here, as in Scotland. May we be true to the past:—

THE ULSTER SCOTSMAN IN ULSTER AND IN CANADA

It must always be pleasant to an historian to write of a strong race or stock, just as it is a pleasure to be able to describe a rugged mountain or a great cliff of sea-wall, such as that which girds the historic coasts of Antrim, Derry, and Donegal.

Among the men of Scottish blood who have done so much to build up Canada, none is more important than those who came to the country by way of the North of Ireland.

It might be said that they are the only true Scotsmen, if one was a stickler for exact history; as in all the old maps of British antiquity, as far back as maps such as we have them go, the Scotland of to-day is called Caledonia, and the original Scotia is that portion of Ireland, along its northern end, represented to-day by the countries above mentioned—Antrim, Derry, Donegal, and Down.

It was from this region that the Scotsmen came and spread over the southern portion of what is now modern Scotland. So that, if history is to be carried out literally, the title Ulster Scot is a redundancy, and Scot and Caledonian Scot would be more nearly correct when speaking of the great race dealt with in this work.

Be this as it may—and if we go back far enough in history it is strictly true—it might also be said with equal truth that the first great Scottish settlement from modern Scotland was that of Ulster in the North of Ireland. Ever since the days of Queen Elizabeth there has been a movement of emigration from Western and Southern Scotland into Ulster; and so strong has been the movement and so persistent the development as a pure stock of northern Scottish people, in what is called the Scottish Pale, that it might be said that for the last four hundred years the province of Ulster has been held by Scotland.

It is not to be denied that there is some of the Irish stock as well as much English blood in the north. But in every way—in blood, religion, speech, character, and prejudice—the Scotsman has dominated, and still dominates, the country.

For many centuries the Scotsman had ventured forth over the Continent of Europe in search of adventure equal to the desire of his spirit for conquest. In most cases he went as a soldier and became a professional fighter in other men’s quarrels, for there was little to do or to be had at home.

But this, the first great colony of adventurers who went forth from the land of the heather, was of a nature more peaceful and positive in its results, though, as the sequel showed, even here the Scotsman’s share of fighting had to be performed.

This migration was largely a question of over-population in the homeland, so that Scotland became too small to hold her children. Then in the beginning of the seventeenth century, the struggle with England having been settled by the union of the Crowns, the Scotsmen, Celts, Normans, Saxons, and Danes in their origin, like the earlier hordes, men, women, and children, began to go forth, and crossing the narrow seas, from the Campbelltown, Ayrshire, and Galloway ports, swarmed into the North of Ireland, and by right of population possessed themselves of the land, which they have held, more or less, ever since. As one writer puts it: “The numbers which went were large. They took with them their Scottish character and their Scottish Calvinism.” Or, as another writer says: “The foundation of Ulster society is Scottish. It is the solid granite on which it rests.” The story of this the first great Scottish colony should evoke a deep interest. All Scotsmen should have a pride in its history, the tales of its sufferings and struggles. The men it has produced are well worthy of the parent stock. Perhaps more than those who stayed across the Channel have the Ulster men been true to the faith and ideals of the Scottish people at their strongest period. But the great lesson that they have shown to the world is that Ireland where inhabited by the Scotsman is a land of the prosperous and the contented.

It was really King James the Sixth who planted his people, brave and true, in this, then new, colony, and it was the success of this one which suggested the possibility of the second, or New Scotland, colony in North America.

But all colonies must have their leaders or founders, and the first Scotsmen interested in lands in Ulster were Hugh Montgomery of Braidstone and James Hamilton, the first Earl of Clandeboye, ancestor of Lord Dufferin. Montgomery also became an Irish lord, as Lord Montgomery of the Ards of Down, and both obtained extensive land grants in the north. This was only the beginning, and the great houses of Ranfurly, Castlereagh, and many others in Ulster are but branches of the Knoxes, Stuarts, Hamiltons, Campbells, Boyds, and other famous families and clans of Scotland.

The following quotation will give a slight conception of the Scottish element in the North of Ireland. Harrison, in his “Scot in Ulster,” says: “The Scots of the Ards of Down have scarcely intermarried with the Irish during the three hundred years they have been in the Island.” He further describes the people of Down and Antrim: “It is strange for any man who is accustomed to walk through the southern districts of Scotland to cross into Ireland and wander through the country roads of Down or Antrim. He cannot feel as if he was away from his own kith and kin. The men who are driving the carts are like the men at home; the women at the cottage doors are, in build and carriage, like the mothers of our southern highlands; the signs of the little shops in the villages bear well-known names—Patterson, perhaps, or Johnstone, or Sloan; the boy sitting on the ‘dyke,’ with nothing to do, is whistling ‘A man’s a man for a’ that.’ He goes into the village inn and is served by a six-foot, loosely hung Scottish Borderer, worthy to have served drams to the Shepherd and Christopher North; and when he leaves the little inn he sees by the sign that his host bears the name of James Hay, and his wonder ceases. He gets within sight of the South Derry hills, and the actors in the scene partly change. Some are familiar; the smart maid at the inn is very like the housemaid at home, and the principal grocer of the little village is the very image of the elder who taught him at the Sunday School.”

One of the strongest evidences of Scotland in the North of Ireland is the great strength of the Presbyterian Church. It is a proverb that the really strong, old-time or “Black” Presbyterian is only to be found in Ulster. Nowhere, as Orangeism has shown, has Protestantism such a stronghold; and nowhere has it had to fight so long and persistently for its rights and very existence.

The very men of Derry were, most of them, Scotsmen. The historian of the siege was a Graham, whose ancestor was among the defenders of Enniskillen. The names of the Scottish clergy in Derry during the siege were: John Rowan; Thos. Temple; John Campbell; Barth. Black; John Knox;—Johnston; Wm. Carnighan; Thos. Boyd; John Rowat; John McKenzie; John Hamilton; Robt. Wilson; David Brown; and Wm. Gilchrist. The commanders of sallying parties were mostly Scottish, as: Colonel Murray; Captains Noble; Dunbar; Wilson; Adams; Hamilton; Beatty; Sanderson; Shaw; Wright; Cunningham; and Majors Stewart and Dunlop. Among the names of the leading signers of the address to William and Mary by the inhabitants of Derry, dated July 29, 1689, were the following of Scottish origin: Col. John Mitchelburn; Col. Wm. Campbell; John McLelland; Jos. Graham; Wm. Thompson; Jas. Young; Alex Knox; Patk. Moore;—Humes; Robt. Denisstoun; Marm. Stewart; Jas. Flemming; Andrew Grigson; Christopher Jenny; Thos. Smith; Barth. Black; Col. John Campbell; John Cunningham; H. Love; Geo. Hamilton; Andrew Baily; John Hamilton; Robt. Boyd; Ralph Fulerton; Michael Cunningham; Jos. Johnson; Robt. Bailey; Danl. McCustin; John Bailly; Robt. Lindsay; Francis Boyd; Wm. Hamilton; Arthur Hamilton; Jos. Cunningham; And. McCulloch; Alex. Sanderson; Arch. Sanderson; Arthur Noble; Phil. Dunbar; Geo. White; Thos. White; Jos. Gledstanes; Adam Murray; Henry Murray; Henry Campbell; Alex. Stuart; Thos. Johnston; Jos. Gordon; James Hains; And. Hamilton; Jas. Moore; Nich. White; Jas. Hunter; Abr. Hillhouse; Robt. Wallace; Richd. Flemming; Thos. Lowe; Jas. Blair; John Buchannan; Wm. Stewart; Mathew McLelland; Robt. King; John Logan; Alex. Rankin; Jas. McCormick; John Cochrane; Thos. Adair; John Hamilton; Jas. Case; and Wm. Montgomery. These comprise seventy out of the hundred and thirteen names on the address.

It has wrongly been said that Scottish Ulster has produced no men of genius. This statement is decidedly misleading. No people in the world has produced more noted men than have this breed of Ulster Scotsmen. In the Anglican Church in Britain and Ireland, some of the most distinguished bishops, preachers, and scholars have been of Ulster blood. Archbishop Magee, and Boyd-Carpenter, the present distinguished Bishop of Ripon, are two examples of many noted divines of this race. Among soldiers, Sir Henry Torrens and Lord Roberts have been men of Ulster descent. In literature alone, such names as Browning, Poe, Kipling, and the Canadian Drummond are sufficient to redeem Ulster from the long silence as to her men of genius. She has been exceedingly prolific in great scholars, divines, poets, soldiers, scientists, jurists, business men, and statesmen.

A great many of the Ulster Scotsmen, during the eighteenth century, removed to the United States; and such prominent men as McKinley, Roosevelt, Hanna, and James Stewart, the late merchant prince, are a few among the thousands of prominent Americans who have been proud of having the Ulster-Scottish blood in their veins.

Canada is one of the countries which owes much to the Ulster Scotsman, who has been a prominent factor in her progress and development. There is scarcely a part of the country where Ulster Scotsmen have not settled. There are many in the Maritime Provinces, in Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, whose ancestors came out in solid settlements, or are mingled with the other Scottish elements in the cities, towns, and country places.

The county of Truro, Nova Scotia, was first settled by Ulster Scotsmen. In 1761, fifty-three families, comprising in all one hundred and twenty souls, who had emigrated from Ulster to New Hampshire, then a colony of Britain, became dissatisfied and removed to Truro. They came under the guidance of Colonel McNutt, himself an Ulster Scotsman, who for years had been an active agent in the settlement of the Maritime Provinces.

These emigrants were no poor crofters or out-driven fisher-folk. But they were a good independent stock of the Scottish race. They brought with them from New Hampshire household utensils, farming implements, seed-corn, and potatoes, besides over one hundred head of cattle. It was in the pleasant month of May when they arrived at their destination and got their first view of the land that was to be theirs and their children’s for generations to come. They were, for the most part, of the stern Presbyterian stock, and the names of many of these first settlers and grantees of lands are strong evidence of their Scottish blood and general character for meeting the obstacles and privations of pioneer life in the New World.

The list of Scottish names on the original grants are in this order: James Yuill; James Yuill, jun.; Alex. Nelson; James Faulkner; Andrew Gamble; John Gamble; Jemet Long; Wm. Corbitt; W. Corbitt, jun.; Mathew Fowler; Wm. Gillmour; Wm. Nesbitt; Charles Proctor; Thos. Gourlie; Jas. Gourlie; John Gourlie; Samson Moore; James Moore; James Johnson; Jas. Johnson, jun.; Adam Johnson; James Dunlop; Thos. Dunlop; Ely Bell; John Crawford; Adam Boyd; John Morrison; James Whidden; Alex. Miller; Thos. Archibald; John Rains; Robt. Hunter; Wm. Kennedy; John McKeen; John McKeen, jun.; Wm. McKeen; John Fulton; Wm. Logan; Samuel Archibald; Mathew Archibald; John Archibald, jun.; David Archibald; Charles McKay; Alex. McNutt.

From these settlers have descended some of the most noted men and families in the province, including the Dickies and Archibalds; and they have been represented especially by Senator Dickie, one of the Fathers of Confederation; his noted son, the late Honourable Arthur Rupert Dickie, Minister of Justice for Canada; the Honourable Adams Archibald, Lieut.-Governor of the Province; and Senator McKeen.

Quebec has also many Ulster Scotsmen among her most progressive inhabitants in the cities and towns and among her farming population.

Ontario has a large admixture of this element, as is evinced in her strong Orange population. Many of the rural classes are of Ulster-Scottish descent. There is hardly a county in the province that has not a large number among its well-to-do farmers and townsmen. The counties of Grey and Bruce have whole townships of Ulster men, who have made loyal and respected citizens and subjects of the Empire. They are to be found in all walks of life. The Anglican, Presbyterian, and Methodist Churches have contained many able clergy of this noted stock. Many of Canada’s leading divines, legislators, jurists, financiers, scholars, and writers have been of the Ulster-Scottish stock, whose families, through a period of residence in the North of Ireland, trace their blood and heredity back through a thousand years of Scottish history. It is therefore plain that no proper chronicle of the Scotsman in Canada can be complete without an account of this great and important portion of the Scottish race.

All through the pages of this work mention will be made of the Ulster Scotsmen as they appear on the stage of the country’s development.

NEW SCOTLAND, OR NOVA SCOTIA, AND THE ORDER OF BARONETS

One of the most remarkable and interesting chapters in Canadian history is that dealing with the Scottish dependencies in the New World. Much has been written of New England, New France, and New Amsterdam. But few even among scholars know the real history of this page in our British colonial annals, and the story of New Scotland in North America is almost unknown to the average reader of works on early America. This is the more to be deplored, considering that Scotsmen have had so much to do with the subsequent development of our country, and form such a large and important portion of the population.

Like many attempts at early colonisation, this project, so far as its immediate objects were concerned, was destined to failure. But the attempt was far-reaching in its consequences. Its story reads more like a romance of the days of chivalry or a fairy tale than a plain chapter of our annals. But in all matters which have to do with Scotland and her history this element seems inevitable. Then, as has ever been the case in connection with the Scottish settlement and development of Canada, we have here to do with a strong, masterful and ambitious personality, that of Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling and Viscount Canada, the first great Scotsman to couple his name and fame with our country.

The story which leads up to the founding of New Scotland may be related briefly.

In 1497 John Cabot and his son Sir Sebastian, those adventurous spirits, discovered Cape Breton, and set up the flag of Britain on its shores. Thus the territory became a part of the dominion of the British monarch, Henry the Seventh. Within a century afterwards, over three hundred fishing vessels were found upon the coasts in the vicinity of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They were of the leading sea-going nationalities, British, French, and Spanish. But the harbours of the vicinity were held by the British.

A marvellous but not exaggerated account, as subsequent history has proved, was given in the Old World as to the vast riches of the New. The early explorers spoke of the mines of gold and silver, the forests rich in furs, the seas, rivers, and lakes, teeming with fishes, and there were even stories told of precious stones in the far interior to the north, and those stories are believed to this day. These tales of a vast, wealthy continent created a keen rivalry between the leading European Governments regarding the exploration of this dazzling treasure-house of the Far West.

In 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert took possession of Newfoundland in the name of Britain; meanwhile the King of France, Henry the Fourth, had sent explorers to colonise Acadia.

In 1608, Champlain’s ship was steered up the St. Lawrence by the Scottish pilot—Abraham Martin. So it was a Scotsman who had to do with the founding of Quebec, and gave his name to the famous heights.

It was not until 1613 that Captain Argall, whose name suggests the Scottish one of Argyll or Ergadia, a brave Briton who had already made a name in the Western world by carrying off the famous Indian Princess Pocahontas, captured, with a single ship of one hundred and thirty guns, the whole vast territory of Acadia, and took possession in the name of King James the Sixth of Scotland and First of England.

This great and diligent Scottish monarch, the first of the later line of Stuart kings, was both a statesman and a scholar, and moreover a man of wide knowledge of the world as it then existed; and he at once realised the great possibilities of his new possessions in the Far West. He also saw that here was a chance to form a rich colony in close connection with the great northern kingdom of his forefathers, and out of this grew the scheme for founding a New Scotland in North America. King James was a man of practical brain, and he saw that something would need to be done to persuade his northern subjects to take a part in this royal project. But though kings can plan, they need men of affairs to carry out their schemes, and he found the man to his hand in his friend, favourite, and brilliant courtier, Sir William Alexander, a poet like himself, and, like all large Scotsmen, a strange mixture of the man of affairs and the dreamer.

That was a great age, like the Elizabethan which preceded it, when all from the monarch down were poets, scholars, and thinkers, and Alexander, the head of the first Scottish-Canadian community, could not escape the inspiration for verse-making which then prevailed. It was said sneeringly of him and his royal master, that James was a king who dared to be a poet, and that Alexander was a poet who would found a kingdom. This last dream was indeed realised when, two hundred and sixty years later, his great fellow-clansman, Sir John Alexander Macdonald, proposed the union or federation of the British North American provinces under the title of the Kingdom of Canada.

The biography of Sir William Alexander Macdonald, for such was his true name, is one of the most romantic and tragic in Scottish history. It not only carries the reader back to the peculiar relationship which formerly existed between the two great clans of Campbell and Macdonald, but also introduces us to the Earl of Stirling’s first patron and friend, Archibald, seventh Earl of Argyll, to whom he became tutor and travelling companion.

Sir William Alexander, afterward Earl of Stirling, was of distinguished Scottish ancestry. He was descended from a collateral branch of the great family of whom the famed Somerled was the noted progenitor. His ancestor was Alexander Macdonald, and a branch of this family was that of the Macalisters of Loup, which like the Alexanders became residents in Argyllshire, and possessed of lands under the lordship of the Earls of Argyll.

Sir William was the only son of Alexander Alexander of Menstrie, which place was the family seat for many generations, and he was born in the manor-house of that place. There is some dispute as to the exact date of his birth, but the best authorities place it at about 1567. Owing to the early death of his father, he was brought up by his paternal grand-uncle, a burgess of the historic old city of Stirling, and he was probably educated at the grammar school of that city under Thomas Buchanan, nephew of the famous George Buchanan, historian and tutor of James the Sixth. Having gained some reputation as a scholar, Alexander became travelling companion to Archibald, seventh Earl of Argyll, with whom he visited many European countries, including Italy, France, and Spain. This Earl became his friend and patron, and introduced him at the court of James the Sixth, where he became tutor to the young Prince Henry. Alexander’s literary ability and general qualities appealed to James, and at the King’s accession to the English throne, the Scottish poet and adventurer became one of the thirty-two gentlemen attendants of the Prince of Wales.

He had, ere leaving Scotland, already made a reputation as a poet. “The Tragedy of Darius,” printed in 1603, was his first contribution to Scottish poetry, and was dedicated to the King. He wrote several other meritorious works. But it is rather of his work as a founder of Canada that we must speak here.

In 1609 he is described as a knight, and soon became interested, though without profit, in some of the King’s schemes to develop the gold and silver mines of Scotland. He at this period carried on a literary correspondence with the distinguished Scottish poet, Drummond of Hawthornden. In 1614 he became Master of Requests, and in 1620 the King sought his advice regarding his new acquired lands of Acadia, and Sir William wrote regarding this adventure: “My countrymen would never adventure in such an enterprise, unless it were, as there was, a New France, a New Spaine, and a New England, that they might likewise have a New Scotland.”

This great and promising undertaking at once appealed to the poet’s daring and active spirit, and he determined not to rest until there should be a newer Scotland, a “Nova Scotia,” in the far continent beyond the Hesperides.

Firmly fixed in this purpose, he obtained from the King that the new territory should be called New Scotland, and immediately acquired a vast territory, which now includes all the Maritime Provinces, the peninsula of Gaspe in Quebec, and all the islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, west and south of Newfoundland. This area included Anticosti, Cape Breton, and all other adjacent islands as far as Newfoundland. The bounds set by the King himself were: on the north the river St. Lawrence, on the east the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the south the Atlantic Ocean, and on the west the river St. Croix to its head, and a line thence to run north to the first station for ships, or river falling into the great River of Canada, and thence northward by that river.

The royal letter, dated August 5, 1621, communicating the King’s purpose to the Privy Council, is, in part, as follows:—

The Privy Council having consented, a Royal Warrant for the Charter was issued on September 10, 1621, and the Charter passed the Great Seal on the 29th of the same month, appointing Sir William hereditary Lieutenant of the new colony. The patent was embellished with portraits of James and his lieutenant.

But the first attempt to carry out the work proved a failure. Alexander obtained a royal Charter of the Cape Breton portion of New Scotland for his friend Sir Robert Gordon of Lochinvar, under the title of New Galloway, and dated November 8, 1621.

In 1622, Alexander sent forth his first colonising ship to New Scotland. Early in the spring she sailed from London to Scotland, where, at Kirkcudbright, on Sir Robert Gordon’s lands, emigrants were to be recruited. But though many inducements were offered, only a blacksmith and a Presbyterian minister were induced to make the venture. The rest were agricultural labourers. The ship sailed from Old Scotland in June, but was delayed at the Isle of Man until August, and Newfoundland was not reached until the middle of September, where she was held by a storm. Sir William Alexander gives an account of the many difficulties encountered in his famous work, “Encouragement to Colonies.”

But the failure of the first vessel to arrive at New Scotland did not discourage its ardent Governor. A second ship, the St. Luke, sailed in March, 1623, and arrived at St. John’s on June 5th. Impeded by fogs and adverse gales, the emigrants finally arrived at Port de Mouton; but the expedition was, like the other, a failure, though by both Alexander sustained serious loss to his fortune.

But he steadily persevered. In 1624 he published his work, “Encouragement to Colonies,” which is, without doubt, the earliest serious emigration literature published in connection with Canada. It is a great pity that the British people have not, since that date, done more in this way, especially during the last century, to direct British emigration to the colonies, instead of allowing it to scatter over the globe.

In his work referred to, Alexander included a map of New Scotland, and he traced the history of colonial enterprise from the days of the sons of Noah through the Phœnicians, Greeks, and Romans to his century. He praised the Spanish energy in establishing transatlantic colonies. He spoke of the success of Virginia, and proclaimed the discovery of America as the call of Providence to Britain to occupy the New World. We, in this later day, realising what has since happened, should appreciate the efforts, foresight, wisdom, and ardour of this, the first great colonist of British North America. He also hoped that the dignity of the royal sceptre would be further increased by the plantation of New Scotland, which would carry into unexplored tracts the influence of British culture and of the Christian faith. He described the richness of the country awaiting its inhabitants, and pointed out that each year, like to a beehive, Scotland sent forth swarms of her people to expend their energies in foreign wars. This was only too true at that time and for long after, when we remember the famous Scottish Brigades, whose activities in different countries of Europe are a part of history. But Alexander invited his fellow-countrymen to settle in a country where the arts of peace might have full sway, where commerce and agriculture might develop, and the missionary have a vast field of work. He—

This stirring appeal fell, however, upon stony ground. The period was evidently too early a one for such attempts to have any real effect. And the Governor of New Scotland was forced to resort to another method, which had already been adopted in settling the Northern Pale of Ulster, or Scottish Ireland. This was by means of the establishment of the now famous order of Baronets of Nova Scotia, or New Scotland. The Ulster order of Baronets suggested to Alexander the idea of the Scottish Baronets, whereby Scottish landowners and younger sons of the nobility might form a new noble order and also thereby benefit Western colonisation.

Again, on his recommendation, a royal letter was issued from the Court of Roystown to the Privy Council of Scotland informing the Council that Royalty had determined that the colonisation of New Scotland should succeed, and that the King himself was, in this connection, about to establish a new order of Baronets.

To this the Council, under the guidance of Alexander, agreed, and in its reply, dated November 23, 1824, asked that the honour be kept select, and given only to those of station, birth, and fortune; and it also suggested that the scheme of colonisation might relieve Scotland of many of her surplus population. There were twelve signatures to the Council’s answer, among them those of the Earls of Mar, Morton, and Lauderdale. The whole text of the royal letter, the reply, and the subsequent royal proclamation, are given in the Register of Royal Letters. The proclamation recapitulated the substance of the Council’s reply, and invited the leading Scottish gentlemen to contribute to the colonisation fund and become members of the order of Baronets of New Scotland, and to repair for enrolment, either by person or agent, to the Lords of the Council.

Even this apparent reward of honours to aspirants did not have the desired effect, and Sir William renewed his appeals in the form of a royal mandate dated March 23, 1624-5, inviting candidates to apply to him personally or to his agent, Sir John Scott, Knight; and the fee of 3,000 merks was reduced to 2,000, to be applied strictly to colonial purposes.

But the whole scheme was again retarded by a grave event, the death of the King on Sunday, March 27, 1625, just four days after the date of the royal missive referred to.

However, on May 28th, the first three Baronets of Nova Scotia were made in the persons of the famous Sir Robert Gordon, Knight, younger son of the Earl of Sutherland, who thus became premier baronet of Nova Scotia; William Keith, Earl Marischal; and Alexander Strachan of Strachan. The next day five more were added: Sir Duncan Campbell of Glenorquie, Knight; Robert Innis of Innis; Sir John Wemyss of Wemyss, ancestor to the Earl Wemyss; David Livingston of Dunipace; and Sir Robert Douglas of Glenbervie. On July 1st Charles the First granted to Sir William Alexander a charter of Novodamus, with a re-grant of all lands, powers, and privileges cited in the former charter, and additional clauses respecting the order of Baronets. By the new arrangement, Sir William resigned all his lands in New Scotland to the King, who re-granted them to the different baronets. It was also provided that infeftment should take place at Edinburgh Castle, as New Scotland was already made a part of the kingdom of Scotland. The whole of the grants were afterwards ratified and confirmed in the first Parliament of Scotland at Edinburgh on June 28, 1633, the King himself being present.

An additional clause also promised that the former grant would be confirmed by Parliament.

Under the charter the baronets were to be barons of large territories in New Scotland, which was parcelled out among them. The first created received, each, estates six miles in length by three in breadth.

The second proclamation, that under Charles the First, was issued on August 31, 1625, giving the rank, powers, and responsibilities of the undertakers who became baronets.

The King took a deep interest in the new order. He even wrote strong letters of rebuke to the Earl of Stair and others who were opposed to the making of the new baronets. Among the others was the Laird of Wemyss, who received a sharp summons to take advantage of the opportunity of acquiring the offered rank, which he accepted, together with the promise that it would lead to higher promotion.

There are some facts not generally known to the average student in connection with the Nova Scotia baronetcies. One of these is, that by right the titles are connected with New Scotland, rather than with the Old Land. For instance, the Campbell Baronetcies of Ardnamurchan and Auckinbreck, so-called, are rather New Ardnamurchan and New Auckinbreck in the Gaspe portion of New Scotland. Likewise the Laird of Wemyss became Sir John Wemyss, Baronet of New Wemyss. Thus it is seen that the whole undertaking was indeed the creation of a great Canadian aristocracy, whereby a long list of noted Scottish families became the nobility, though now in title only, of a great part of Maritime Canada and Southern Quebec. This significant historical fact should be of deep interest to all Canadians of Scottish extraction.

The first Baronet of Nova Scotia, Sir Robert Gordon, was so created May 28, 1625, and the last to be created was Craigie of Gairsay in 1707.

The descendants of these Baronets of Canada have, many of them, been since connected with the history of Canada, as governors, soldiers, colonists, statesmen, clergy, and in other important walks of life. Some of these families have become extinct and others lost to history, the titles becoming dormant through the loss of the rightful heir. It is known that some cadets of these families have drifted to the colonies, and have there lost sight of their connection with this old historic order of lesser nobility.

The scheme of colonisation went steadily on. Sir William had been made Secretary for Scotland, as well as Lieutenant of New Scotland.

A small fleet was then announced as being in preparation to proceed to the new colony. The royal letter containing this pronouncement is dated: “Whythall,” January 17, 1627. Money was also furnished from the royal Treasury to the amount of six thousand pounds. The ships, bearing the suggestive names of the Eagle and Morning Star, finally got under way. A Captain David Kirk, a colonist of Scottish descent, whose people had settled in France, was appointed Deputy-Admiral under Sir William. With a small force, he defeated the French squadron bound for Quebec and Port Royal, and captured eighteen transports. This gave prestige to Sir William’s scheme, and fourteen patents of baronetcy were added between October, 1627, and February, 1628.

Alexander now chartered new vessels, and his son and heir, Sir William, who was made Knight Admiral of New Scotland, sailed with four ships in May, 1628, carrying seventy colonists, who were safely landed at Port Royal, now Annapolis. Some English adventurers now attempted to procure the right of trafficking with the new colony, but were frustrated, and a royal patent was granted to Sir William Alexander the younger and others, as “sole traders” in the Gulf and River of Canada, and they were empowered to settle a plantation “within all parts of the gulf and river above those parts which are over against Kebeck [Quebec] on the south side, or above twelve leagues below Todowsack [Tadousac] on the north side.”

They were also, on February 4, 1629, empowered “to make a voyage into the Gulf and River of Canada and the parts adjacent for the sole trade of beaver, wools, beaver skins, furs, hides, and skins of wild beasts.”

Sir William, the elder, was now made Keeper of the Signet for Scotland, with a deputy at Edinburgh; and, to further his colony, he established in 1627 a shipping port at Largs at the mouth of the Clyde, and secured a charter to build a free port and haven at that place “for advancing trade and commerce between the Old World and the New.” This was the first beginning of what afterwards developed into the world-wide shipping and vast trade of Glasgow and the Clyde.

Sir William and the King intended that Nova Scotia should be, in the New World, the same complement of Scotland as the sister Province of New England was to the mother country from which it derived its name. It must not be forgotten, however, that Nova Scotia was a royal colony. Much injustice has been done to the memory of James the Sixth of Scotland and First of England. He was in many respects a man far in advance of his times. His colonial policy may have been paternal, but it was not any the worse because of that. It was certainly eminently practical and far-seeing, and decidedly commercial in its object. But the difficulty was to get men to leave their homes and adventure over an unknown sea into a far country, unless they were compelled thereto by persecution, a strong unrest, or a dissatisfaction with their own surroundings. It was in that age a difficult matter to move any people to emigrate, and hence the failure in interesting the people of Scotland in the new colony.

That the scheme was strong in the mind of James is evident, as on his death-bed he referred to it plaintively but earnestly as “a good work, a royal work, and one beneficent to the kingdom in general,” and he left it as an heritage of duty to his royal son to carry out. His object had been, no doubt, to found on the American continent a country which should be a part of his kingdom of Scotland, and joined to it by bonds of sentiment and mutual commerce. It is a great pity that this great scheme, as originally intended by the King and Sir William Alexander, was not carried out in its entirety. The founding of the order of Baronets and Barons of the new community was for the sole purpose of interesting the well-to-do people in this important scheme. Those writers who have sneered at or ignored this important undertaking have certainly missed the real significance of the adventure. If it had been made successful, what a blessing it would have been to the New World.

The premier baronet of New Scotland, Sir Robert Gordon, was created by Charles the First on May 28, 1625, and received a grant of 16,000 acres of land in New Scotland. By July 19th nine other baronets with similar grants were added, and by 1630, fully fifty in all were created; and between 1663 and 1707, when the union of Scotland and England occurred, one hundred and twenty had been created.

In the year 1845 the memorandum on the Nova Scotia question stated that there were in Great Britain one hundred and sixty baronets of this order, of whom forty were peers of the realm.

The following is the correct roll of the baronets of Scotland and New Scotland, with date of creation and designations.

The baronets created from 1638 to 1707 were: 1638, Pollock of Jordanhill; Musgrave of Hayton Castle; 1639, Turing of Foveran; 1642, Gordon of Haddo (Earl of Aberdeen); 1646, Hamilton of Silverton Hill; 1648, Seton of Abercorn; 1651, Primrose of Chester (Earl of Rosebery); 1663, Carnegy of Southesk; Hay of Park; 1664, Murray of Stanhope; Dalrymple of Stair (Viscount Stair); Sinclair of Longformacus; 1665, Purves (Hume Campbell) of Purves; Malcolm of Balbeadie; 1666, Menzies of that Ilk; Dalzell of Glencoe (Earl of Carnwath); Erskine of Alva (Earl of Rosslyn); Erskine of Cambo (Earl of Mar and Kellie); Wood of Boyentown; Elliot of Stobs; Ramsay of Banff; 1667, Shaw-Stewart of Greenock; Don of Newton; Douglas of Kelhead (Marquess of Queensberry); 1668, Barclay of Pierston; 1669, Wallace of Craigie; Cunyngham of Caprington (now Dick-Cunyngham, Baronet of Preston Field); 1671, Halkett of Pitfirrave; Cockburn of that Ilk; Home of Blackadder; Scott of Ancrum; 1672, Cunningham of Corsehill; Ross of Balnagowan; Jardine of Applegirth; 1673, Murray of Ochertyre; Mackenzie of Coul; 1675, Hamilton of Preston; 1679, Clerk of Penicuik; Cochrane of Ochiltree (Earl of Dundonald); 1680, Baird of Saughton Hall; Dundonald; 1680, Baird of Saughton Hall; Maitland of Hatton (Earl of Lauderdale); 1681, Maxwell of Montreath; 1682, Maxwell of Pollock; Kennedy of Culzean (Marquess of Ailsa); Bannerman of Elsick; 1683, Stewart of Grandtully; Pringle of Stitchel; Maxwell of Sprinkell; Seton of Pitmedden; 1685, Grierson of Lag; Kilpatrick of Closeburn; Laurie of Maxwelton; Dalzell of Brims; Montcrieff of that Ilk; 1686, Broun of Colstoun; Kinlock of Gilmerton; Nicholson of Tillicoultry; Gordon of Park; 1687, Calder of Muirton; Stuart of Allanbank; Hall of Dunglas; Thriepland of Fingask; 1688, Dick-Lauder of Fountainhall; Grant of Dalvey; 1693, Stewart of Coltness; Dunbar of Durn; 1698, Dalrymple of North Berwick; Dalrymple of Cousland (Viscount Stair); 1700, Mackenzie of Gairloch; Forbes of Foveran; Livingstone of Westquarter; Johnstone of Westerhall; Elliot of Minto (Earl of Minto); Dunbar of Northfield; 1702, Cunninghame of Milncraig; Grant-suttie of Balgone; 1703, Mackenzie of Scatwell; Cathcart of Carleton; Ferguson of Kilkerran; Reid of Barra; Hay of Alderston; 1704, Murray of Melgun (Count Murray); Wemyss of Bogie; Grant of Grant (Earl of Seafield); Sinclair of Dunbeath; Wedderburn of Blackness; 1705, Grant of Monymusk; Holbourne of Kirshie; 1706, Gordon of Earlston; Naesmith of Posso; Dunbar of Hempriggs (Lord Duffus); 1707, Dick of Preston Field (also Baronet of Capington); Stewart of Tillicoultry; Cragie of Gairsay.

It is interesting to trace the representatives or scions of these old houses who have since then been connected with Canada. There are descendants of Sir Robert Gordon’s elder sister, Lady Jane Gordon, living in Canada to-day. The great Bishop Strachan represented well his family or clan, as the first Bishop of Nova Scotia represented the Inglis family. A Douglas was one of the founders of British Columbia, and the Macdonalds have been notable. A Ramsay, Lord Dalhousie, was a noted Governor. Mackay of Reay has descendants in Canada. The noted Bishop Stewart of Quebec was a younger son of the Earl of Galloway. Several of the Campbell families, such as Arkinglas, Auchinbreck have representatives, and the distinguished chief of the clan was a Governor. No clan on the list but has had some one of its name playing an important part in the subsequent life of the whole country from Cape Breton to Vancouver.

The map of New Scotland, issued by Sir William Alexander in 1630, is exceedingly interesting. It shows New France on the north bank of the St. Lawrence, with Kebec (Quebec) and the river Saguenay and Tadousac; and New England parcelled out among the many English adventurers. The St. Croix, which to-day is the boundary, is there called the Tweed, which, as that river separated England and Scotland, so the Tweed of the New World separated New England on the south-west from New Scotland on the north-east. The St. John River, in what is now New Brunswick, was called the Clyde, and the Bay of Funday was called Argal Bay, and the Sound west of Prince Edward Island, which had no name, was called the “Forthe”; the St. Lawrence was called “the great river of Canada,” and the gulf “Golfe of Canada.” One of the large rivers running north into the St. Lawrence was called the “Sulway,” and all the land south of the St. Lawrence belonged to New England and New Scotland. The latter was divided into two provinces. All, now New Brunswick, and all Quebec from the Sulway down south of the St. Lawrence with Anticosti, was the Province of Alexandria; while what is now Nova Scotia, with Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island, was the Province of New Caledonia. In this map the southern part of Newfoundland is called Alexandria.

Sir William Alexander, in his “Encouragement to Colonies,” gives an insight into his own personality, his scholarship, and original thought. The student reading this important work by this remarkable man, in the light of subsequent history and research, cannot but realise that his insight into the history of the human race was far beyond the common, and that his knowledge of the earth’s surface and the emigration of the races, even those of the remote East and West, was that of no ordinary person.

History will yet acknowledge that this, the first Scottish coloniser of America, was one of the great men of history, and, like Sir Walter Raleigh, a lofty soul, whose imagination and aspiration for his race went far beyond his native borders and his own day and generation. Faults he, no doubt, had, as had Columbus, Champlain, and Cabot. But his signal virtues of insight, vast courage, and imagination, his great knowledge of the New and Old Worlds both East and West, his deep scholarship, his indomitable energy, all directed toward the opening up of new worlds in the West, place him high up in the ranks of that immortal band of the world’s adventurers—“The Discoverers”—who—

THE PICTOU SETTLEMENTS

I

The Sailing of the Hope

The history of the most noted of the Scottish communities of Nova Scotia and the Maritime Provinces, that of Pictou, is an important chapter in the annals of the Scottish race in Canada.

It has two distinct periods. First, that dating from the earliest British settlement in 1765 to the arrival of the Hector in 1773; and the second, that of the direct Scottish settlements commencing with the arrival of that ship, and continuing until late in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Among the early pioneers of the province, and especially in this locality, were many persons of Scottish and Ulster-Scottish stock, who had much to do with the early settlement and development of the province. In the early half of the eighteenth century several persons had already secured and taken up large tracts of land. Among these ambitious landowners was the subsequently prominent American revolutionist, Benjamin Franklin, who was in truth one of the greatest and most covetous landgrabbers and absentee landlords that our continent has ever known.

In a letter from the Lieutenant-Governor to the Lord-Commissioner of Trades and Plantations, under date April 30, 1765, it is shown that several persons had arrived from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and other colonies with the object of settlement. Prominent among these was Alexander McNutt, who with his associates applied for very extensive grants. He is described by Haliburton as an enthusiastic adventurer from the north of Ireland, and had already helped to settle Truro, Onslow, and Londonderry. Two of McNutt’s associates were William and Richard Caldwell, also north of Ireland Scotsmen. The amount of their grants reached hundreds of thousands of acres.

This grant was called the Irish (more properly the Ulster-Scottish) grant, or that given to Scots from Ayrshire and the other parts of Scotland who had settled in Ulster before removing to America.

The other important grant of lands was called the Philadelphia grant. It is dated October 31, 1765, and is granted to several persons, among them the Reverend James Lyon, Thomas Harris, and Robert Harris; the whole grant was for 180,000 acres. In connection with this grant, which is of special interest as being closely connected with the early history of Pictou, the real promoters were Lyon and the two Harrises, with Dr. John Harris. The Rev. James Lyon, as his name shows, was a Scotsman from Ulster. The Harrises, Mathew and John, says the chronicle, were of the Scotch-Irish race, their ancestors, Edward Harris and Flora Douglas, having left Ayrshire in Scotland in the reign of Charles the Second, losing a fine estate for their attachment to Presbyterian worship. They settled near Raphoe, in the county of Donegal, Ireland, where so many other Scotsmen had settled since the Scottish plantation in 1608. Thomas, grandson of Edward, and father of Mathew and John, and an elder son Robert, were members of the Philadelphia Company. Thomas was then of Maryland, and his son John a physician in Philadelphia. John, the younger son, had most to do with the Pictou settlement. He was born on July 16, 1739. He acted as attorney for the Company, recorded all the deeds in the vicinity, was the first magistrate, being appointed in 1769, and first registrar of deeds. He at first lived near Browns Point, but about 1778 removed to Onslow, became Clerk of the Peace, a Member of the Assembly for Truro, 1779 to 1785, and died in Truro April 9, 1802. His descendants are numerous in Colchester, Pictou County. His son John was Sheriff of Pictou. Mathew Harris was born in 1731 or 1735. His son Thomas was a surveyor of much land in Colchester, and Sheriff of Pictou. He had many children. One daughter married John Patterson and was ancestor of the Rev. George Patterson, the historian of Pictou County.

The immediate result of this grant was the arrival of a small brig, the Hope, from Philadelphia, bringing the first little colony, consisting of only six families, including the Harrises, already described. Dr. Harris, being the agent, was of the number, and the night after they reached the harbour Mrs. Harris gave birth to a son on shipboard, Thomas Harris, afterwards Clerk of the Peace, who died in 1809, and was the first British settler born in Pictou. Among the others on the Hope was John Rogers, with a wife and four children. He was a native of Glasgow, Scotland, as was his wife, a Miss Richie. He emigrated to Maryland, and thence to Pictou. He left many descendants. He took up land and gave his name to Roger’s Hill, and some of the apple-trees grown from seed he brought from Maryland were still standing in 1876. He helped to blaze the road to Truro, and also gave his name to Roger’s Settlement. Another pioneer on the Hope was Robert Patterson, who came as the surveyor for the Company; he brought his wife and five children—the eldest nine years, the youngest three months old. He has been called the father of Pictou. He was a native of Renfrew, in Scotland, but had emigrated to Maryland, and had been a pedlar and sutler to the army previous to 1763. He was for many years a surveyor and a leading man in Pictou, and was made magistrate in 1774. He built the first frame house in the place, on land conveyed to him by Governor Patterson. He died in 1808. He was long an elder in the Presbyterian Church, and left many descendants, among them a daughter Margaret, afterwards wife of Capt. Pagan of the Hector, and the Rev. George Patterson, the county historian, already mentioned.

The Hope reached Pictou Harbour on June 10th. But a party from Truro, having come over to receive them, built a fire on the shore to guide them, which made those on the Hope think them savages. But the next day the ship stood in for the shore, where those on board saw the wild, unbroken forest and virgin country yet to be conquered, the famous white pines looming up conspicuously to the height of 150 or 200 feet “like masts of some huge admiral.”

It was, indeed, a brave and indomitable stock which could, without misgivings regarding the future, become the pioneers in such a wilderness. But what of the wives of the settlers? Mrs. Patterson afterwards said that when they finally landed she leaned against one of those great trees and thought that if there was a broken-hearted creature on the face of the earth she was one. Indeed, so desolate did the place look, with the horror of savages in the minds of the newcomers, that the captain of the vessel, after landing their supplies, slipped out of the harbour in the night and left them to their fate.

Of the five or six young men who had set out from the sister settlement of Truro to welcome and aid the immigrants we will now speak. They aided in building huts and in laying a rude road to Truro. The leader was Thomas Archibald, of Scottish descent.

The Rev. James Lyon was already in Nova Scotia when the Hope arrived. He appears as one of the Philadelphia Company, being sent as their minister, but did not continue with the settlement. He was ordained in New Jersey and arrived in Nova Scotia late in 1764 or early in 1765, and was the first Presbyterian minister in the province of whom there is any account. He was residing in Pictou with his family since 1769, and gave his name to Lyon’s Brook.

Of the other early settlers in Pictou, many had arrived by 1769. A return of inhabitants taken in this year shows a decided increase, and most of them of Scottish or Ulster-Scottish origin.

Of these were Thomas Skead, born in Scotland; William Aiken, of Scottish descent; James Fulton, an Ulster Scot; Robert Stewart and William Kennedy, Ulster Scots. Kennedy erected the first sawmill in the country. Barnabas McGee was born in the north of Ireland. In this connection it may be interesting to state that the McGees are a sept who came from the Rhinns of Isla, and settled at Island McGee, in Antrim. They are a sept or branch of the great Scottish clan of Macdonald, who settled and owned Antrim for centuries.

James Davidson was another early settler of Pictou. He was born in Edinburgh, where he married, and where the first of his family was born. He came out with the Rev. Dr. Cook, of Truro, and was the first schoolmaster of Pictou.

Such was the stock of the first settlement of Pictou down to the coming of the good ship Hector in 1773.

II

The Arrival of the Hector, 1773

The sailing of the Hector, with her Highland emigrants, from the Port of Greenock, was an event of significant importance in the history of Western emigration, and especially in that of the settlement of the Maritime Provinces and of all Canada.

With the arrival of her passengers there began the really effective settlement, not only of Pictou, but of the whole province. She was the first emigrant ship from Scotland to Nova Scotia or New Brunswick since the days of Sir William Alexander. With her voyage began that vast but steady stream of Scottish immigration which, as the years went on, flowed into, and over, not only the county of Pictou alone, but over much of the eastern portion of the province, into Cape Breton, Prince Edward Island, and portions of New Brunswick, and even into what was afterwards Upper and Lower Canada.

It might be said that all the subsequent Scottish settlements originated in the coming of this one ship, because those who then came out wrote back to their relatives and friends in Scotland. These pioneers, after enduring great hardships and sufferings, not only achieved a position of independence, but also acquired an appreciation of the real value of the country and gave a good report of the land; so that those at home likewise ventured their all and followed, to greater or less success, according to their ability and fortune.

There is no one element in the population of Canada upon which its social, moral, and religious development has depended more than upon its Scottish inhabitants; and of this great element for good to the whole Dominion, the members of that little band in the Hector were the pioneers and vanguard. What the arrival of the Don de Dieu was to French Canada, that of the Hector might be said to represent to the Scottish element of our country. History records that this was her last voyage; that on her return to Scotland she was condemned as unseaworthy and went to sea no more. It is a pity that there is nowhere preserved, so far as is known, a picture of this historic ship, which, in her last sailing, made so remarkable and epoch-making a voyage.

The Scot in America has ever seemed to have had to endure special hardships; and it is said that no Nova Scotia settlement had such obstacles to encounter as that of Pictou. They came out, unbonused by any Government grant, and unprovided for, to a country covered with heavy forest; and were, from the first, thrown altogether on their own resources. One cannot but admire the heroism which faced such odds in winning a foot-hold in the New World.

So far, the few settlers had struggled against great difficulties, until in 1773 the ship Hector arrived with her Highland emigrants; and a new era in the history of the settlement began.

John Pagan was a merchant of the town of Greenock, who purchased several shares of the stock of the Philadelphia Company. He had been engaged in the undertaking to settle the colonies of the South—and this was not the first voyage of the Hector, which was owned by Pagan, in carrying emigrants to American shores. Pagan’s partner was a Dr. Witherspoon, presumably of Philadelphia, who also had an interest in the Company.

Their Scottish agent was one John Ross, who was an earlier example of our present-day emigrant agent in the Highlands. He pictured in glowing colours the New World and its advantages as over the Old, and hundreds of poor souls, who knew nothing of the other side of the shield, and attracted by the prospect of owning a farm, without payment, accepted his terms, and, gathering together their all, prepared to seek their fortune across the ocean. The Hector (John Spear, master; James Orr, first mate; and John Anderson, second mate) was the vessel fated to bear these pioneers to their destination.

She sailed from Greenock, where three families and five young men embarked, and went north to Lochbroom, Ross-shire, where 33 families and 25 unmarried men were added to her quota of passengers. One account gives 189, and another 179, as being the number of souls on her list. Legge, the Governor, in his dispatch, refers to them as 200 on their arrival.

She sailed from Lochbroom early in July (probably the 1st), and was eleven weeks making the passage across the Atlantic.

On her departure a piper went on board, and was ordered ashore; but the emigrants interceded, and he was allowed to sail. They were all new to the wide ocean, even the ship’s officers—only one sailor having crossed before—and hope beat in every bosom, in spite of the fact that their native hills soon faded from view.

But the Atlantic soon had them in its rolling trough, and their merriment was changed to tears and sea-sickness; and home-sickness seized their dismayed bodies and souls. The ship was an old Dutch hulk, and a slow, lubberly sailor; so that she made but a poor headway against contrary winds that smote and buffeted her dingy rotten hull and veered her sails; and ere many days many an eye was scanning anxiously the grey sweep of desolate waters and skyline for the longed-for glimpse of solid land.

But the brave Scottish hearts bore up with the lion-souls within, and the leaders encouraged the weak and the young by all sorts of amusements to overcome the tedious hours and days of waiting. At last, when they arrived off Newfoundland, a severe storm beat them once more out into the bleak ocean. All this time the accommodations, never good, were becoming unendurable; and their food, not over-well-provided, began to fail. Had it not been for the fantastic thrift of one of the emigrants, Hugh McLeod, who had gathered in a bag all the food cast away by the others, they would have starved to death at the last. Then smallpox and dysentery broke out, so that most of the poor children that had embarked died, cooped up in that rotten hulk; and many a poor mother must have landed mournful and sad on the shores on the New World, who had left the Old hopeful, with her all in her infant shawled in her arms.

Such is the tragic side of the making of new lands. Many must suffer that in after-days others may reap the glory.

However, nothing lasts for ever, not even sorrow; and on September 15th this pioneer shipload of Scottish immigrants dropped anchor in the harbour of Pictou.

In spite of their sad voyage, the Highlanders adorned themselves in their kilts and plaids for the disembarking; and the Indians, who had threatened to be troublesome, on hearing the weird sound of the pipes, and seeing what they thought to be the dreaded petticoated soldiers who had captured Quebec, fled in terror to the forest, and from that day ceased to be a menace to the pioneers.

But the poor travellers were fated yet to endure hardship and suffering. Though the sick were cared for, several died, and only landed in the New World to be borne to their graves. So that it might be said that the first city established was that of the dead. Disease and death had lowered their spirits, and a sight of the bleak, unbroken forest and lonesome, desolate coast-line added to their despondency. But worse was yet to come.

A free farm and plenty in the New World they had been promised, but the reality was a rude awakening from their dream of the Far West. Landing without provisions or shelter, the lateness of the season made their situation even more desperate, as no planting could be done until the land was cleared during the following year. They also found that they would have to go inland for their farms, all these facing the shore being pre-empted. Many of them were fishermen, and had counted on the sea for a portion of their substance. The result was hunger, hardship, and misery; with much heartburnings, even open rebellion, when some of the leaders of the party in desperation raided the Company’s stores and took what they needed for the requirements of the suffering. That first winter was one of hardship and misery never to be forgotten. Many moved to Truro and Londonderry, some even to Halifax, Windsor, and Cornwallis, and hired themselves out, men, women, and children. The majority returned afterwards, but none forgot that dread winter, with its deep snow and its want of food and clothing, where a little flour and a few potatoes, often frozen, were all that, sometimes carried miles on a man’s back, kept life in the community.

Patterson, in his History, gives numerous incidents which illustrate the great privations endured not only that winter, but in some instances afterwards. But they struggled on with the Scottish pertinacity and belief in the future; and, in spite of all, made themselves successful, and the land, if a land not of great plenty, a place of dignified and frugal comfort in which to cradle a God-fearing and ambitious race.

There is a list given in Patterson’s History, which was drawn up about 1837, by William McKenzie of Lochbroom, containing the names of the passengers in the Hector, with short accounts of their personal and family history and of the record of their places of settlement.

As one of the objects of this work is to give as much information as possible regarding the real people themselves, the rank and file of the Scots who have made our country, I quote this important list in full as it is given, though omitting many notes and remarks, which will be found by the student in Patterson’s “History of Pictou.”

This is, in brief, the history of the Pictou Scottish settlements, which also included many Ulster Scotsmen. These were the pioneer settlements for the Dominion. From here many families at a later date removed into Upper Canada, and helped to form Scottish communities in what is now Ontario.

OTHER NOVA SCOTIA SETTLEMENTS, AND EARLY INDIVIDUAL SCOTSMEN

From the earliest days of the British colonisation, Nova Scotia was, in keeping with its name, extremely Scottish. In 1843 statistics from authentic sources gave one-third of the whole population as Scottish or of Scottish descent.

Many of the early settlers, before the United Empire Loyalists, were from Scotland or were Ulster Scotsmen, as is shown in the Pictou settlements. Among the United Empire Loyalists there were also many Scotsmen, and wherever their people settled Scottish surnames were plentiful.

There were many descendants of the famous Fraser Highlanders, such as John Fraser, who died at Shelburne in 1840, aged eighty-eight. This clan was one of the most noted in connection with the history of Canada. As soldiers, discoverers, statesmen, and divines, many representatives of the name Fraser are famous in our annals.

At Pugwash Harbour there were important Highland settlements. They were men from the Hebrides, and were hardy and industrious. Fort Wallace was another successful settlement.

In 1774 a number of Lowlanders from Dumfriesshire were brought from Prince Edward Island to Pictou. In 1783 the 82nd or Hamilton Regiment was disbanded at Halifax, and the men received grants in Pictou.

Early in the nineteenth century the Frasers made a settlement at Millbrook, and from there certain Macdonalds, Rosses, and Gordons went to Middle River. The Mount Thorn settlement was Protestant. The settlers were McLeans, McLeods, Macdonalds, Chisholms, Camerons, Thompsons, Grants, and Browns.

During the years 1790, 1791, and 1792 many Roman Catholic Highlanders came to the Maritime Provinces, and their numbers were added to year by year up to 1828. Those in Nova Scotia settled chiefly in Antigonish County, Pictou, and Cape Breton. They were principally Chisholms, Macdonalds, Camerons, and Frasers. It is said that the chief of the Chisholms evicted many of his tenants to establish sheep-walks on his estate of Strathglas. A great many left there in 1801, and another party in 1803.

The first Highland Catholics settled the parish of Arisaig in Antigonish County. Bishop Macdonald, in a dedication sermon, said: “In 1787 the first Catholic Highlander, the pioneer of the faith, took up his solitary abode in the ‘forest primeval,’ which then wound in unbroken grandeur on these shores.”

For years there was a steady stream of immigration into Nova Scotia of people from Sutherland and Lewis. All Antigonish was purely Scottish. Fox Harbour in Cumberland County was settled by Highlanders, and New Edinburgh in Annapolis and Grenville Township were settled by Scotsmen. From the opening of the nineteenth century the Scottish Highlanders flowed steadily into Cape Breton. The late Edward Fraser aided much in the movement. At Grand Anse there was a Scottish colony. Along the Straits of Canso the majority of the inhabitants were descendants of Scottish Highlanders.

The principal immigration into the province in the earlier days was from Inverness, Ross, and Sutherland, and in later years from Argyllshire, Perth, and Caithness. These were chiefly Macdonalds, Macdonells, Frasers, McKenzies, Mackays, Camerons, McLeods, Campbells, Grants, Robertsons, Stewarts, Mclntoshes, Malcolms, McIntyres, McNeills, MacNabs, Munros, McLeans, McDougals, Chisholms, McPhersons, Sutherlands, McKinnons, and McQueens.

By the returns in 1887 there were in the province 48,000 Presbyterians, and 47,000 Catholics, upwards of one-half of which were Scotsmen by descent. In the 50,000 inhabitants of Cape Breton of that date, nearly half were Presbyterians, and a large proportion of the remainder Scottish Catholics.

The county of Pictou in 1843 had a population of 25,000, principally Scottish and Presbyterian, from Inverness, Ross, Argyll, and Sutherland.

The shores of the Gulf were lined with Highland settlements such as Wallace, Tadmagouche, and other places.

Boulardie Island, St. Anne’s Harbour, Bedeque Inlet, and the Straits of Barra were all settled by Highlanders.

The city of Halifax, long a great military depôt as well as a great seaport and commercial centre, has had from the first a large Scottish element in its population.

Probably the best picture of Scottish Halifax is given in the history of the Halifax North British Association, the strongest and oldest Scottish organisation in Canada. We get in its published transactions a long list of Scotsmen of all walks of life—soldiers, merchants, divines, professional men, and statesmen; some with world-wide reputation and others obscure; but all representing the great clans and families of Scotland. In Halifax were stationed some famous Scottish regiments. Here His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, of the Royal Scottish line of Stuart, spent some years as a military commander. Here, like the Allans at Montreal, the Cunards, another noted Scottish family of ship-owners, founded the greatest Atlantic line of steamships. Here lived the great Scottish families of Haliburton, Archibald, Inglis, and Young; and here to-day, as half a century ago, the names of Scotsmen are prominent and powerful, as is but fitting in this famous capital of New Scotland.

Among the leading Scotsmen of the city of Halifax and Nova Scotia have been distinguished and noted men, like Lord Dalhousie; Sir Colin Campbell; Hon. Wm. Annand; Hon. Alexander Brymer; Hon. John H. Duncan, R.N.; Hon. Jas. Fraser; Hon. Wm. Garvie; Lieut.-Col. Charles Gordon; Principal Grant; Sir Brenton Haliburton; Thomas Haliburton; Hon. John Haliburton; Col. Irving; Hon. Alex. Keith; Chief Justice Macdonald; Col. Macdonald; Prof. Macdonald; Col. McGregor, 93rd Regiment; Prof. A. Murray; Gen. Ogilvie; Hon. James Stewart; Hon. Alex. Stewart, C.B.; Hon. Judge Sedgewick; Chief Justice Strange; Hon. Wm. Wallace; Hon. John Young; Chief Justice Young; Hon. Wm. Young; Hon. Senator Dickie; and Hon. Arthur Rupert Dickie, Minister of Justice for Canada. At the present day, there is the able Premier of the province, the Hon. W. H. Murray; and the late Lieut.-Governor, one of the most eloquent and enthusiastic Highlanders in Canada; His Honour the Hon. D. C. Fraser, who has just passed away. He was a noted politician and later a justice of the Provincial High Court, which position he resigned to become Lieut.-Governor.

Nova Scotia has given to the Dominion some of her most distinguished men, and it is safe to say that at least the majority of these were of Scottish extraction.

THE SCOTSMAN IN PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND

In 1758, Lord Rollo, a Scottish Peer, and a trusted colonel under Wolfe, captured Prince Edward Island, and as early as the year 1767 the island was parcelled out among a number of landed proprietors from the Old Land. Three of these, who were prominent as having established fisheries and having made other extensive improvements on the island, bore Scottish names, such as Spence, Muir, and Cathcart. Capt. Walker Patterson, another son of Southern Caledonia, and who was one of these proprietors, was appointed Governor, and arrived at the island in 1770.

In the following year Mr. John Stuart was appointed agent for the island in London by the House of Assembly. Another proprietor was Capt. Macdonald, who had much to do with the early affairs of the colony. At that period there were trouble and strife among the colonists concerning the lands, which continued for some years. In 1803 the successors to Stuart in London were William and Thomas Knox, two Scotsmen, and at the same time Messrs. McGowan, Stuart, and Macdonald were made members of a committee of five to draw up a new Bill for the province; showing that Scotsmen were the leading spirits in the affairs of the colony.

A Scottish chief who was prominently associated with the island was John Macdonald of Glenaladale, who purchased an extensive tract of land there, and conceived the idea of emigration of Highlanders on a large scale. He sent his brother, with an overseer and labourers, provided with all the requirements for farming for several hundred settlers, whom he shipped out soon afterwards. It is said that Macdonald’s real object was to relieve the wants of his distressed clansmen and other Highlanders, whom the late Jacobite wars and other causes had impoverished. His emigrants were gathered from his own estates and from those of his cousin and chief, Clanronald, in Moydart; with others from the Island of Uist.

From this large immigration many descendants remain to this day. In 1843 there was estimated to be fully 24,000 people of Scottish descent in the island, and of these not less than 4,500 bore the name of Macdonald. Capt. Macdonald of Glenaladale took a leading part in the life of the province. He refused the position of Governor, but, at the head of a portion of the 84th Regiment of Highland emigrants, he performed good service for the Crown. During the war of the Revolution an American man-of-war landed part of her crew on the Nova Scotian coast near where Glenaladale was stationed with a portion of his regiment. Capt. Macdonald, with a few men, captured this vessel and sailed her to Halifax, then returned with more men and captured the surprised crew of Americans and French. He died in 1811. Though a good Catholic, he was of a broad, tolerant nature, and made no difference because of the religion of his settlers or acquaintances. He left behind him a good record as a fine type of the old-time Highland military gentleman.

In 1803 another great Scottish immigration came to Prince Edward Island, when Lord Selkirk brought out about eight hundred Highlanders to occupy his lands. These people were located in the vicinity of Point Prim, and many of them made very successful inhabitants.

The earliest historian of the island colony was the Rev. John McGregor, who was a Scotsman by descent, but a native of the island. He gives a faithful description of its settlement and growth.

In 1813 Charles Douglas Smith became Governor, and the Receiver-General was John Edward Carmichael. At this period, says the historian, King’s County, the most thickly populated district on the island, was inhabited by Highlanders, who spoke no other language than their native Gaelic. “They were men,” he says, “who would have faced open fire in the field with the courage characteristic of the Celtic race, and had a profound respect for law.”

During that period we find John McGregor, afterwards Member of Parliament for Glasgow, High Sheriff of the island.

In 1827 the membership of the House of Assembly included the following names of Scotsmen—Cameron, McAuley, Campbell, McNeill, Montgomery, and a Stuart was Speaker.

In 1830 Cobbett wrote thus flippantly of this colony as a home for emigrants. “From Glasgow,” he says, “the sensible Scots are pouring out amain. Those that are poor and cannot pay their passage, or can rake together only a trifle, are going to a rascally heap of sand, rock, and swamp, called Prince Edward Island.” Such were the views of this much over-rated man. But he knew even less of the island than he did of the Scotsmen who went there and made for themselves happy and comfortable homes in this veritable garden of the Canadian Gulf.

The late Col. Fraser also did much toward the colonisation of Prince Edward Island. Indeed, it can be seen that the greater part of its settlement was brought about by Scotsmen from Highlands and Lowlands. The result of all this was, that in 1841 the statistical returns showed natives of Scotland, 5,682; adherents to Church of Scotland, 10,000 persons, and Presbyterians, 5,089, and nearly 20,429 Highland Roman Catholics.

So much for the Scottish settlements, and we may glance at some of the leading personages connected with Prince Edward Island who were of Scottish birth and extraction.

In 1834 there died John Stuart of Mount Stuart, aged seventy-six. He came to the island in 1778, and was Speaker of the Assembly for many years. This worthy old pioneer was a good friend to the inhabitants, and a dignified official. He took an interest in the early struggles of the people, and wrote a valuable book dealing with the island and its colonisation.

Another prominent personality was John McNeill, who did much for education. In 1837 he was appointed official visitor of schools, being the first appointment, and in his return he shows the number of schools to be 51, and the total of pupils, 1,533. He instituted important reforms in education, and, when he retired ten years later, there were over 120 schools and 5,000 scholars.

Walter Johnston, writing in 1824, says that the agriculture of the island was largely improved through the influence of the Lowland Scots from Perthshire and Dumfriesshire.

The Scotsman was also prominent in politics. In 1847, at the elections in the Belfast district for the Assembly, there were four candidates, all Scotsmen, as their names, Dowe, McLean, Little, and McDougal, will show.

About this date, Sir Donald Campbell, of Dunstaffnage in Argyllshire, was sent out as Governor, and as a noted member of a distinguished Highland family, he received an enthusiastic welcome. He possessed all the qualities of a good Governor, but unfortunately died within a year of his appointment. The next Governor was Sir A. Bannerman, and later, in 1857, George Dundas, Esq., M.P. for Linlithgowshire, filled the position.

In 1859, there died at St. Dunstan’s College, the Right Rev. Bernard Donald Macdonald, the Roman Catholic bishop. He had for years been a hard-working and faithful missionary among his people, and a worthy member of his famous clan. Another noted figure in the Roman communion was the Venerable Bishop McEachern, who came to the island in 1790, and was long a prominent personality in his own Church, and as a public man. One of his duties was that of Road Commissioner, and he had an earnest co-adjutor in the Rev. William Douglas, another worthy Scotsman of the Presbyterian fold. These two divines not only pointed the road to heaven, though by different theological paths, but also worked loyally together to promote good roads and highways on earth, in so far as Prince Edward Island was concerned. It seems that much evil has been done of late in thrusting the clergy out of public affairs and into mere ecclesiastical functions. This has had as one result to separate the Churches and deteriorate them as organisations for the community’s good. What greater aid to religious union can there be than where the leading divines of different communions work together on committees for the common good? They not only learn to know and respect each other, but it broadens and humanises their outlook, and gradually teaches them and their respective followers that in the best interests of all that pertains to the weal of the community, all religions are, or should be, one.

The Rev. Donald Macdonald, who died bewailed in 1867, was another venerable Scotsman, who as a Protestant missionary was known and beloved all over the island. He was a remarkable preacher and a fine scholar, and his funeral was said to have been the largest ever witnessed in the colony. The Rev. D. Kerr, who succeeded Dr. McCullough, became the leading representative of the Presbyterian Church. He, like many of his confrères of his day, was noted for his strong moral fibre and his great influence as a personality throughout the whole community.

That was the day of strong men in religion. They were scholars, statesmen, and rulers in their way. Since they have been driven out of public affairs, not only have the divines deteriorated, but the public men as a class have sadly declined and degenerated, and public spirit and opinion are almost dead.

Prince Edward Island has given its share of strong, useful, and brilliant men to the life of the Dominion. Among them are many of Scottish descent.

The most distinguished islander now living is Sir William Macdonald, the noted philanthropist and merchant prince of Montreal, whose career will be dealt with in another place, and who is a descendant and the representative of Macdonald of Glenaladale, one of the leading colonisers of the island. Another noted son of the island province is Dr. Falconer, President of Toronto University.

That the colony was, in its early foundation, largely Scottish, will be shown by a return of the inhabitants in 1798. Out of a list of 750 heads of families, 350 bore Scottish names, many of them being Highlanders. Thus it will be seen that the beautiful little island-province of the Gulf owes much to the daring and courage of Scottish navigators and colonisers from Sir William Alexander down, and that the character of its people is founded on the energy and high moral qualities of its Scottish settlers, who have done so much to give it the place it holds among the provinces of the Dominion.

Thus might the early islanders, the pioneer emigrants from the great British Island, have sung with the Poet Marvell—

THE SCOTSMAN IN NEW BRUNSWICK

While there are not as many people of Scottish descent in New Brunswick as in the sister province of Nova Scotia, there are a large number of the population who are proud of having in their veins the blood of the race of Albion.

In the year 1761, Fort Frederick in St. John Harbour was garrisoned by a Highland regiment, and during the same year the harbour was for the first time regularly surveyed by a Scotsman, Captain Bruce, of the Royal Engineers, and a map then made is still extant.

In the following year, an exploring party, consisting of about twenty persons, came to St. John from Newburyport in New England, and journeyed up the river as far as Fredericton and beyond. They found at the mouth of the Nashwack River the remains of a very old fortress. The single Frenchman whom they encountered told them that it was originally built by a party of settlers from Scotland, who were without doubt those sent out by Sir William Alexander, under Claude de la Tour.

In 1764, William Davidson, a native of the north of Scotland, most probably Caithness, came and settled at Miramichi, and received extensive grants of lands. With him was associated a Mr. Cort of Aberdeen. Four years before, in 1760, a prominent trader named Walker, who also hailed from Scotland, founded a trading post on Alston Point. These were a few of the very early, hardy pioneers who settled on those coasts and who were of Scottish birth.

As already shown, a large portion of the United Empire Loyalists and Treasury or Military Loyalists were of Scottish birth or extraction. They were for the most part soldiers. In McGregor’s “British America” it is shown that of the thousands of Loyalists who poured into the province, many were of Scottish descent. They settled principally on the St. John and St. Croix rivers, and the list, which is still extant, shows their origin and place of settlement.

It would be impossible in a work of this limited nature to include the names of all the United Empire Loyalists of Scottish origin who settled in Canada or the Maritime Provinces.

A few of the leaders in New Brunswick will, however, be referred to. A prominent Scotsman was Captain Archibald McLean, who settled in St. John in 1783. Another founder of that city was Charles McPherson. Hugh Mackay and two others of his clan were early settlers at this time, and the military Loyalists furnished eleven Macdonalds.

The county of Restigouche was a leading Scottish settlement, as the place-names of Dunlee, Glenlivet, Glenelg, Campbelltown, and Dalhousie show. The settlers here were direct from the Old Land. Many were fisher-folk, and not really by experience fitted to till the soil. But they were a sturdy folk in the main, and managed to make their way.

A great many of the Scotsmen entered the lumber trade on the different rivers in the province, and many acquired large fortunes. The great draw-backs to the settlements for nearly a century were the terrible fires that swept the country, partly owing to the great areas of pine lands.

One of the Governors, Sir Howard Douglas, who was a Scotsman, took a deep interest in education and the general improvement of the people. He did much to foster the foundation of colleges and schools, and, being of that Church, he encouraged Presbyterianism.

John Fraser, father of the Hon. John James Fraser, Provincial Secretary, was an early settler. He came from Inverness-shire in 1803, and settled at Miramichi. Alexander Wedderburn of Aberdeen was an author and a public officer in the province. His son was the Hon. William Wedderburn, Speaker of the Assembly. Urbain Johnston, Member of Parliament for Kent County, was the representative of a Scottish family which intermarried with the Acadians.

In connection with the history of the Scotsmen in New Brunswick, there is no more interesting chapter than that dealing with the Queen’s Rangers, Simcoe’s famous regiment, as there was a large element of Scotsmen among its soldiers. It was the most noted of all Royalist colonial battalions, chiefly because Simcoe was its commander. In official documents it was sometimes called “The King’s First American Regiment.” It was founded in 1776, in the colonies of Connecticut and New York, and soon mustered fully four hundred men who were at first all American Loyalists. But as time went on, the composition of the regiment changed, and it became more European than American. According to the muster rolls, dated August 24, 1780, out of the forty commissioned officers attached to the regiment, nineteen were of Scottish birth. This was during the period when Colonel Rogers held the command and before Colonel French succeeded him. French had as his successor a Scotsman, Major Wemyss, under whose command the regiment on September 11, 1777, at the victorious battle of Brandywine, covered itself with glory. The worst of the battle fell upon the Rangers, then about four hundred strong, and a detachment from the 71st Regiment under another Scotsman, Major Ferguson. After this period the regiment consisted of eleven companies, one of which was purely Highland, with kilts and a piper.

The regiment, on its disbanding, settled mainly in New Brunswick, and there are many descendants of the officers and men in the province.

The muster roll of 1781 includes the following list of Scotsmen, who were officers and privates:—Major Richd. Armstrong; Rev. John Agnew; Quartermaster Alex. Matheson; Surgeon’s Mate James Macaulay; Capt. John Mackay; Ensign John Ross; Sergeants, Donald Macdonald, John Macdonald, and George Sutherland; Corporals, Geo. Walker, James Gunn; Drummer Wm. Mackay. Privates, John Craigie, Alex. McKinnon, Alex. McLean, R. McDougal, Angus McDonald, Hugh McKinlay, Murdoch McLeod, Alex. McDonald, Lachlan McKinnon, Alex. McClure, Alex. Curry, Wm. Smyth, John McLachlan.

Capt. Stephenson’s Company: Capt. Francis Stephenson; Lieut. Alex. Matheson; Corporals, Michael Burns, George Miller; Privates, Carbray Burras, Wm. Chisholm, Thos. Lowe, David Oliver, John White, N. Ayres, Jos. Dawson, Jas. Sparks.

Capt. McCrea’s Company: Capt. R. McCrea; Lieut. Chas. Dunlop and Lieut. Patterson; Sergeant W. Burnett; Privates, Digory Sparks, Wm. Davidson, Michael McIntyre, James Smith, Michael McDonald, Peter Wood, John Brown, Thos. Robertson.

Capt. Murray’s Company: Capt. Jas. Murray; Ensign Edward Murray; Sergeants, Jas. McConell and Samuel Burnett; Privates, N. Huston, J. McEwen, John Burns, Wm. Kirk, Alex. Ross, Jas. Gremer, J. B. Miller.

Capt. Kerr’s Company: Capt. Jas. Kerr; Ensign Creighton McCrea; Privates, Jas. Cochrane, Patrick Read, Wm. Armstrong.

Capt. Agnew’s Company: Capt. Stair Agnew; Lieut. Hugh McKay; Ensign S. Armstrong.

Capt. McGill’s Company: Lieut. Adam Allan, Robert Richey; Privates, Patrick Allan, T. Coyne, J. Brown, Wm. Scoby.

Capt. Smith’s Company: Ensign Andrew Armstrong; Sergeant S. Stevens; Privates, Wm. Burns, John Thomson, Wm. Graham, Alex. Johnson.

Capt. Whitlock’s Company: Capt. John Whitlock; Sergeant John King; Drummer Daniel McKay; Privates, Henry Adam, Chas. Boyd, Chas. McKinley.

Capt. Shaw’s Company: Capt. Æneas Shaw; Lieut. Andrew McCan; Ensign Jos. Matheson; Drummer Black Prince; Privates, Hugh Morris, Jno. Scriver, John Smith, Jas. McFarland, Geo. Murdock, Thos. Patterson, Thos. Crawford, Jno. Hamilton.

Capt. Wallop’s Company: Lieut. St. John Dunlop.

Cavalry Hussar Troop: Lieut. Allan MacNab (father of Sir Allan MacNab); Quartermaster John McGill; Privates, Robt. Ferguson, John McConnel, Saml. Lindsay, David Lindsay, Andrew Shields, H. Cochrane, David Mitchell, John Stephens, Jas. Campbell, Geo. Killan, Duncan Campbell, Jno. Munro.

Capt. Shanks’ Troop: Lieut. Geo. Spencer; Privates, Angus McIntyre, N. Gladstone, John Houston, Jas. Johnston, Jos. Mitchell, F. Miller, Archd. McKinley, Jno. Clark.

Capt. Saunders’ Troop: Corporal John Haney; Privates, R. Brown, Jas. Campbell, J. Inglis, J. Sparks, J. Blair.

Capt. Sutherland’s Troop: Cornet B. Thompson; Quartermaster Wm. McLachlin.

At the settlement of the regiment in Nova Scotia at the peace in 1783, the return of the Rangers totalled 575. They were disbanded at St. John on October 13, 1783, and settled largely in York County, the parish of Queensbury being named after the regiment, and formed the largest body of military Loyalists that settled in the Maritime Provinces.

Of the officers, Major James Wemyss was afterwards Lieut.-Col. of the 63rd Regiment. In 1819 he petitioned the Prince Regent from New York for assistance. He was then in his old age, and said he had hopes to end his life in Scotland, his native land. But he suffered a loss of property, and at the time of the petition was in indigent circumstances. He was of the noted Scottish family of whom the Earl of Wemyss is the head. Capt. Arthur Ross was killed in the West Indies. Capt. Michael Armstrong saw a great deal of service. Simcoe recommended him. He went with the regiment to New Brunswick, where he received a large grant of land at the mouth of the Nacawick. He became a magistrate, and was afterwards Lieut.-Colonel of the Militia, but finally rose to be Lieut.-General in the British Army. He died at Fredericton in 1817. The Rev. John Agnew was of an old family in Wigtonshire, of which shire he was a native. He became Rector of Suffolk, Virginia. He settled in New Brunswick, and became a member of the House of Assembly. He died in 1812, aged eighty-five. Capt. James Kerr was born in Dumfries, was in New York at the time of the Revolution. He raised a part of a company of the Rangers. He returned to Scotland, but later settled in Nova Scotia at Parrsboro. He died at Amherst on June 6, 1830, in his seventy-sixth year. He was a Colonel of the Militia, and had several sons: Thomas, an ensign in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, was killed at the battle of Frenchtown; James died in the Navy on board the Royal William; another son, John, became a wealthy merchant of St. John, New Brunswick; and another, Joseph, an extensive mill-owner at Wallace, Nova Scotia.

Capt. John McGill was a native of Scotland. He went to St. John at the peace, and had lands there; but he moved to Upper Canada, and became a member of the Legislative Council.

Capt. Stair Agnew, son of the chaplain, followed the war, and being captured, was imprisoned at St. Malo, in France, until the peace. He settled in York County, New Brunswick; was a member of the House of Assembly for thirty years, and a judge of the Court of Common Pleas for York County. Capt. Jas. Murray drew land in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, close to Capt. Kerr, but did not remain there. Capt. John Whitlock settled in Queen’s County, was colonel of Militia and a Justice of the Peace. Capt. John Mackay, a native of Scotland, settled in York County, where he died in 1822. Lieut. Allan MacNab settled in Upper Canada. Ensign Hugh Mackay, settled at St. George, New Brunswick, and was elected a member of the Assembly during thirty years. He was a colonel of Militia and Senior Judge of Common Pleas for Charlotte County. He died in 1843, aged ninety-seven. Adam Allan settled in New Brunswick in York County, and became lieutenant in the King’s New Brunswick Regiment.

From many sources there was a continual influx of Scottish peoples, until in the year 1843 the census showed about 30,000 persons of that descent in the province. Many of them were, as is shown, of United Empire Loyalist or military ancestry. Many soldiers of the famous Black Watch Regiment, or 42nd Highlanders, settled on the St. John close to Fredericton. The towns of Bathurst and Dalhousie on the Bay of Chaleurs were also largely of Scottish origin.

The following list of Scottish Presbyterian families in New Brunswick in the year 1843 may be of interest in this connection: St. John City, 300 to 400 families; Kingston, 100 families; Parish of St. James, Charlotte County, 150 families; St. Andrews, Charlotte County, 150 families; Digdequash, 100 families; Magaguavedick, 100 families; Sudbury County, 150 families.

There were also many settlers of Scottish origin at Nashwack, in York County, at Fredericton, Newcastle, Chatham, Richibucto, Restigouche, Dorchester, Norton, and Woodstock. It must not be forgotten that many of these Scotsmen were of Ulster-Scottish origin—as a large number of Ulster Scotsmen came into the country. A noted Ulster Scotsman was the late Senator Wark, of New Brunswick, who was sitting as a Senator of the Dominion at Ottawa only a few years ago, in his one hundred and first year—and still having all his faculties. He died a year later aged one hundred and two. There is a fine portrait of the old Senator, aged one hundred and one, painted by a leading Canadian artist, which is now hanging in the gallery of the Senate at Ottawa. It may be interesting to know that the portraits of almost all of the Speakers of the Senate or Upper House at Ottawa that are not Frenchmen are those of Scotsmen. The names are: Ross, Miller, McPherson, MacNab, Allan, Sir William Campbell, and Sir Alexander Campbell.

Some notable Scotsmen in early New Brunswick are well worth chronicling. Many of the clans and families were represented. Daniel Grant, who settled at the purely Scottish colony of St. Andrews, was from Golspie in Sutherlandshire, where Dunrobin Castle stands. He died in 1834, aged eighty-two. The family of Gray, Scottish United Empire Loyalists, numbered thirteen, children of Joseph Gray, who settled at Halifax. A brother William became a magistrate in King’s County, New Brunswick, and died in 1824, aged ninety-six. The Scottish settlements in New Brunswick date from the very earliest period, that of Sir William Alexander’s settlement on the St. John River. While the present population is not as distinctly Scottish as that of Nova Scotia, there are many people of that and Ulster-Scottish blood in the province, and no chronicle of this province can be perfect without reference to the influence and personality of the Scotsman.

Further mention of Scotsmen in New Brunswick will be found in the chapter on Scottish societies.

THE SCOTSMAN IN QUEBEC

It is not generally known that from the very earliest period of the history of the Province of Quebec the Scottish race have been in some manner connected with its settlement and development.

Every Canadian of Scottish extraction should be proud of the fact that the very vessel which sailed up the St. Lawrence, and from the arrival of which was to date the foundation of French Canada, was steered by a Scotsman, the now noted Abraham Martin, dit ecossais, whose Christian name is immortalised in connection with the famous heights along with the memories of Wolfe and Montcalm.

The fact that the Scottish sailor was the pilot of the Don de Dieu is merely one more instance of the world-wide genius of the Scotsman as a master-man in all ages and among all lands and peoples.

That he received the lands where the battle was afterward fought as a reward for his skill and labour is also evidence of the Scotsman’s gift in acquisition the world over.

The sons of the land of the heather had to penetrate everywhere in their restless adventuring, and even French Canada could not escape the almost universal experience. In truth it has seemed that, the world over, wherever practical skill, sagacity, and hard work were needed, a Scotsman has ever been found in the forefront, ready to essay the difficult task, and to achieve the seemingly impossible undertaking.

It is, however, a strange picture to contemplate, this presence of the Scotsman, Abraham Martin, on this pioneer vessel of New France. This adventure to Canada was the undertaking of a French people; a great French discoverer was the leader of the expedition; the Don de Dieu was a French ship sailing from a French port to found a French province in the wilds of the New World, under the mandate and prestige of a French monarch; and yet as the brave little vessel forged her way past the gloomy and forbidding entrance and sailed up that vast lonely gulf into the great, silent, eld-haunted river it was the hand of that lonely, self-contained, dour Scotsman who guided the wheel; and it was his indomitable will that would not be defeated, and his unerring brain that marked the latitude and longitude, and guided, by the compass or the stars of heaven, the first Canadian vessel into her virgin port.

How true a prophecy was this of the future of the vast region which lay beyond that narrow river gateway, wherein many notable Scotsmen, chief among whom were Macdonald and Strathcona, were to control, during a remarkable century of our own history, the direction and development of its great destinies. Indeed, this picture of the pilot Abraham Martin is but one of many examples in Canadian history of the energy, endurance, and daring of that remarkable people the iron-souled children of famous Northern Britain, who had then, and have had ever since, their hands on the wheel-spokes of all great ventures of the modern world.

Sir James McPherson Lemoine, the noted Quebec historian and essayist, himself a Scotsman in descent, makes, in his “Scot in New France,” a suggestive remark to the effect that Master Abraham, the Scotsman, may have experienced but a mild regret at seeing a new Governor of Scottish descent, Louis Kirke, the Calvinist, hoist his standard on the bastion of Fort St. Louis, which had just been evacuated by Champlain.

Another significant picture is given by Lemoine; he writes: “The first British Governor of Quebec, a Scotsman, General James Murray, as it were, took loyally and bravely the keys of the city gates from the last French Commandant of the place, Major de Ramezay, a Ramsay of Scottish ancestry.”

He also hints, as others have done, that some of Cartier’s sailors were Scotsmen, and he suggests that Michel Herue was no other than a Scotsman, Michael Harvey.

A very interesting and remarkable work is that of the French savant, Francisque Michel, entitled “The Scot in France.”

It shows that for centuries there was a close connection between Scotland and France, and that since the year 1400, when Scotsmen landed by thousands in France to fight the English, many of that nation have continually settled in the country, and he cites many names of noted families showing plainly a Scottish origin, such as Sichelant (Sutherland), Coninglant (Cunningham), Dromont (Drummond). For centuries the Scottish Ramsays had settled in France; De Ramezay’s father was for twenty years Governor of Montreal. Later, under British rule, another Ramsay, the Earl of Dalhousie, was to represent his monarch at the Castle of St. Louis.

In 1745, when the Scottish Highlanders had made a vain and last attempt to restore the Jacobite Prince to the British throne, France was indifferent; and it is significant that many of the Fraser Highlanders who stormed and took Quebec under Wolfe so shortly afterwards had been strong Jacobites and followed Prince Charles in 1745. It has been suggested that the kilted scalers of the Heights of Abraham, were only too eager to avenge on her chief colony what they considered as France’s bad faith with the Jacobite cause.

Those hardy mountaineers, who thought nothing of exposure to frost and cold, whose diet and dress and manner of life inured them to all hardships, became ideal soldiers and afterwards splendid settlers, when once they had become accustomed to the necessities and habits of a pioneer colony.

The Highland garb they wore by choice in their regiments and out of them; and even an Act of Parliament failed to do away with this most picturesque of all costumes civil or military.

In 1780, it will be remembered, the soldiers of the 42nd and 71st Highlanders mutinied when ordered to wear the Lowland military dress, and in the end they recovered their rights to wear their ancient dress; so that to-day among the finest British regiments, both Regular and Militia, are the kilted corps of the Highlanders.

History shows that as soon after Culloden as 1759, it was Fraser’s kilted Highlanders who stormed and captured Quebec, and planted the British flag on the ramparts.

The Master of Lovat had been a Jacobite, and his father, the noted Lord Lovat, was one of the two last Scottish lords beheaded at the Tower in London, paying the penalty of treason in the Jacobite cause. The young Master, who, but for his father’s attainder, would have been Lord Lovat, commenced early to evince his loyalty to the House of Brunswick in gratitude for the pardon granted to him; and seeing, as so many soon did, the rank folly of the late rising and the great injury which it had caused to the flower of Scotland’s clans, he turned his attention to the purpose of using the splendid fighting stock of the Highlands in the cause of Britain rather than against her. His estate had been lost, his wealth gone, and he a suspected man; all he had left was the hereditary attachment of his clan to their chief. In spite of all this, he went to work to raise a Highland regiment, and in the space of a few weeks had recruited fully 800 men, who were ready to fight anywhere under his leadership.

The Cadet gentlemen of his clan and other officers and neighbouring gentlemen added 700 more; and the result was the famous Fraser Highlanders. They wore the full Highland dress, with musket and broadsword, dirk and pouch.

The list of the officers of the Fraser Highlanders, whose commissions are dated January 5, 1759, were:—

Lieutenant-Colonel Commandant: Hon. Simon Fraser.

Majors: James Clophane; John Campbell, of Dunoon, afterwards commanding the Campbell Highlanders in Germany.

Captains: John McPherson, brother of Clunie; John Campbell, of Ballimore; Simon Fraser, of Inverlochy, killed on the Heights of Abraham, 1795; Donald Macdonald, brother of Clanronald, killed at Sillery, 1760; John Macdonald, of Lochgarry, afterwards Colonel of the 76th or Macdonald’s Regt.; Alexander Cameron, of Dungallon; Thomas Ross, of Culrossie; Alexander Fraser, of Culduthel; Sir Henry Seton, of Abercorn, Bart.; James Fraser, of Belladrum; Simon Fraser. Capt. Lunn died a general in 1812.

Lieutenants: Alex McLeod; Hugh Cameron; Ronald Macdonald, of Keppoch; Charles Macdonald, of Glengarry, killed at St. John; Roderick McNeill, of Barra, killed on the Heights of Abraham; Wm. Macdonald; Archibald Campbell, son of Glenlyon; John Fraser, of Balnain; Hector Macdonald, brother of Boisdale, killed 1759; Allan Stewart, son of Innernaheil; John Fraser; Alexander Macdonald, son of Boisdale, killed on the Heights of Abraham; Alexander Fraser, killed at Louisburg; Alexander Campbell, of Aross; John Douglas; John Nairn; Arthur Rose, of the family of Kilravock; Alexander Fraser; John Macdonald, of Leeks, died at Berwick, 1818; Cosmo Gordon, killed at Sillery, 1760; David Baillie, killed at Louisburg; Charles Stewart, son of Col. John Roy Stewart; Ewen Cameron, of the family of Glenevis; Allan Cameron; John Cuthbert, killed at Louisburg; Simon Fraser; Archibald McAlister, of the family of Loup; James Murray, killed at Louisburg; Donald Cameron, son of Fassifern, died on half-pay, 1817.

Ensigns: John Chisholm; Malcolm Fraser, of Errogie; Simon Fraser; James Mackay; Malcolm Fraser, afterwards Capt. of the 84th Regt. Royal Emigrants; Donald McNeill; Henry Munro; Hugh Fraser, afterwards Capt. 84th Regt.; Alexander Gregorson, Ardtornish; James Henderson; Robert Menzies; John Campbell.

Chaplain: The Reverend Robert Macpherson.

Adjutant: Hugh Fraser.

Quartermaster: John Fraser.

Surgeon: John McLean.

The Fraser Regiment comprised thirteen companies, numbering in all 1,460 men, who upheld the military honour and reputation of the Scottish race.

A host of men of the Fraser name throughout Quebec and other parts of Canada trace their descent back to this famous regiment. Likewise do numerous Macdonalds, Campbells, Rosses, Stewarts, Murrays, McPhersons, Camerons, McKenzies, and Munroes, who are now Canadians of several generations.

The regiment was disbanded in 1764. But in 1775, when the call to arms to defend the country for the King went forth, none were more eager to respond than the Fraser Highlanders who were settled in Canada; and out of them, and other loyal Highlanders from the St. Lawrence to Newfoundland, was raised the 84th or Royal Emigrants, spoken of elsewhere in this work. These became the garrison of Quebec during that awful winter of siege when they held Canada for the Empire.

The following extracts are from the manuscript journal of Col. Malcolm Fraser, then lieutenant of the 78th Regiment of Fraser’s Highlanders, relating to the operations before Quebec in 1759. Colonel Fraser died in 1815 at the age of eighty-two:—

Thus writes this gallant Scottish officer in his journal, and how true were his words as to the importance of this battle our history has since shown. The most significant fact, however, for the purposes of this work, was that this history-making battle was fought and won, as this journal shows and as all history acknowledges, largely by Scotsmen.

But though the day was won, the French, a gallant foe, were not yet conquered; and we learn more of what happened in Col. Fraser’s journal. He continues:—

Col. Fraser does not bear out Lemoine regarding the kilts and the severe climate. He says:—

These extracts afford some idea of the prominence of Scotsmen in the memorable battle and siege.

Another vivid picture is possible fifteen years later, when the 84th or Highland Emigrant Regiment defended Quebec from the Americans.

During all that terrible time, in the face of fearful odds, Col. McLean, the head of the regiment, proved himself to be a fine type of Scottish commander. With traitors, disease, and famine to contend with, and the whole province outside of the walls of Quebec in the hands of the American Army, the Governor, Guy Carleton, with his brave officers, McLean, McKenzie, and Hamilton, and others equally brave, withstood the foe and kept the province for Britain.

For these important services the officers and men received grants of land in the province. Major Nairn received the seigniory of Murray’s Bay and Lieut. Malcolm that of Mount Murray. The men of their companies settled about them, and one of the noted Scottish colonies in Quebec Province was formed.

In that locality the names of McLean, McNeill, and other clan names connected with the famous 78th Regiment are to be found. But the mass of this noted fighting stock has been so absorbed in the French population that it is doubtful how much of Scottish stock is not now animating the present-day French Canadian. They settled all over the province; and in the year 1880 the then known descendants numbered fully three thousand.

But there are other Scottish settlements in Quebec, besides the great scattered stock, which has come in from time to time during the nineteenth century. Among these, Metis was founded in the year 1823 by Mr. McNider, of Quebec: and there are many Scotsmen of good standing and means settled in the Baie des Chaleurs district.

These are neither of United Empire Loyalist origin nor descended from the Fraser Highlanders.

Of these, Lemoine mentions William McPherson, who was for years Mayor of Port Daniel. Lemoine himself was grandson of another McPherson, a noted United Empire Loyalist, who was born in Inverness, Scotland, in 1752. With this family there had settled, about the year 1790, a numerous colony of Kennedys, Arnetts, Morrisons, and other Scottish and United Empire Loyalist families. In addition to these settlements, all through the province will be found intermarriages, with the best French families, of Scottish officers of the different regiments, as is instanced by such families as those of Stuart, Fraser, McPherson, and Campbell. The present Baron de Longuiel is in the male line of the great clan of Grant.

It will be impossible to deal with all the Scotsmen in the province since its foundation. But the Scottish element in the cities of Quebec and Montreal will be of interest to readers of this work, and much of this will be referred to in other chapters later on. In this connection, however, the religious element in the life of the province, which will be examined later, is important, as the Scotsman is nothing if not religious. In the year 1802 a memorial to King George the Third was signed at Quebec city by leading Scotsmen asking for a site for a Presbyterian church. It is dated October 5th. The list of names which follows is representative of the business and professional men of the day: Alexander Sparks (Minister); Jas. Thompson, jun.; Fred Stuart; Jno. Greenshields; Chas. G. Stewart; Jas. Sinclair; Jno. Urquhart; Wm. Morrin; Jno. Eifland; Jno. Barlie; Geo. McGregor; Wm. Holmes; James Ward; Jno. Purss; J. Brydon; Jno. Fraser; James Somerville; J. A. Thompson; Wm. Hall; Wm. Thompson, jun.; D. Monro; J. Blackwood; M. Lymburner; W. Roseburg; Jno. McCord; J. G. Hanna; J. McNider; Adam Lymburner; Jno. Lynd; Peter Stuart; Wm. Grant; J. A. Todd; Jno. Mure; Jno. McLeod; Hugh Munro; Geo. Geddes; Archd. Donaldson; Sandford Hoyt; Robt. Haddon, sen.; Robt. Haddon, jun.; Alexander Hadden; Wm. Brown; Geo. Morrison; Jno. Goudie; G. Sinclair; Walter Carruthers; Wm. Petrie; Jno. Ross; Wm. McKenzie; Thos. Saul; J. Ross, jun.; Jas. Mitchell; Geo. King; Alex. Thompson; Jas. Orkney; J. Neilson; Danl. Fraser; A. Ferguson; Robt. Eglison; Robt. Cairns; Wm. A. Thompson; Wm. McWhirter; John McDonald; Jno. Auld; Jno. Shaw; Charles Hunter; Wm. Anderson; Hugh McQuarters, jun.

That the influence of the Scotsman in the intellectual life of the province was not wanting is shown by the royal charter granted to the Quebec Literary and Historical Society by William the Fourth on October 5, 1831. In the list of charter members appear the names of many prominent men of Scottish birth—such as George Earl of Dalhousie; John Caldwell; Hugh Caldwell; Archibald Campbell; Charles Campbell; John Saxton Campbell; John P. Cockburn; Andrew W. Cochrane; John Davidson; Wm. Findley; Jas. B. Forsyth; John Fraser; John Malcolm Fraser; James Hamilton; Wm. Henderson; Wm. Lyons; Fredk. Maitland; John McNider; Wm. McKee; Wm. King McCord; Rodk. McKenzie; John I. Mills; Wm. Rose; James Smillie; Hon. and Rt. Rev. Chas. James Stewart, Lord Bishop of Quebec; James Stuart; David Stuart; Andrew Stuart; Robt. Symes; Rev. Daniel Wilkie. In 1835 the corresponding secretary was George Okill Stuart.

Robert Sellar, in his history of Huntington, Chateauguay, and Beauharnois down to the year 1838, gives us a glimpse of the Scottish Settlement in that part of Quebec.

The first Scotsman whom he mentions, as in the settlements, is a Scottish United Empire Loyalist, John Fisher, who was a native of Killin, in Perthshire, Scotland. Fisher moved into Hemingford in 1800. A little earlier, in 1798, Rach Gordon, a Scottish Loyalist, at Sorel, settled on one of the first three lots in Havelock. In 1801 Andrew Gentle, of Stirlingshire, a brewer, arrived with certificates of his good character from the minister of Dunblane. He came by way of the States and brought an American wife. He settled in Hemingford. Near him settled James Gilfillan, a Highlander. About 1808 Archibald Muir, another Scotsman, was manager of the first great mill on the English River. In Franklin, Dewar, a Scottish blacksmith, established his trade in 1811.

As has been seen, Hemingford’s infant settlement had her Scotsmen. Likewise the young settlement on the Chateauguay had its representative of this indomitable race. In 1800 a Mr. Goudy came to the settlement. He was the forerunner of the great body of Scotsmen who were afterwards to settle the community. He sold his farm to a relative, William Ogilvie, who left Scotland in 1802. About 1810 John Milne, from Aberdeen, was the agent for making out deeds of the Seigniory. In 1800 John Simpson, a Scottish millwright, built a mill at Beauharnois. Opposite St. Martine there settled William Reed. Each year saw the coming in of more Scottish settlers. Alexander Hassock, from Cromarty, came in 1801, and settled in North Georgetown. He was followed by his nephew-in-law, James Wilkinson, and John Raleston, from Ayrshire, who claimed to have known Robert Burns.

At English River in 1807 settled James Wright, a shoemaker, of Cupar. Other Scottish settlers were Somerville, a miller, Andrews, Williamson, Alex. Logan, from Ross-shire, John Hervie, Neil Morrison, from Lochgilphead, Argyllshire, John Stewart, Thompson, James McClatchie, from Ayrshire; Renshaw, a schoolmaster.

In 1802 the Nephton arrived at Quebec with seven hundred Highlanders on board. They were chiefly from Glenelg, in Ross-shire. Many of them at first settled on Sir John Johnson’s property in Chambly, but finding much of the land too swampy three of their number, John Roy McLennan, John Finlayson, and Finlay McCauig, in 1812, found lands for many of them in Beauharnois. The rest went to Glengarry in Upper Canada.

Many of the officers of the Scottish regiments settled in the city of Montreal, and some of them, with other adventurous Scottish spirits, founded the North-West Trading Company, so noted in the fur trade. Others became prominent business men and financiers. These were augmented by many other Scottish emigrants, who, as time went on, made themselves masters of Canada’s trade and finance. Wherever her vast wilds were, by her lakes and rivers, in the lone North-West, there Montreal Scottish traders adventured or sent their agents, until they became the builders of financial and trading Canada. Many of the most noted of these progressive and persistent Scotsmen will be mentioned in other parts of this book. But there are to-day many distinguished representatives of the Scottish colony in Montreal. The names of a few, like the late Honourable Sir George Drummond; the Honourable A. B. Angus; Sir Montague Allen; Sir Hugh Graham; the Honourable Robert Mackay; the Honourable Jas. Meighen; and Sir William Macdonald, are among a long list of present-day Scotsmen who dominate the financial and commercial world of Canada.

THE GLENGARRY SETTLEMENTS

The Coming of the Scottish Loyalists

Unlike that of Pictou, the Glengarry settlement in Upper Canada was a great military community. It had its origin in the disbanded Scottish regiments composed largely of members of the great clan Macdonald or Macdonell, a name, as history shows, famous in Canadian as well as in British annals.

Claiming a common descent from the stock of the Lords of the Isles, the several branches of the clan spell the name differently. The Macdonells of Antrim and those of Glengarry are of the same stock as Lord Macdonald of Slate in Antrim and the late Sir John A. Macdonald.

The history of the Glengarry settlement is, in a sense, a history of the Highland regiments and of the great Jacobite wars. These Macdonells were of an undaunted stock of fighting men, who strove to the last for the Stuart cause. But since then they have been as steadfastly true to the House of Hanover, which now represents the Royal House of Stuart.

When Pitt, in 1757, started out to raise the Highland regiments, as one writer says, “this call to arms was responded to by the clans; and battalion on battalion was raised in the remotest parts of the Highlands among those who, a few years before, were devoted to, and too long had followed, the race of Stuart. Frasers, Macdonalds, Camerons, McLeans, McPhersons, and others of disaffected names and clans were enrolled.”

All the world knows how they soon, at Quebec and Aboukir, added fame to Britain. Lord Chatham, in his famous eulogy of their regiments, said: “I sought for merit wherever it could be found. It is my boast that I was the first Minister who looked for it and found it in the mountains of the North. I called it forth and drew into your service a hardy and intrepid race of men—men who, left by your jealousy, became a prey to the artifices of your enemies, and had gone nigh to have overturned the State in the war before last. These men in the last war were brought to combat on your side; they served with fidelity, as they fought with valour, and conquered for you in every part of the world.” Of these, this account has to do with those who emigrated to the Crown colonies in America, and who proved their worth and loyalty on this continent, as their brother Scots had done in other parts of the Empire and the world.

Since then the name of Macdonald has continued famous in Canada and elsewhere. One has only to mention Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir William Macdonald, John Sandfield Macdonald, Bishop Macdonell, and a host of others of this clan, in the State, the Church, the Bench, and many other walks in life in Canada, to show how one at least of the great Highland clans has made its name synonymous with the best life of this country.

The history of the Glengarry settlement is similar to that of Pictou, in that it has to be dealt with under several heads, those of the first and second and third immigrations. The first immigration was the United Loyalist one, under Sir John Johnson, from Tryon County, New York. It was on a small scale, but the second and third were great movements, the third being the coming of a whole regiment of Highland soldiers in 1802.

One of the most important of all the United Empire Loyalist settlements was that of Glengarry, which contributed during the wars more fighting men in proportion to its population than any other portion of the province.

But to explain its settlement we must go back to the Old Land and the old days, as no people or generation lives merely in the present. We are a part and parcel of the past, and are much what our forefathers made us ere we were born. To understand and explain the Scotsman in Canada we must know of the Scotsman in the Old World. And as he was inspired there, so his children and children’s children will be led here.

RT. HON. SIR JOHN ALEXANDER MACDONALD, K.C.B.

Among the leading Jacobites were the sept of the Macdonald clan, the Macdonells of Glengarry. They had followed Montrose and Claverhouse. In 1715 they joined the Earl of Mar, and in 1745 were staunch adherents of Prince Charles Edward. They met defeat, and paid the penalty like men.

After the disarming Acts and the abolition of the feudal system, thousands of Highlanders were forced to emigrate.

Among these were several gentlemen of the clan Macdonell of the Glengarry branch—Aberchalder, Leek, Collachie, and Scothouse, so designated from their several estates. These, collecting a number of their people together, emigrated to America, and settled on tracts of land in what was then called Tryon County, in the beautiful valley of the Mohawk in the Province of New York.

They had hoped, in crossing the ocean, to live in peace and make up for the disasters of fortune which the Jacobite wars had helped to cause in the Old World.

But their fate was destined to be otherwise; and it was not long ere they had to take up arms for George the Third, as they had for the Stuart cause. And once more for an ideal—the monarchy—they forsook all, and went forth into the northern Canadian wilderness to establish the foundation of a new Empire on this continent.

The man who was to lead them was Sir John Johnson, son of the famous Sir William Johnson, the friend and ally of the Redman. Sir William was from Ireland, and descended from a branch of the famous Lowland Scottish family of Johnson of the borders.

When the rebellion broke out in 1775 Sir John armed his retainers for the King, and his Scottish allies, who were Roman Catholics, took the side of their monarch against the rebels. It was not long before the Highlanders were denounced by the Continentals as Tories, and were commanded to deliver up their arms. This they appeared to do, but an attempt was made to seize Sir John Johnson and his friends and allies, the Highlanders. But, being warned in time, he escaped and made his way, after a hard march, to Canada, accompanied by many of his friends and associates, chief among whom were the Macdonnells and other Highland gentlemen and their clansmen who had followed his fortunes and had stood for the Empire.

On their arrival, Sir Guy Carleton issued a commission to Johnson to raise a fencible regiment from among the two hundred followers who had accompanied him from New York. This regiment was called “The King’s Royal Regiment of New York.” Among others the Highland gentlemen from Tryon County received commissions, and their men enlisted. The following is a list of the Scottish officers in this regiment, in Butler’s Rangers, and in the 84th or Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment:—

Other Scottish gentlemen who held commissions in the King’s Royal Regiment of New York were:—

As will be seen by these lists, the Macdonells, who are in a list by themselves, are in the great majority.

The Royal Highland Emigrant Regiment, or the old 84th, was raised from the Highland emigrants then arriving in Canada, and Lieut.-Col. Allan McLean, of the 104th Regiment, was Commandant of the First Battalion, and Captain John Small was Commandant of the Second Battalion, raised from the discharged soldiers settled in Nova Scotia, who afterwards re-settled there.

A large proportion of the King’s Royal Regiment of New York and the Royal Emigrants were of the Scottish stock.

The First Battalion of the Royal Emigrants settled in Canada. The following is a list of its officers in 1778:—

In 1778 this regiment was numbered as the 84th.

Though many of the United Empire Loyalists were of Scottish stock, yet Glengarry must be considered as the great centre of the Scottish Loyalists. The Empire Lists, which are only partially complete, show that the name Macdonell, or Macdonald, outranks in the numbers of its representatives any other United Empire name in the Province of Upper Canada. There were on the Lists the representatives of almost every Highland clan and Scottish name. Then there were many of the Highlanders who never registered their names. Bishop Macdonell, who came to Canada more than twenty years after the Loyalists, wrote that he had not been long in the province before he discovered that few or none among the earliest settlers had legal tenure of their properties, and it took him months’ of hard labour to secure for the Highland emigrants of Stormont and Glengarry proper deeds for their lands.

Lord Dorchester’s original United Empire List, which was only the nucleus of the Royalist immigration into Upper Canada, showed nearly six hundred Scottish names, of which 84 were Macdonells, 35 Grants, 28 Campbells, 27 Frasers, and 25 Camerons.

Of these Scottish Celtic settlers in early Canada, their enemies have striven to say that they had no mental qualifications to rank them with the early settlers of Massachussets, Virginia, Maryland, and Connecticut; that long subjection to their Highland chiefs had paralysed those nobler qualities which make men desire freedom and progress. But their manner of conquering nature in their new home during the earlier years of pioneer life, the spirit they showed in repelling the foe in 1812 and 1837, give the lie to such a false estimate of the Glengarry, Stormont, and other Scottish settlers of Canada.

In the grave crisis of the summer of 1812, when the gallant Brock stood alone, when cowards and traitors had combined to make the holding of the young province for Britain almost impossible, who was it who stood loyally, as Brock himself said, but his loyal Glengarry men? And it was a Macdonell of the clan who died on the same field of glory while rallying his forces at the untimely death of his great general.

But they have evinced a host of other qualifications, mentally, morally, and physically, to show them to be the equal, if not the superior, of the members of any other community which ever settled on this continent. Almost supreme as has been the Scot in many parts of the great Republic to the South, it seems that there is somewhat in the very climate and austere seasons and natural environment of Canada that brings out the Scottish nature, as in his own dear homeland, at its very best, and blossoms, as nowhere else outside of the northern isle, the very flower of the Scottish personality. Where else has there developed a Lord Strathcona, a Sir John Alexander Macdonald, a Sandfield Macdonald, a Lyon McKenzie, an Oliver Mowat, a Principal Grant, a Sir William Dawson, a Bishop Strachan, a Bishop Macdonell, or a thousand other remarkable individualities, rugged scions of the Scottish stock, but Canadians of the Canadians, because this land of ours is so much of Scotland and Scotland so much a part of us? This individuality has been both the strength and curse of the Scottish race, and it is alike the curse of the Canadians, because we are too strong as individuals in our own conceit and will not band together for any cause—save a vulgar party one—and therefore, though we still are Grits or Tories, at least in name, we have ceased to be true patriots.

The early settlement of Glengarry developed slowly. The county of Glengarry, where the settlement was made, is the most easterly county of what was old Upper Canada, now Ontario, Alexandria, the centre of the county, being about halfway between the Ottawa and the St. Lawrence Rivers, and about fifty miles from Ottawa city. The neighbouring counties are Stormont, Dundas, and Prescott, where many of the early settlers found their homes, and most of them were soldiers and United Empire Loyalists of Scottish descent.

Cornwall was the great early county town for these districts, and a famous Scottish centre in old Upper Canada. Here Bishop Strachan, then plain John Strachan, taught his famous school; and near here, at Williamstown, the Rev. John Bethune founded the first Presbyterian Church in Upper Canada. Here, during the early pioneer days, the eighteenth century wore itself out, and early in the nineteenth came the third great influx of Scotsmen, with the disbanded regiment of the Glengarrys.

The second immigration into the Glengarry community took place soon after the close of the Revolution.

The Rev. Alexander Macdonell brought out some five hundred colonists, who came chiefly from the Knokdart portion of the Glengarry estates in the Western Highlands. These Highlanders came and settled on land among their fellow-clansmen in the county of Glengarry. They sailed for America in the ship McDonald, Captain Robert Stevenson, from Greenock. She arrived in Quebec on September 7, 1786, and her reverend colonist and her 520 pioneers made their way up the St. Lawrence to the land which was to be their home.

Father Alexander Macdonald was one of the earliest Catholic missionaries, not French, in Upper Canada. He founded the parish of St. Raphael’s, the pioneer parish of Upper Canada, and died at Lachine in 1803, aged about fifty-three years, after a long and faithful pastorate.

Mr. Macdonald, of Greenfield, who emigrated in 1792, also brought out emigrants who were of his clan. He was brother-in-law of Col. John Macdonald, the first Speaker of the Upper Canadian Assembly.

The county now became noted as a Scottish colony, and emigrants were attracted to it from all parts of Scotland; and among them came McPhersons from Badenoch and Camerons from Lochiel’s country, who settled in Lancaster and Lochiel.

There is also a tradition that a Capt. Alexander McLeod, of the family of Moule, in 1793 chartered a vessel and brought from Glenelg in Scotland forty families, principally of McLeods, McIntoshes, McGillivrays, and McCuaigs. They arrived in Glengarry in 1794, and settled in the north of the county.

These were the principal Scottish immigrations into these settlements prior to the coming of the regiment in 1802.

THE GLENGARRY SETTLEMENTS

The Coming of the Fencible Regiment from Scotland

Over one hundred and sixty years after Sir William Alexander sent his first shipload of Scottish colonists across the Atlantic, there laboured on the borders of the counties of Perth and Inverness in the Highland mountains of Scotland a devoted missionary of the old Celtic blood, whose name was Macdonell. He was of the same race as the Earl of Stirling, those descendants of the renowned Somerled. He was a practical man as well as a dreamer, and was, no doubt, a poet at heart as all his race are. But unlike Alexander—the poet, courtier, colonist, and psalm-writer—this man was a priest of the Roman Church, whose chief interest was the spiritual welfare of that great mass of Catholic Celts who, since the decay of the clan system, were out of place in the Highlands, which were then being turned into sheep-walks and agricultural experiments on a large scale.

Of this great man I will speak at length later. But here his work as a successful coloniser of one of the most important Canadian communities will alone be dealt with. Affected by the distress of his countrymen, who, as he said, had been driven out of their glens to turn the latter into sheep-walks, he was debating what to do to alleviate their condition, when he heard of an emigrant ship which, sailing from Barra, had been wrecked and had put into Greenock, leaving her passengers in a destitute and helpless condition. He at once went to Glasgow in the spring of 1792, and by interest with the University authorities and merchants, strove to get the evicted farmers and shipwrecked people into the local manufactories. For this vocation, however, these poor people were ill-fitted both by inclination, ability, and knowledge. They preferred the wild life of the open, and made splendid soldiers and deer-stalkers. Then they spoke only the Gaelic and were Catholics in religion, so that a double barrier separated them from the factory people of Lowland English-speaking Protestant Glasgow. But the College professors and merchants appreciated his efforts, and in spite of all the difficulties enumerated, in two months he had procured employment for fully six hundred Highlanders.

The faithful and energetic priest became the spiritual father of these people, and for a couple of years all went well, though his followers failed to learn English. But soon came the troubles of the French Revolution, and war between England and France and the subsequent decline of trade and labour; and amid the general misery the poor Highlanders lost their employment.

Again the ardent missionary met the crisis. He conceived the daring idea of embodying his idle labourers into a Catholic Corps in His Majesty’s service, and setting to work he soon received the Royal assent, and by June, 1795, had embodied the Glengarry Fencible Regiment, the first Catholic Corps raised since the Reformation.

Becoming chaplain of the regiment, with his chief, Macdonell of Glengarry, as colonel, he got the regiment to offer their services where they might be wanted. At first starting in Guernsey, they soon went to Ireland, where they, with the Reay Fencibles, put down the Rebellion of 1798.

Their faithful chaplain was their constant attendant down to the year 1802, when all the Scottish Fencibles were disbanded.

In 1798 there were twenty-six Scottish regiments in the British Army, and the Glengarrys were, no doubt, among the finest of that splendid group of fighting men who made the British soldiers dreaded all over the world. The following list of the officers of the Glengarrys is found in the British Army List of 1798:—

Could a regiment be any more thoroughly Scottish and Highland than this?

On the disbanding of the Fencibles, the Glengarrys found themselves in as desperate a position as ever. But their resolute chaplain conceived the idea of their emigrating to Canada, and appealed to the British Government for assistance to enable them to do so. The Government, while regretting the great flow of emigrants from Scotland, offered to bear a colony of the regiment to Trinidad. Thanking the minister for his offer, the chaplain replied that his people preferred to go to Upper Canada where their friends were already settled and doing well. The result was that Mr. Addington, the Premier, procured an order with the Sign Manual to the Lieut.-Governor of Upper Canada to grant two hundred acres of land to every one of the Highlanders who should arrive in the province.

This wholesale emigration alarmed the Scottish landlords of the Western Highlands, and an effort was made to induce the Highlanders to stay at home. They were even offered the waste lands of Cornwall.

At this juncture, however, as in the case of Sir William Alexander, a member of the great rival clan Campbell came to the Reverend Mr. Macdonell’s assistance in the person of Major Archibald Campbell, who proposed a plan of making a complete military organisation of all the Scottish Fencible regiments which were disbanded, and of sending them all to Upper Canada and so prevent them going to the United States. This was a feasible and wise scheme, could it have been carried out, but just then Addington resigned, Pitt returned to office, and the war was renewed with France under Napoleon, who was just then rising in power, so the greater part of the Fencibles remained at home or drifted into other units of the army.

At this time also strict regulations were enforced as to vessels carrying emigrants abroad, owing to cruelties said to be practised by owners of vessels in that business. The result of these regulations was that an embargo was laid on all emigrant ships in British harbours. By good fortune the Glengarrys had, the most of them, got away ere this was enforced, and set sail for the New Scotland across the water.

Curiously, at this time their chaplain, who had stayed behind in London to complete his business, was approached by another noted Scottish colonist in Canada, Lord Selkirk, whose operations will be dealt with by Dr. Bryce in another volume of this work. Lord Selkirk proposed to join with Macdonell in his colonisation scheme, but announced that his idea was to settle the country between Lakes Huron and Superior with Highlanders, the climate there being similar to that in Scotland and the soil richer and more productive. This offer was refused because the location chosen was beyond the jurisdiction of the Government of Upper Canada, and too remote from other settlements.

The Fencibles arrived in Upper Canada and received their lands according to the despatch from Lord Hobart, Secretary of State for the Colonies, to Lieut.-Governor Hunter, dated March 1, 1803. By this order twelve hundred acres were granted to Mr. Macdonell, and two hundred acres to every family he introduced into the colony.

Of other Scottish immigrations into Glengarry since that date, those of Locheil and the McLeods have been mentioned.

The year 1803 saw other emigrations of Scotsmen, and in the ships that carried the Glengarry Fencibles were other Scottish immigrants into Canada, many of them from Kintail and Glenelg. One old resident of the county, Murdoch McLennan, had released a valuable farm in Kintail rather than separate from his kinsmen and friends who were emigrating. He said that there were eleven hundred persons on the ship, and that they were four months crossing in stormy and wintry weather, especially off Labrador.

The county was divided into settlements: Breadalbane of the Campbells and others of North Argyllshire who settled there; Dunvegan, named by the McLeods, a large number of whom settled in that locality; Strathglas suggests the Chisholms; and Uist and Knokdart certain septs of the Macdonalds.

Stormont, the adjacent county, was also settled originally by Scottish United Empire Loyalists, and St. Andrews in that county is a suggestive name.

The early settlers in Glengarry came chiefly from the neighbourhood of the Mohawk River in New York. They selected their land on the shores of the St. Lawrence and Lake St. Francis, and on the borders of the river Raisin as far inland as Williamstown and Martintown. They were joined in 1784 by officers and privates of the 84th Regiment, and of that of Sir William Johnston, from whose Christian name the former place acquired its name.

From the very first the greater proportion of the people were Scottish folk, most of whom had come to the colony in 1783. Such names as those of Grant, Rose, McLean, Murchison, and Bethune are witness to this fact.

Among the officers who settled in the township of Lancaster were Col. Sutherland and Mr. Gunn. In 1786 Capt. John Hay, from Glenbrae in Aberdeenshire, who had come out to Prince Edward Island in 1773 and afterwards joined the 84th Regiment, settled on the border of the river Raisin. His place was named Glen of Hay (Gaelic, Gleana-feair).

Among others who settled in Lancaster were the McPhersons from Badenoch. Kenneth, the son of John, was for over thirty years postmaster and general merchant at Lancaster village. His father was John McPherson, who came out and took up lands. Kenneth came out in 1822 as a follower of Cameron of Thora. One of the McPherson family named Murdoch died in his 107th year.

In the Scottish emigration of 1802 there came out Mr. Donald Fraser, who became a merchant at Williamstown. He bought Sir John Johnson’s place at Point du lac, and renamed it Fraser’s Point. His son, Lieut.-Col. Alexander Fraser, of the Glengarry Militia, was living and over eighty years of age in 1887.

A number of retired officials of the Hudson’s Bay Company settled in Glengarry. Among them were the Hon. John McGillivray, whose eldest son, Neil, became heir to the chiefship of that clan and to the ancestral estate in Scotland; Duncan Cameron, father of the late Sir Roderick Cameron, of New York city; Mr. John McDonald, who resided at Gray’s Creek; and Mr. Hugh McGillis, of Williamstown.

This is the story of this famous old Canadian community whose history is linked with the martial valour and prowess of 1812. Many of the descendants of the rugged old Highland settlers have drifted west or into other parts of Ontario. But whenever the Scotsman in Canada is spoken of, the Glengarry settlements have a foremost place in the memory and hearts of our people.

THE PERTH SETTLEMENT

“Among all the provinces in Scotland,” says Sir Walter Scott, “the most fertile and the most beautiful is the county of Perth.” If this cannot be said of Perth in Ontario, at least it can be asserted that it has much beauty and fertility of soil and is a pleasant home for Scotsmen in the New World. This was one of the Canadian settlements of purely Scottish and military origin. The names of the old town and of the river on which it is founded at once suggest the famed city and stream of Perth and Tay in Scotland. The terrible depression in trade and manufactures in the Old Land that followed the close of the Napoleonic wars produced a large class of people who were out of employment; and suffering and privation began to be felt in different parts of Britain and, among other places, in certain districts of Southern Scotland. Realising the necessity of some relief from this condition, the British Government deemed that it would be wise to send many of the superfluous population to Upper Canada, and not only relieve the Old Land of her burden, but also fill the young colony with loyal subjects of the Crown. As a result of this idea, late in May, 1815, three transports sailed from Greenock in Scotland, that famed port of departure for emigrants, loaded with Scottish families destined for Upper Canada.

These ships were the Atlas, the Baptiste Merchant, and the Dorothy. These vessels, for some strange reason, were all summer on the ocean, and did not reach Quebec until the middle of September. Arriving too late to go to the new settlements that winter, the emigrants were brought up to Brockville and Prescott, and kept there in quarters until the following spring. By April 18, 1816, they were conveyed to their future home in the back townships on the Tay and Rideau, having to travel through blazed trails in the, as yet, uncleared forest. A letter of the Deputy Quartermaster-General of October 13, 1816, describes this settlement as follows:—

Meanwhile another source was to provide settlers for the new settlement. After the close of the war of 1812-14, many of the regiments which had taken part in the struggle were disbanded, and the rank and file were induced to become dwellers and landowners in the country which they had helped to defend. In the month of June following the settlement of the Scottish emigrants at Perth, three regiments—the Glengarry Fencibles, the Canadian Fencibles, and what was known as De Watteville’s Regiment—arrived at the settlement, and the town plot of Perth was laid out, a bridge was built over the Tay, and the foundation of the settlement was carried forward.

The first settlers were purely Scottish, and many of them Highlanders. A great number of the military settlers were also Scotsmen; and during 1816 many other ships, such as the Canning, the Duke of Buckingham, and the Commerce, brought hundreds of families, the majority of whom were Scotsmen and Ulster Scotsmen.

The settlement at its foundation was a military one, and under the control of the commander of the forces. The troops were used at first to build houses for the rest of the settlers and provide roads and bridges. Among many other necessaries, axes for felling the forest were given the settlers; and though they had much to contend with, they were lucky in having the care and aid of the Government during the first years of pioneer life. Clothes and rations were also served out, and everything was done to give these sturdy pioneers a favourable start in their conquest of the wilderness. There are in the archives at Ottawa lists of supplies that were furnished; and that under the heading of hardware included all sorts of articles from palliasses, blankets, billhooks, and Flanders kettles, down a long list to shingle-nails, brads, and iron wedges.

Another letter, dated Quebec, November 21, 1815, refers to the first settlement as follows:—

It is seen that those in charge were all Scotsmen.

The following statement will be of interest. It is dated Scotch Settlement, Perth, August 10, 1818 (over two years later):—

Another petition of inhabitants of Perth shows “Much regret at the removal of the Rev. Wm. Bell from the public school at this place, having the highest opinion of his abilities as a teacher, as well as of his moral and religious character.” The petition, which is a long one, is addressed to the Deputy Quartermaster-General, and is dated at the Scotch Settlement, Perth, December 27, 1820, showing that the settlement was still under military supervision. It is signed by the following fifty-five inhabitants, who are all Scotsmen:—John Alston; Jos. Taylor; A. Fraser; Wm. Mackay; J. Watson; John Adamson; Jas. McLean; Jas. Ferguson; John Campbell; N.B. Thomas; Wm. Brown; Jas. Robinson; Angus Cameron; Peter McPherson; John Ferguson; John Paterson; Robt. Smith; Chas. Jamieson; James Bows; Wm. McPherson; Jos. Barrie; Jas. Bryce; John Fletcher; Hugh Scott; Edwd. Harkness; Jas. Roberts; Jas. Scott; John McLaren; John McLeod; Austin Allan; Geo. Wilson; John Allan; Abraham Ferrier; John Ferrier; Jas. Fraser; Samuel McEachern; Jas. McCraken; Donald Gillies; Alex. Kidd; E. C. Mallock; John Hay; Alex. McDonald; Richard Jamieson; Jas. McIntosh; Francis Allen; John McNee; Duncan Cameron; Wm. McGillivray; Jas. McDonald; John Holiday; Wm. Rutherford; John McNiel; Colin Campbell.

The following petition, addressed to the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, asks for title deeds to their lands, without which they were not qualified to vote at the elections. Perth was just then set apart to elect a member to the Provincial House, and hence the request to be legally qualified as electors. The petition, which is dated at Perth, Upper Canada, March, 1820, is signed on behalf of the inhabitants of the Perth Settlement by twenty-four persons, all Scotsmen: Al. Thom, J.P.; A. McMillan, J.P.; R. Matheson; Wm. Bell; Josh. Taylor; J. Watson; Alex. Matheson; John Jackson; Josh. Holesworth; Robt. Winchworth; Thos. Cousitt; John Ferguson; W. Morris; G. H. Reade; Wm. Baily; N. B. Townes; John Alston; James Young; Wm. Matheson; H. Graham; David Bay; A. Fraser.

The officers of the Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles in 1816 were—Col. Edward Baynes; Majors Robt. McDonald and Alex. Clark; Captains R. M. Cochrane, Alex. McMillan, Wm. Campbell, W. Coates; Lieutenants Jas. Stewart, A. Leslie, Walter Kerr, Jas. McCaulay, Rodk. Matheson, Angus McDonald, Robt. Kerr, John McKay; Ensigns Jos. Frobisher, Alex. McDonell, Alex. McDonald, John Fraser, John Wright; Adjutant Wm. Blair; Surgeon Alex. Cunningham.

The Scotsmen among the officers of the Canadian Fencibles, 1816, were: Lieut.-Col. Geo. Robertson; Capt. G. R. Ferguson; Lieutenants John Johnston, Alex. Grant, J. McKenzie; Ensigns Walter Davidson, Wm. Mitchell, J. H. Kerr; Quartermaster Alex. Fraser; Surgeon T. Robertson.

The following letter from the Rev. William Bell, who has already been mentioned, will be of interest in its picture of early conditions in the settlement.

It is dated Perth, Upper Canada, October 10, 1818. He says:—

The Rev. William Bell was the youngest son of Andrew Bell, of the parish of Audrie in Scotland. He was teacher of a grammar school in Bute before entering the ministry. Of his many sons, Andrew, the eldest, was the father of Dr. Robert Bell, Chief Geologist of the Canadian Geological Survey. His fourth son, Robert Bell, was Member for North Lanark during the McKenzie régime. James, the seventh son, was the first male child born in Perth, and was for forty years Registrar of Lanark. The youngest son, Rev. Dr. George Bell, was the first student enrolled at Queen’s University, and afterwards Registrar of that institution. The only daughter married John G. Mallock, first Judge of the county of Lanark.

Another Perth family was that of Peter Campbell, who came out in 1817. He was descended from an old Highland family. Three of his sons were Presbyterian ministers, the most noted being the Rev. Dr. Robert Campbell, ex-Moderator and present Clerk of the General Assembly of Canada. Another son was Archibald, of Perth, father of Archibald M. Campbell, the Ottawa explorer and economic geologist.

Judge Mallock, of Brockville, was a brother of Judge Mallock, of Lanark.

The Hon. Roderick Matheson was paymaster of the military settlements on the Rideau. He was afterwards appointed to the Legislative Council for Upper Canada, and became one of the first Dominion Senators. One of his sons is the Honourable A. J. Matheson, Provincial Treasurer for Ontario. Another was the late Marshall Matheson, Master-in-Chancery at Ottawa.

The Honourable William Morris and Malcolm Cameron are mentioned elsewhere in this work.

Judge John Wilson fought a duel in Perth in 1833 with Robert Lyon, and killed him. Wilson gave himself up, pleaded his own cause, and was acquitted. Perth was the scene of the famous litigation in connection with the MacNab and his unfortunate settlement.

The McLaren family, the well-known lumbermen of Buckingham and Ottawa, were Perth settlers. Some noted members of this family have been the late Senator McLaren, Peter McLaren, of Perth, David McLaren, of Ottawa, and Professor McLaren, of Knox College, Toronto.

James Wilson, M.D., was a well-known practitioner of Perth. He became a noted geologist. He died in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1881.

The Honourable John Graham Haggart, late Postmaster-General and Minister of Railways and Canals, is a prominent citizen of Perth. He has represented Lanark County in many Parliaments, and is one of the veterans of the Macdonald régime still in the House of Commons. In addition to his energy and abilities as a politician and a man of business, Mr. Haggart is a fine scholar and a close student of classical literature.

Another prominent Perth family is that of Balderson, one of the oldest and most respectable in the locality. Lieut.-Col. Balderson, of Perth, and his brother, Mr. James Balderson, barrister, of Ottawa, are the present representatives of that family.

THE LANARK SETTLEMENT

During the years from 1816 to 1820, there was, as pointed out in the last chapter, much depression in the motherland owing to commercial declension, and this caused a great deal of privation among certain classes of people in the south of Scotland whose means of living depended largely upon production and manufactures.

This class of people in the Scottish counties of Lanark and Renfrew had suffered a great deal from this depression, so that many of them, despairing of eking out an existence at home, began to look abroad with that hope eternal which inspires the human breast to dream of a new life in the more promising regions of the Western world.

Having this object in view, a considerable number of families in the two counties, during 1820, banded themselves together into societies for the purpose of petitioning the Government for the power and means of emigrating to Upper Canada and for grants of land in that province. The Colonial Secretary of the day was Lord Bathurst, and to him and his Majesty’s other ministers the petitions of these societies were presented by several Members of Parliament, who were aware of the distress existing in Glasgow and the surrounding country, and of the difficulties affecting the petitioners. During the following winter much was done by philanthropists to relieve the suffering of the poor, and work was made by the magistrates of Glasgow to relieve the existing conditions.

Meanwhile the interests of the several emigrating societies were advanced by Lord Archibald Hamilton, Kirkman Findlay, Esq., and John Maxwell, Esq., Members of the Commons. The result was that grants of land were procured in Upper Canada for heads of families and individual petitioners, whose names were entered on lists sent into the Colonial Office. These grants were given on the understanding that the expense of their passage and sustenance as far as Quebec would be guaranteed by the societies.

Fully a thousand heads of families or individuals in the county of Lanark were, through local assistance, able to accept this offer; while a local subscription in Glasgow enabled those in that vicinity to do likewise. Each man received one pound, which was to be paid to the owners of the vessels as part payment of passage money. The ships which carried out these people were the Prompt and the Commerce.

Immediately after this an additional sum of £500 was raised in London to enable the remaining families in the societies, who had no means to do so, to emigrate. These were decided on by ballot, as out of 149 persons, only one-tenth of the expense could be raised. One hundred of these families were sent out in the ship Broke. Some account of the details of this emigration will be of value in showing the great difficulties undergone, and the privations endured in early emigration to Canada from the Old Land by the sturdy Scottish settlers.

On October 24, 1820, a meeting was held at the Black Bull Inn, in Glasgow, at which Lord Archibald Hamilton, Colonel Mure, Kirkman Findlay, James Oswald, Robert Dalglish, William McGavin, and Robert Brown were the gentlemen present. The following list of societies, including altogether 6,281 individuals, was laid before the meeting:—

Cambuslang and Govan, 227 persons; Kilbride, 40; Stonehouse, No. 1, 70; Stonehouse, No. 2, 89; Strathaven, 70; Wishawton, 81; Hamilton, 295; Lesmahagow, 112; Glasgow Highland and Lowland, 167; Brownfield and Anderston, 395; Glasgow Wrights, 200; Glasgow Junior Wrights, 205; North Albion, 127; Barrowfield Road, 269; Rutherglen Union, 175; Camlachie Transatlantic, 215; Rumford Streets, 115; Glasgow Loyal Agricultural Union, 118; Stockwell Street, 162; St. John’s Parish, 202; Kirkman Finlay, 158; Lanarkshire, 158; Parkhead, 145; Glasgow Union, 119; Paisley Townhead, 603; Cathcart, 100; Emigrants from Renfrewshire, not of societies, claiming means to emigrate, 188; Glasgow Canadian, 284; Abercrombie, 160; Bridgetown, 284; Bridgetown Transatlantic, 225; Mile-end, 225; Spring Bank, 139.

The agent appointed was Mr. Robert Lamond, 43, Ingram Street, Glasgow.

The Government aid to these Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, and West of Scotland emigrants was on the following terms:—

One hundred acres were assigned to every family on arrival in Canada on condition of residence and partial cultivation within a limited period. The Government were to defray expense of surveying and charge of removal of emigrants from Quebec to the place of location. The emigrants were to arrange means and pay passage to Quebec at rate of four pounds a head; that the settlers should receive at place of settlement not less than three pounds a head for every emigrant, and another advance of three pounds a head to be made six months after their arrival; all to be advanced to enable them to establish themselves in the country.

The following ships sailed carrying the Canadian emigrants to their destination in the New World.

The ship Broke sailed from Greenock, July, 1820, with 176 passengers, the greater portion of whom belonged to the Abercrombie, Transatlantic, and Bridgetown societies. They were all poor, and unable to pay their passage. They left in good spirits. A letter to the Secretary is dated on board at Greenock, July 8, 1820, thanking the Committee for the care and accommodation, and for being relieved from their miseries of years past. It is signed on behalf of the others by John McLachlan and Thomas Whitelaw.

The ship George Canning, registering 485 tons, sailed from Greenock, April 14, 1821, carrying 490 individuals, men, women, and children; and arrived in Quebec on June 1st, all well, there being only one death, that of a boy, who fell overboard. Three children were born on the voyage.

A letter dated Gourock Bay, April 14, 1821, from the representatives of the heads of families on board the George Canning, thanks the Committee who had embarked them, and also the owners of the vessel. The eleven representatives who signed in the name of the societies on board the Canning were: Wm. McEwen, John McPherson (probably father of Kenneth of Lanark), Duncan McInnis, James Braidwood, James Youll, jun., James Paul, James Borrowman, Walter Black, John Kilpatrick, Robt. McLaren, and James Aikenhead.

The ship The Earl of Buckinghamshire, Captain Johnson, sailed from Greenock on Sunday morning, April 29, 1821, with 607 passengers, old and young, of whom 287 were from Lanarkshire. She arrived at Quebec on June 15th, all well. There were seven births on the voyage, and one death from premature birth.

The Greenock Advertiser of May 2nd, describing the sailing of the vessel, said: “The emigrants, generally, have a most respectable appearance; and amongst them are various artificers, such as smiths, joiners, &c., whose labours in their respective occupations must prove peculiarly valuable to the other settlers in their agricultural operations, to which the whole purpose to devote themselves under the encouragements held out by the Government, whose bounty, we are well persuaded, has in few instances been more judiciously bestowed.”

The ship Commerce, Captain Coverdale, sailed from Greenock, May 11, 1821, with 422 individuals. She arrived at Quebec, all well, on June 20th. Two children and one woman died on board. There were no births.

The ship David, Captain Gemmell, sailed from Greenock on May 19th, carrying out 364 individuals. She was sent off in a fair wind under favourable circumstances, all on board in good spirits. The passengers were chiefly from the counties of Lanark, Dunbarton, Stirling, Clackmannan, and Linlithgow. A letter to the Secretary of the Committee on Emigration, Mr. Robert Lamond, was dated on board the ship David at Greenock, May 19, 1821.

It was written on behalf of the several societies, and thanked the Government for the several grants and other advantages conferred upon the members going to Canada, and also thanked the Emigration Committee for their exertions on their behalf, among other things for the many copies of the Bible received from the British and Foreign Bible Society. The letter was signed by five representatives: Samuel Stevenson, John Blair, David Young, George Bremner, and Archibald Paterson.

The comfort of the passengers in these ships was well provided for by the Committee. The ships themselves were thoroughly inspected, and pronounced sound and staunch, and in every way fitted for conveyance of emigrants to Canada, and the ship’s officers and men were also certified to be sober and expert seamen, and well acquainted with the navigation of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence, that most dreaded part of the voyage to Canada.

The emigrants were exhorted in the new land to “call to mind the days of old, the precept and example so beautifully exemplified in Scotia’s cottages, where the daily worship of God might have been heard in every family; . . . see,” the advice ran, “that you do likewise; and with the blessing of God on your exertions, the difficulties which may bear hard upon you for a little time, will gradually pass away like a cloud.”

The principal settlement in Upper Canada, which was the destination of these emigrants, was the Lanark settlement. It was described in 1820 by Captain W. Marshall, the superintendent of the settlement, as consisting of three townships each ten miles square, situated immediately behind the Perth settlement, and named respectively Dalhousie, Lanark, and Ramsay. These three townships were named respectively after the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, his family name Ramsay, and Lanark, the county in Scotland from whence the settlers had come. The village of Lanark, fourteen miles from Perth, contained a Government store and dwelling-house, three stores, and about a dozen other houses. It was fifty miles from Brockville on the St. Lawrence, and sixty-five from Kingston. The land was described by a settler as hilly and well watered.

There were in all forty different Scottish societies, engaged in this settlement, which actually sent out settlers. According to the original receipt of instalments of loans authorised by Earl Bathurst, and paid by Colonel William Marshall, the agent, there were six hundred and five heads of families who as settlers received these loans in three instalments, which were paid during 1820, 1821, and 1822. Each Preses, who represented the members of a society, had to sign his name and to witness each member sign his. The names of the Representatives, or Preses, are as follows:—

Lord Dalhousie, Governor-General, in a letter to the Duke of Hamilton, dated Quebec, January 23, 1821, says that he has received during the past summer nearly 1,200 emigrants from Lanarkshire, and has placed them in a special district named after their old home shire, Lanark. He says that they are likely to prosper as they are willing and have a good example of prosperity around them. He adds that one of the earliest wants, aid to build a church and schoolhouse, he cannot grant, but hopes that the Duke, or Lord Archibald Hamilton, may be able to raise £200 or £300 in Lanarkshire for the purpose. The money asked for was, as a result, raised and forwarded.

THE MACNAB SETTLEMENT

One of the most interesting and instructive episodes in the history of Scottish settlements in Canada is that of the founding of the township of MacNab by the last laird or chief of that Ilk.

This settlement, like that of Col. Talbot, was the result of the ambition, effort, and ideal of one man, and has about it, moreover, a suggestion of what some have called the feudal system of founding society in the New World. This aspect has been somewhat exaggerated by writers who had but a superficial idea of the real facts concerning the matter. It is true that MacNab’s effort failed, so far as his ambition aimed. But, in spite of the amount of abuse and scorn heaped upon the founder of this settlement, the greater portion of the settlers were the gainers as the result of what some would call their chief’s absurd attempt to transplant a Celtic feudal community into the New World. The only real loser and sufferer was the poor old chief himself, who, owing to his own impracticability and the ingratitude and disloyalty of his settlers, failed to make any profit out of his years of struggle to colonise a portion of Upper Canada. It seems that, owing to some strong prejudice, it is impossible for the average man to see anything but evil and tyranny in the attempts at colonisation made by such men as Talbot, Macdonald of Glenaladale, and MacNab. The whole idea is scouted as dangerous to what is called the democratic idea. The cry of landlordism and feudalism is raised by people who have been wrongly educated to believe that such men as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin had freed the world from such Old World serfdoms as these colonisations would suggest. So cruelly has the truth been hidden from the masses on this continent and in Britain that it is only now, after a century and a quarter of false teaching, that the public are being informed of what a few have always known, that Benjamin Franklin was the engineer of a similar scheme of colonisation, only on a far larger scale; and that he and a few other colonists approached the British Government shortly before the Revolution with the modest request for about 2,500,000 acres of land west of Virginia, of which they were to be masters by charter, to dispose of, settle, and rule as they thought fit. Now that a century has gone by since, and men are discovering that the idols of the democracy are not as white as they have been painted, and that the people on the other side of the struggle were not all wrong in their endeavours to be loyal to a strong and long-tried social and political system and tradition, it may be that they may find that even men like Talbot and MacNab were not all evil and absurd in their ideals, though they have been somewhat misunderstood and misjudged by persons whose mere prejudice was stronger than their knowledge of human social conditions. The press and the average political orator had much to do in falsely educating the people into an exaggerated idea of what was wrongly called the rights of man, with an utter forgetfulness or an unprincipled ignoring of his responsibilities to others. It was this false conception—namely, that the land belonged essentially to the people—which incited thousands in the States at the Revolution, and in Canada afterward, to strive to repudiate community contracts made under sacred obligations.

Though Mr. Fraser, the clever chronicler of the MacNab settlement, and others holding the same popular views, see nothing but oppression and tyranny on the part of the chief, and nothing but heroism and love of liberty and unmerited suffering on the part of the people involved, yet, in spite of this, the very bare account of MacNab’s settlement which they give shows that their attitude is an unjust and partial one.

It is not intended here to palliate or ignore any of the failings of this sturdy Celtic chief; but it is not only wrong, but absurd, to see no wrong-doing or failure of contract on the side of any of the settlers.

The plain truth of the whole affair is as follows: MacNab, like many another Scottish gentleman at that day, had been ruined partly as the result of his own fault and partly owing to the times. He hoped to retrieve his fortunes in Canada, and, coming out, formed a scheme of colonisation similar to those of Talbot and Bishop Macdonell, the latter of whom encouraged him strongly to attempt the undertaking. Having first approached the Provincial Government of the day, they looked favourably on his offer to colonise a portion of the then desolate, forest-clad regions of the Upper Ottawa. They offered him a township—no great tract in those days, where the settlements were sparse, and land so far from markets and uncleared was virtually worth nothing. The next proceeding was to appeal to his brother-in-law, Dr. Hamilton, in Scotland to send out settlers who would be willing to be assisted to settle on the land on the chief’s terms. While his detractors have accused MacNab of duplicity and deceit toward the settlers and the Government, they fail to remember that these people were virtually conveyed from Scotland to Canada and aided to settle by MacNab; that they had not any means of their own; and that it was not reasonable that any man in his senses would undertake to perform all this for such settlers and expect no return. Thousands of people have since settled in Ontario on Government lands, and, to enable them to do so, have placed far heavier liens on their property in mortgages than did MacNab’s settlers to their chief. It is true that MacNab was often a hard master; but the fact that the people came under his community rule as they did proves that they did not altogether resent this attitude on the part of their chief. They, on their part, were not altogether an ideal people.

The Western Scottish Celt was not a purely self-reliant person. He had for centuries depended upon his superiors to act for and to protect him, and these settlers would never have seen Canada at all had it depended on their own means and initiative.

In 1823 MacNab left Scotland, where his estates were deeply involved owing to the Jacobite movement and his own extravagance. He was the last of one of the oldest families in Scotland, and was first cousin of Buchanan, or Hamilton, of Arnproir, head of another old family of royal descent. MacNab, when he arrived in Canada, was well received by the gentry of Montreal; but he was not to be turned from his heart’s project. He proceeded to Glengarry, where he was for some days the guest of Bishop Macdonell. Then, visiting Toronto, he was offered, and accepted, his township of 81,000 acres, which had been surveyed by P. L. Sherwood. This tract of land adjoined the township of Fitzroy. MacNab gave to the district his own name, and agreed to the terms offered by the Government, dated November 5, 1823, which were as follows: “That the township be set apart and placed under MacNab’s direction for eighteen months as an experiment; that patents be issued to settlers on certificate from MacNab that the settling duties are well performed, and that his claims are arranged and settled, or that patents do issue to the petitioner in trust for any number of settlers; that the conditions between MacNab and each settler be fully explained in detail; that a duplicate of the agreement be lodged with the Government; that MacNab may assign not less than one hundred acres to each family, or male of twenty-one years of age, on taking the oath of allegiance; that a grant of twelve hundred acres be assigned to MacNab, to be increased to the quantity formerly given to a field officer on his completing the settlement of the township; that the old settlers pay the interest on the money laid out for their use by MacNab, either in money or produce at the option of the settler; and that the settler have liberty to pay both principal and interest at any time during the first seven years.”

MacNab at first built a large log-house on his place as a headquarters of operation, and which he named Kennel Lodge, after his ancestral place in Scotland. Then he wrote to his brother-in-law to send out settlers. His own letter to Hamilton speaks for itself, and shows his honesty of purpose in settling the township. It is dated August 10, 1824. He states that he has already informed Hamilton of his purpose and progress. He now says that he is ready for the proposed settlers, that he desires twenty families at first; they are to be provided with three months’ provisions and passage tickets. But before receiving such, each head of a family is to sign a bond of agreement. Hamilton is to see to the embarkation at Greenock, and MacNab promises to meet them at Montreal and see each one located on the land, and to provide for their transport to their destination. This was no slight task for these two men to perform. One was to procure the emigrants who might be willing to venture, arrange for their leaving their places, get them and their families to Greenock on the Clyde, arrange for their passage, and provide food, passage and other supplies; while MacNab’s part was to meet the emigrants at Montreal and keep them there and provide their passage, and provide for them until they could procure homes in the new settlement, which was in a remote place up the Ottawa. MacNab had also to pay for the surveying of their lands.

The bond signed by the settlers bound each man to the amount of £36 for himself, £30 for a wife, and £16 for every child, with interest in money or produce. On April 19, 1825, the settlers sailed from the Port of Greenock in the ship Niagara, and arrived in Montreal on the 27th of May following. Here they were met by MacNab and his attendants, and before the end of June they had reached the township and were put up at Kennel Lodge, or in camps in the vicinity.

The following list of first settlers is given in Mr. Fraser’s book as having signed in the preceding January the bond which had been especially prepared by the Attorney-General of Upper Canada: James Carmichael; Donald Fisher; Peter Campbell; Peter Drummond; James Robertson; Alexander MacNab; James McFarlane; Duncan Campbell; James McDonald; Donald McNaughton; John McDermid; John McIntyre; Peter McIntyre; Donald McIntyre; James McLaren; Peter McMillan; James Storie; James McFarlane; Alexander Miller; Malcolm McLaren; and Colin McCaul.

In spite of the condemnation of MacNab, the whole proceeding on his part seems to have been a particularly hazardous one. He had gone to all the expense referred to, besides providing each settler with three months’ provisions after leaving Greenock; and there was little chance of his ever getting any compensation. In the end he was virtually ruined. He had undertaken an impossible task to establish a community in the New World wherein he would be the leader and intermediary between them and the Government.

He was accused of having pretended to settlers that he owned the township. But as Judge Jones, who presided at the trial for libel brought by MacNab against Mr. Hincks, of the Examiner, remarked: “The chief gave the settlers location tickets, in which he promised to procure them patents from the Crown, which proved that he never claimed the township at his own property.” The reply to this was that poor ignorant emigrants such as these were could not know the difference between a patent and a title-deed. Such a statement is a sad reflection on the class of settlers, and does not hold good, as there were persons in the community, one of them a schoolmaster, who from the first were hostile to the chief, who could read and did know better. No doubt MacNab naturally felt that he had a certain power in the township under the superintendency granted him by the Government. It must be remembered that he felt a responsibility to the whole community, even if he exercised it in the feudal manner.

The great mistake was his attempting such a scheme at all. He might have known that so soon as the settlers who came out under his guidance and at his expense came into contact with others who had made no such agreement, that dissatisfaction would ensue; and, as is ever the case, the settlers would be persuaded that they were justified in repudiating all obligations. He, on his part, was no doubt exacting and arbitrary, and played the laird overmuch in a community which fancied that Jock was as good as his master. Then there were the demagogues and the reformers, who were only too glad to show up the idiosyncrasies of such a conservative as the exacting old chief probably was; who would exaggerate all his demands into tyrannies, and proclaim his rights as wrongs against the people. In this world there are always the two sides to a question, and the historian should strive to do justice to both sides.

The real difficulty in MacNab’s case was that only the first settlers were brought out to the country by him, and that the more recent settlers came in under different terms. In all cases, however, the laird lacked judgment in exacting terms which were never carried out, and only hurt his reputation and prevented his finally recovering what was his own by right. In 1830 MacNab met a band of emigrants in Montreal, and persuaded them to become settlers in his township. They were from Isla, in the Campbell country, and were MacNabs, Camerons, Campbells, McKays, and McNevins. These he agreed to settle and to procure their patents, but demanded a feudal quit-rent—for him and his heirs as Chief of MacNab for ever—of three barrels of flour, or their equivalent in Indian corn or oats, for every two hundred acres.

We are not told what expense MacNab went to in getting them from Montreal or in settling these peoples; but they accepted these terms, which were never fulfilled. It is not fair to be too hard on the old laird. He was no more peculiar than his settlers, who at first were willing to be assisted and promise anything, which afterwards they did not perform. The whole miserable succession of after-troubles was but a translation into the New World of what has often been repeated in the Old. It meant the relations existing between a Highland chief and his people or dependants, and there were faults on both sides.

In 1834 a large party of Stewarts, Fergusons, Robertsons, McLachlans, and Duffs arrived from Blair Athol, in Scotland, and settled in the township, accepting the same terms as the last emigrants, with the addition that all the pine timber was reserved for the Arnprior Mills. We are told that these people accepted these terms without a murmur, because “all this time they believed that the land was MacNab’s own property.” And yet we are told that the location tickets were the same as those of others, which promised that MacNab would procure their patents from the Crown.

It seems that there was something wrong on both sides; and while MacNab was no doubt improvident, impractical, and somewhat of a tyrant, who, by heredity, thought his will the only law, yet what sort of people were these who would go blindly into such a bargain as we are told they made during several years? There is a strong suspicion of either crass stupidity on their part or else a feeling that they could afterwards do what many of them certainly did, namely, avoid or ignore the obligation made, and thus, in their turn, play the part of dishonour. No one wants to palliate any attempt to rob or oppress the poor of any land or clime, but the mere abuse of so-called landlords in the Old Land, and of colonists on a large scale in the New World, has gone too far, and too many writers have painted the picture of pretended or fancied oppression in far too glaring colours. Even a man like MacNab deserves the justice due to him for his well-meaning, if impractical and narrow, attempt at providing a home for his peasant countrymen in the wilds of the New World.

GALT’S SETTLEMENT AT GUELPH

The foundation of the city of Guelph and the settlement of the surrounding country by John Galt, the Scottish novelist, is an interesting and important chapter in the annals of Scottish settlements in Canada.

After the war of 1812 Upper Canada became better known in the Old Land as a country of promise and possible prosperity. The fine struggle made by the loyal settlers side by side with the Regulars to keep the country under the British flag had gained respect for the province in Britain; and the returning officers of the regiments proved good emigration agents in the interest of the young country.

Later, in 1822-23, the debates in the Imperial Parliament on the subject of the proposed Union of Upper and Lower Canada, and the vote of £100,000 for the payment of losses sustained by citizens of Upper Canada in the late war, turned the tide of emigration in that direction.

At this period the founding of the Canada Company by John Galt was brought about; and in this connection he had seriously considered the emigration on a large scale of Scottish and English settlers to the western part of Canada.

Of a keen, shrewd, practical nature, and well known as a writer and as a student of the people of his own country, Galt was able to secure the confidence of the Government and the public, and a favourable consideration of his schemes.

Consulted by Mr. Robertson, Chancellor of the Exchequer, on Canadian affairs and Upper Canada’s liabilities, Galt established the Canada Company, and became its secretary.

He was then appointed, with Sir John Harvey, Col. Cockburn, and Messrs. McGillivray and Davidson—four other Scots—a Commissioner of the Government for the valuation of Upper Canada.

Meanwhile he had consulted a noted Scotsman, Bishop Macdonell, of Glengarry, Upper Canada; and when the question of the Clergy Reserves had to be settled it was left to arbitration between him and another noted Scotsman in Upper Canada, the Honourable and Rev. John Strachan, then Archdeacon of York.

He early turned his attention to the new lands in the western peninsula, where Galt, named after him by his friend Col. Dickson, was already a flourishing village. Near here was the noted township of Dumfries, a well-known Scottish centre of settlement.

On April 23, 1827, Galt started out into the virgin forest, some miles north of the village of Galt, for the purpose of founding what was afterwards known as the town, then later the city of Guelph, which he named after the Royal Family. With him on this memorable occasion were other Scotsmen—Dr. Dunlop, a noted character in Western Ontario; Charles Pryor; John McDonald, land surveyor, afterwards Sheriff of Huron County; George Corbett, since of Owen Sound; and James McKenzie, who finally settled in Guelph.

The ceremony consisted in the felling, in a solemn manner, of a large maple-tree, each man, commencing with Galt, cutting a few strokes. We are told that the tree was duly cut down, an impressive silence following the thundering jar of the fallen forest monarch; while Galt says: “The silence of the woods that echoed to the sound was as the sigh of the solemn genius of the wilderness departing for ever.”

Then the humorous Dr. Dunlop produced a flask of whisky and “we drank prosperity to the city of Guelph.”

Among the earlier settlers were the following of Scottish origin: Thomas Stewart, shoemaker; Wm. Gibbs, baker; Jas. Anderson, carpenter. Others arriving in 1827, with their place of settlement, are found in the books of the Canada Company as follows:—

Another party of emigrants arrived later in the summer of that year direct from Scotland, and, being for the most part farmers, they founded what was afterwards known as the Scotch Block on the Elora Road.

In Burrows’ “Annals of Guelph” the names of the most of these good Scottish settlers are given. They were: Alex. McTavish; Donald Gillis; Alex. Reid; McFie; Peter Buchart; Angus Campbell; Halliday; Joseph McDonald; Capt. McDonald, uncle of a Lieut.-Governor of Ontario; Jas. Stirton; Jos. McQuillan; Wm. Patterson; Rose; McCrae; John Dean; Jas. Mays; Thos. Knowles; the Kennedys, three families.

Many of these moved elsewhere afterwards; the Bucharts, I think, going north to Owen Sound. Those who stayed became well-to-do citizens of the community.

A third party came to the locality of Guelph about the same time and settled in what was called the Paisley Block, from the city of that name in Scotland. Prominent among these were: John Inglis; Robert Laidlaw; J. McCorkindale; Drew; Campbell; Alexander; Gideon Hood; Wm. Hood; Thos. Hood; Boyd; McKenzie; John Spiers; Thos. Jackson; John Jackson; Jos. Jackson; Wm. Jackson; and George Jackson.

These people all had families; and many of them became prominent and wealthy members of the community and the province.

The historian gives John as the name of the Laidlaw whose name is second on the list, but his real name was Robert. He was grandfather of Mr. Robert Laidlaw, the present able attaché of the Dominion Archives, the discoverer of many valuable collections of historical documents, and formerly a well-known journalist.

Galt took a deep interest in the educational facilities of the young community, and insured half the price of the building lots as an endowment and maintenance of a school.

During the summer of 1828 Mr. Pryor was sent out by Mr. Galt to survey the Huron tract and lay out the plot of the proposed town of Goderich.

In September Mr. Buchanan, British Consul of New York, came to Guelph and inspected the affairs of the Company, there being a conspiracy to wreck it. The result of his inspection was that he wrote to England praising Mr. Galt’s management. Before leaving Canada Galt paid a visit to the sister settlement of Goderich.

On his leaving Guelph an expression of regret, signed by 144 heads of families, expressed the obligation he had conferred upon the settlers whom he had brought into the country.

He left the country regretted by all in the community; for through the busy, indefatigable energy of this wonderful Scotsman a large portion of what is now the Province of Ontario was opened up and settled by a number of sturdy, self-reliant communities, the most of whose citizens were emigrants from that glorious land of Wallace, Bruce, Robert Burns, and Walter Scott, his one-time friend. For his able management of the Canada Company alone the province owes Galt’s memory a debt of gratitude which can never be repaid. Is there a statue to this remarkable man in Guelph or Goderich or Galt? If not, there should be one erected in the public square of each of those places.

Certainly Guelph and Goderich should pay some lasting tribute to the memory of that doughty Scottish genius who laid their first foundations.

Far over the wave, in the old maritime city of Greenock, from whose quays so many vessels have sailed bearing Scottish adventurers to Canadian shores, this fine writer and father of Western Ontario communities sleeps in the tomb of his fathers.

THE TALBOT AND MIDDLESEX SETTLEMENTS

I

The Talbot Settlement

One of the most remarkable chapters in the history of Canadian pioneer life is that of the Talbot settlement, in what is now the county of Elgin in Ontario.

The history of this important undertaking, with that of the eccentric and remarkable undertaker is related in a very able and exhaustive contribution to the Royal Society of Canada by Dr. Coyne, F.R.S.C., of St. Thomas, whose grandfather was a prominent member of the early Talbot settlement.

The Honourable Thomas Talbot, of Port Talbot, on the shores of Lake Erie, and the founder through long years of toil and expense of one of the most successful Upper Canada settlements, remains to-day as one of the most picturesque and interesting personalities in the history of our country. About the lives of few men has there gathered so much of the romantic and the mysterious as has become attached to his. When his real story is known, the elements of tragedy lie deep beneath the seemingly strange events of his life and his sudden self-banishment from the court and camp of the Old World to the rough hardships of a pioneer condition in the New.

As regards the man himself and his evident life-tragedy, those who care to study the subject will find all the details in the ably-collected memoirs of Dr. Coyne, with its long list of documents bearing on the subject. Let it suffice here to say that Col. Thomas Talbot, the intimate friend of the Duke of Cumberland and Arthur Wellesley, afterward Duke of Wellington, suddenly sold his commission in the army in 1800, and came out to Upper Canada, where he got a grant of 5,000 acres of land, with the avowed object of settling that part of the province with emigrants from the Old Land. He had been in Upper Canada some years before as aide-de-camp to Simcoe, and his settlement included a large area along the northern shore of Lake Erie.

Because of his aristocratic connections, his prominence in British society, and for other reasons, Talbot has by some been compared with MacNab, whose settlement has already been dealt with. In some few superficial aspects there is a similarity in their object, but there the comparison ceases. Both, it is true, were regarded as eccentric, but whereas MacNab has been shown to be impractical in his ideals and methods, the opposite is true of Talbot. Dr. Coyne, who is an impartial and not by any means a too lenient student of this remarkable man, says of Talbot: “But aristocrat as he was, and with all his eccentricities, there was a practical side to Talbot’s character, and he looked forward as well as backward. His importance as one of the makers of Canada is based upon the plan of settlement which he formed, or rather adopted, and which he continued to carry out with characteristic determination for nearly half a century.” Dr. Coyne gives a proper estimate of Talbot’s place in Canadian history in the following summary of his accomplishment as a father of Canadian pioneer settlement: “As founder of the Talbot settlement, he attached his name to one of the richest and most prosperous agricultural regions in the world, extending from Long Point to the Detroit River. The Talbot Road is the longest, and was for many years the best, as it still is one of the best, in the province. The property of the Talbot settlers was systematically and extensively advertised. The Government made use of it for the purpose of attracting immigrants to all parts of the province. Throughout Upper Canada the settlement was held up as a model for imitation.”

Talbot’s scheme of settlement, so far as the Scottish settler was concerned, included especially the townships of Dunwich, Aldborough, South Dorchester, and North Yarmouth, which he settled largely with Argyllshire Highlanders. Their language was principally Gaelic, and many of them had emigrated as a consequence of proclamations offering grants of from one hundred to two hundred acres to each settler. The settlement, which was started in 1803, was for many years stayed by the war of 1812-14; and these pioneers suffered much from invaders from the south across the lake. When the war was closed in 1816, a few Scottish and Ulster-Scottish settlers arrived from the United States and settled in Dunwich and Aldborough. In the same year some families of the Selkirk settlement of Kildonan on the Red River, who had removed into Upper Canada, among them the McBeth family, came in and settled. These were followed about 1819 by a large influx of Argyllshire Highland emigrants who took up land in Aldborough. These settlers formed a very desirable addition to the population, being of a superior class. So many came from Argyllshire, that when the Marquess of Lorne, as Governor-General, visited St. Thomas in 1881, the descendants of these early settlers gathered in thousands and presented him with an address. A printed copy of this address, which was composed by the Rev. Dr. McNish, a noted Gaelic scholar and a native of Argyll, is in the Library of Parliament at Ottawa. It is signed by hundreds, including many Campbells. The Marquess, in his reply, informed his audience that he had never seen, even in Argyllshire itself, so many Argyllshire people present at one time.

The following is a list of persons of Scottish extraction who were settled by Col. Talbot in the townships of Dunwich and Aldborough, dated March 20, 1820:—

William Bannerman; George Bannerman; James Black; Neil Blue; Arhd. Blue; Duncan Brown; Robert Blue; John Brodie; Alex. Brodie; Alex. Baxter; George Brodie; Hugh Black; Henry Coyne; Donald Currie; John Currie; John Clark; Wm. Clark; Alex. Cameron; Donald Campbell (1); Donald Campbell (2); Archd. Campbell (1); Donald Campbell (3); Archd. Campbell (2); Dougald Campbell (1); John Campbell (1); John Campbell (2); Dougald Campbell (2); Duncan Campbell; James Campbell; Archd. Campbell (3); Archd. Coswell; Neil Campbell; John Campbell; Alex. Campbell; Angus Campbell; Archd. Campbell (4); Donald Campbell (4); John Campbell (4); Donald Cameron; Donald Campbell (5); Thos. Dewar; John Douglas; James, George, Thos. and John Dixon; Thos. Dewar (2); Alexd. Dewar; Malcolm Downie; Colin Ferguson; John Ferguson; Duncan Ferguson (1); Alex. Forbes; Mungo Forbes; James Ferguson; Donald Ferguson; Angus Gunn; Donald Gunn; George Gunn; Alex. Gunn; John Gibson; Jas. Gibson (1); James Gibson (2); Hugh Graham; David Gibson; Wm. Gibson; Robt. Gibb; George Gibb; John Gillies (1); Archd. Gillies; Colin Gillies; John Gillies (2); Wm. Gunn; Angus Gray; John Gillies (3); John Gillies (4); Alex. Gray; John Gray; Duncan Gillies; Neil Galbraith; Neil Haggard; Alex. Haggard; John Kerr; Robt. Kerr; John Livingston; John Leitch (1); Duncan Leitch; Colin Leitch; Malcolm Leitch; John Leitch (2); Neil Leitch; Donald McIntyre; John McPherson; Duncan McLelland; Robt. McDermand; Wm. McDermand; Abr. McIntyre; James McKay; John McCallum (1); John McCallum (2); John Matheson; John McLyman; Hugh McKean; Carson McCurdy; James McLean; Neil McPhail; Alex. McNabb; Duncan McNabb; Daniel McKinley; John McLean; Peter McKinley (1); John McDugald (1); Duncan McFarland; Donald McGregor; Archd. McIntyre (1); Angus McIntyre (1); Findlay McDermod; Donald McIntyre (2); Donald McNaughton; Allan McDonald; Angus McKay; Gregor McGregor; John Menzie; Laughlan McDugald; Donald McEwen; Neil McLean; Duncan McLean; Duncan McKinley; James McKinley; Peter McKellar (1); Arch. McLean; Donald McLean (1); John McIntyre; Malcolm McIntyre; Duncan McIntyre (1); Donald McDermod; Malcolm McNaughton; Duncan McCallum; Duncan McCall; Thos. McCall (1); Samuel McCall; Duncan McKillop; Archd. McKillop; Donald McKillop; Donald McAlpine; Malcolm McAlpine; Donald McGregor; Angus McIntyre (2); Donald McIntyre (3); John McTavish; John Munro; Colin Munro; Archd. Munro (1); George Munro; John McKellar (1); Peter McKellar (2); Neil Munro; Archd. Munro; Alex. McIntyre; Dugald McIntyre; Duncan McIntyre (2); Dugald McLarty; Donald McPhadrain; Neil McPhadrain; Alex. Munro; Donald McArthur; John McKellar (2); Archd. McKellar; Dougald McKellar; Archd. McIntyre (2); Duncan McCallum (2); John McLean; Donald McIntyre (4); Alex. McPhail; Archd. McTavish; John McCachna; Donald McCugan; Donald McKean (2); John McDougald (2); Archd. McArthur; John McArthur; Duncan Patterson (1); Archd. Patterson (1); Donald Patterson (1); James Paul; Donald Patterson (2); Archd. Patterson (2); John Patterson; Duncan Patterson (2); Hugh Ruthven; Colin Ruthven; James Ruthven; Malcolm Robertson; Wm. Stewart; Duncan Stewart; Robt. Shaw; Donald Sutherland; George Sutherland; Alexander Sutherland; John St. Clair; Daniel St. Clair; John Smith; David Full; Neil Walker; Angus Walker; Donald Walker.

What is especially remarkable in this list is the number of emigrants bearing the same name. There are four Archibald Campbells and the same number of Donald McIntyres, and in the list they are each known by their special number. The descendants of these 207 heads of families number thousands in all parts of Canada who are among our most prominent citizens.

II

The Middlesex Scottish Settlements

The county of Middlesex was largely settled by Scottish immigrants, and many of the townships, such as McGillivray and Lobo, bear witness to this in their names.

The first ministers of the Church of Scotland in Middlesex were Alexander Ross and Donald McKenzie, who both took the oath of allegiance in 1832. Other early Presbyterian clergy were John Scott; William Proudfoot; W. McKellican, 1833; Alexander McKenzie, 1837; Daniel Allen, 1838; Donald McKellar, of Lobo, 1839; Duncan McMillan; Williams, 1839; Lachlan McPherson, Ekfrid, 1846; and William R. Sutherland, Ekfrid, 1848.

In the history of Middlesex there is given the following lists of Scottish marriages, by Presbyterian ministers. Twenty-four marriages, from August 6, 1833, to April 29, 1835; twenty-three from May 7, 1835, to Nov. 20, 1836; and nine from February 17, 1837, to December 8th of same year; all recorded by the Rev. Wm. Proudfoot of the Associate Secession Church.

In 1835 seven marriages are recorded by the Rev. James Skinner, of the United Secession Church; and in 1836-7 he records four others. In 1835 the Rev. Wm. Fraser registered two contracts; and the Rev. D. McKenzie four in 1834-7.

All of these marriages are, with a few exceptions, between Scottish persons, and will be valuable data for family history.

Owing to a scarcity of clergy of the Scottish Church, many of the settlers joined the Baptist and Methodist Churches. In the former denomination and its offshoot, The Church of the Disciples, prominent clergy in Middlesex were: Dugald Campbell, 1838; Isaac Elliot, 1839; Dugald Sinclair, Lobo, 1839; and Richard Andrews, 1840. There are also recorded marriages by Baptist and Methodist clergy, many of which were between persons of Scottish birth or origin.

In 1831, the chairman of the Quarter Session was John Bestwick, while two other Scotsmen, Duncan McKenzie and John Mitchell, sat as magistrates. In 1842 the County Council contained the following Scotsmen: Lawrence Laureson, Andrew Moore, Thomas Coyne, Thomas Duncan, John D. Anderson, Archibald Miller, Isaac Campbell, Hiram Crawford, John Edwards, and John S. Buchanan. In 1843, Thomas Graham replaced Moore, James Murray replaced Buchanan, and Samuel Kirkpatrick replaced Duncan.

In the First Regiment of the Middlesex Militia were the following Scottish names: Lieut.-Col. L. Patterson; Major J. McQueen; Captains A. Gillis, J. McKinlay, J. Patterson, G. Munro; Lieutenants McCall, Gillies, D. McKinley, Blackwood, and E. McKinley; Ensigns McIntyre, McGregor, and Sinclair.

The first settler in London, the county town, was Peter McGregor, a Scotsman, who settled there in 1826. In June of 1827 Robert Corfrae, another Scotsman, came to the place.

The township of Ekfrid was one of the leading Scottish settlements in Middlesex. Among the pioneers were: John Campbell, Angus Campbell, Donald McTaggart, Archibald Miller, John McLachlan, John Elliot, Donald McGugan, and Duncan McCall. Among those who came in 1835 were Dougald Patterson, Duncan Campbell, Donald McFarlane, Hugh Rankin, and Alexander McMaster.

Among the pioneers and early settlers of Ekfrid still living there in 1880 were, with the date of their settlement: Angus Campbell, 1828; Duncan McGregor, 1830; Lachlan and Angus McTaggart, 1831; Robt. Orr and N. McLellan, 1832; Jas. Gowanlock, A. Stevenson, and A. McDougal, 1833; David Dobie, 1834; Jas. Allen, Hugh McLachlan, Hector McFarlane, and C. McRoberts, 1835; Angus Chisholm, 1836; Alexander McBean, 1837; John E. Campbell, 1839; John A. Dobie, Alexander McKellar, and Archibald McIntyre, 1840; Jas. G. Begg, Alexander Eddie, George C. Elliot, Robert McKay, Alexander McNeill, and Daniel McCrea, 1842; David Cowan and Adam Clarke, 1845; Duncan McRea, 1849.

The first township offices on record are those of 1833. Those elected then were: Duncan McLean, clerk; Christopher Sparling and James McIntyre, assessors; D. McLean, collector; John McIntosh, John Campbell, Hugh McAlpine, John Galbraith, Robert Parker, James McLellan, Andrew Wilson, Malcolm Galbraith, John McCallum, Alex. McIntyre, and Peter McDonald, road masters; Thos. Curtis, Donald McTaggart, and Joseph Provo, wardens.

In 1840, John McIntyre, Malcolm Campbell, and John McKellar were elected wardens, with Malcolm McFarlane, collector. The first mentioned school and library commissioners, in 1844, were John McIntyre; Donald McFarlane, senior; John R. McRae, senior, Humphrey Campbell, and John Campbell.

The township of Lobo was another noted Scottish settlement. It was surveyed in 1819 by Burwell, and the next year a large immigration of settlers from Argyllshire in Scotland poured in, and took up land throughout the whole township. Archibald McArthur and Thomas Caverhill were the senior or first councillors. John Harris was the first treasurer, Duncan McDougall was collector of taxes. In 1842, Hugh Carmichael was clerk, and Duncan McLean was chairman of Council. Among the pathmasters were John Edwards, Neil McIntyre, Archd. Paull, McLean, Donald McAllister, Hugh Johnson, John Campbell, Hugh Dewar, Duncan McBain. Other officials were Archd. McKellar, Malcolm Gray, Jos. McIntosh, Hugh Johnson, and Donald Johnson. In 1844 Alexander Sinclair was chairman of Council; John Brown, clerk; John Gray, assessor; and Archd. McVicar, collector of taxes. In 1842 there were six schools in the township. The Scottish teachers were John Campbell, Donald McCrea, William Munro, and John Ross. The first inspector for Lobo in 1844 was Alexander Sinclair, and in 1862 Thomas Ure. The names of the first settlers who were heads of families in 1820 were: Malcolm McCall, Donald Lamont, Dugald McArthur, and the Johnson, Sinclair, and McKellar families; also Duncan McKeith, Neil McKeith, Hugh Carmichael, Charles Carmichael, John McIntyre and family, Duncan McIntyre, Archibald Campbell, Malcolm Campbell, John McLachlan, John McCall, John McDugall, afterwards Justice of the Peace, and John Gray and family.

The township of McGillivray was not as thoroughly Scottish in its origin as Ekfrid and Lobo, but contained a very strong Scottish element. Scotsmen are mentioned at different periods as being among the leading township officers. In 1843, Thos. Laughlin was pound-keeper; W. Henry, R. Long, and Isaac Moodie, wardens; and Thos. Laughlin and George Barber, school commissioners. In 1846, James Simpson was assessor. In 1848, Andrew Neil was a warden, and in 1850, John Graham was an auditor. In 1852, John Corbett was reeve. Andrew Erskine took up land in 1852. David Cameron settled here in 1849, aged seven years. His father Samuel came from Scotland in 1842 and settled in Lobo. Other names are: Donald McKenzie, Jas. Corbett, 1843; A. Erskine, 1849; Wm. Fraser, 1858; T. McInnis, 1853; James Marr, 1852; C. T. McPherson, 1853; R. Neil, 1852; Duncan Stevenson, 1851. Other families mentioned in 1866 were either Scottish or Ulster Scots, such as the Hannas, Kennedys, Camerons, Nichols, Lathrops, John McVicar, Logans, and Christies.

Another strongly Scottish settlement of Middlesex was the township of Mora.

Leading Scotsmen among its early settlers were: John Coyne, Archibald McCallum, Archibald Campbell, Andrew Fleming, George Fleming, John D. Anderson, Donald Ferguson, who married Jane McLachlan in 1818, and died in 1851. Hugh McLachlan was another old settler.

Capt. William Symes, of Glencoe (1834); Donald McLean (1834), and Archd. Campbell (1818), were other noted settlers. Other names are Dobie, Parr, McIntyre, Walker, Simpson, McAlpine, and Armstrong. In the oldest extant record-book, dated 1857, Neil Munro, George Currie, and Charles Armstrong are councillors. The village of Glencoe is so called after the famous glen of that name in Scotland. The first surveyors were A. P. McDonald and Ross. As late as 1860 the leading citizens included many Scotsmen. J. W. Campbell was the first reeve. Other names are Dr. McIntyre, Charles Murray, John R. McRae, Dr. McKellar.

The township of East Williams formed part of the lands of the Canada Company, and were surveyed by McDonald, of Goderich. It was settled in 1833 by many Scotsmen and their families, such as those of Donald McIntosh, Donald Henderson, Donald Fraser, James Ross, James McPherson, James Bremner, Hugh McKenzie, and Hugh Crawford. Alexander Stuart, 1832; John Stewart, 1832; Donald Henderson, 1832; David Cluness, 1833; John Levie, 1834, were early settlers. The Rosses and McIntoshes were noted families. Capt. Hugh McIntosh, the Andersons, Campbells, McQuillicans, McNeills, Colin Scatcherd, Wm. Fraser, David H. Craig, Alex. B. McDonald, Neil McKinnon, William Halbert, were all noted residents. In 1880 the leading old residents of the township were: Tafford Campbell, 1847; James Campbell, 1846; John Dingman, 1833; Donald McNaughton, 1834; John Levie, 1834; John Leitch, 1843; Neil McTaggart, 1831; Wm. McIntosh, 1831; Hugh McDonald, 1840; David McKenzie, 1836; John L. McKenzie, 1831; Malcolm McIntyre, 1875; Wm. Menzie, 1844; John More, 1846; John Milligan, 1848; Jas. D. McDonald, 1848; A. J. Ross, 1833; Donald Ross, 1832; Duncan Stewart, 1844; Donald C. Stewart, 1833; John Stewart, 1845.

This is a good example of the Scottish stock in a representative Canadian community founded by men of Scottish extraction. The village of Nairn, in 1885, was also composed largely of Scottish inhabitants.

West Williams was settled by the same stock as East Williams, the names being Stewart, McKenzie, Campbell, Cameron, Cluness, Ross, McNeill, &c.

There are to-day hundreds of families in that and adjoining districts who are descendants of these early settlers in the Middlesex townships. There are also thousands of people of Scottish descent scattered all through Western Ontario, of whom no mention can be made in a work of this size and purpose. The author has endeavoured in this volume to give but a general description of the leading and most noted Scottish hives or central communities, and it is to be hoped that the material gathered together in this work may encourage local historians to pay more attention to the archives of the counties and towns throughout the different provinces of the Dominion. As Joseph Howe said: “A wise nation preserves its records, gathers up its monuments, decorates the graves of its illustrious dead, repairs the great public structures, and fosters national pride and love of country by perpetual reference to the sacrifices and glories of the past.”

THE ZORRA SETTLEMENT AND THE MACKAYS

The Scottish settlers of Western Ontario were, for the most part, folk who had dared to come out from the Old Land because they willed to do so. They were, some of them, evicted tenants from strath and glen. They were, however, not, like the people of other Highland settlements, driven forth, or led by some Moses of colonisation, into a new and strange country, depending on a leader to bring them into their promised land of milk and honey. There were in all the counties sturdy Lowland settlers from Glasgow and the Clyde borders or other Lowland county places. Then there were Highlanders in groups, or mingled with Lowlanders and other folk not of the land-o’-cakes, southern men and women, who knew not the heather and loved not Robbie Burns.

Chief among this great body of Scottish folk was the noted Highland settlement of the township of Zorra, in the county of Perth, in Western Ontario.

As early as 1820 two Scotsmen, brothers, named Angus and William Mackay, came there into the dense, uncleared wilderness, and started to make it their home. They were sturdy Highlanders from the far north of Scotland, and belonged to the great clan Mackay, whose land is historic Sutherlandshire. They cleared a bit of the forest and planted the ground, and fought the fight of the early pioneer with brave hearts and a faith in the future of their adopted land. Nearly ten years later one of the brothers, Angus, returned to Scotland and bore favourable witness concerning the new land in the northern Scottish shire of his fathers; and the following year returned to Canada, accompanied by his aged parents and a whole shipload of his fellow-shiremen.

Many of these were the former tenants of glens made over into sheep-walks by the middle farmers or better-class tenants, who were willing to rent the land from the landlord for a fair rental. Much has been written on this subject, and writers have waxed eloquent over what they have considered the brutal treatment of the evicted glensmen. But the truth was that the glens were overcrowded with a well-meaning, but often impracticable, people, who had for centuries depended on their lord or chief for livelihood. They had all been fighters or deer-stalkers or cattle-drovers or fisher-folk. For farms there were none, seeing that nine-tenths of those regions were mountains and lochs, and the glens deep and narrow and only fit for a covert for deer or a place of ambush when besieged by an invading foe. They had been for centuries the children of a feudal system of clan-fealty and clan-service, where chief made war on chief, and his men followed at their leaders’ beck and robbed their enemies and harried their lands. It was an age of fighting and open robbery, where now, under a democratic system, men steal and dispossess others of their worldly gear in a more subtle and crafty, though less noble, manner. It was an age when life itself was the price of failure, and the leader and his followers went down together to the last man. But after the first half of the eighteenth century, with the ending of the Jacobite wars, all of this was changed. The old order of clan foray against clan and Highland raids of the Lowlands was put down with an iron hand, and the great chiefs became civilised, or were in hiding or driven abroad, and the great mass of the Highlanders were left without any leaders or without any means of subsistence beyond deer-stealing or the making of illicit spirits. Then was the one great cure for all this found in the formation of the Highland Fencible regiments, whereby thousands of idle glensmen were made to perform great martial service for the Empire. But a great many more there were who were at a loss what to do. In the old days they were retainers on great chiefs or lords, who fed and clothed them in return for services performed. But when left to their own resources they knew not what to do; the men especially were impractical, not loving to cultivate the land, and with no knowledge of the art if they had cared to. To this great surplus population of Northern and Western Scotland the idea of emigration to the New World came as a godsend, and was, though at the time considered as a terrible hardship, a real blessing. Serious as was the pioneer life of the New World, they were thrown on their own resources, and it was a case of struggle or perish. They had no landlords to house and feed them, no factors to blame for their ills; they had to get up and put their own shoulders to the wheel and literally do or die.

Too much has been written in a prejudiced manner of the cruelty of the landlords by writers who have not made a complete study of the subject. It has been falsely represented that these people were driven off lands that they had owned or had tilled for centuries.

The truth is that in Scotland in those days the people no more owned the land than the people of Canada do to-day. Then, as now, the land belonged to the man who had the wealth to keep it up or own it. How much of the land of Canada to-day belongs to the people? Scotland was a small country with a dense population in places; but we are a small population in a vast territory, and yet how little, if any, of our millions on millions of acres of land is owned by the bulk of our people. The very descendants of those who were said to have left Scotland to become landowners in the New World own less of the land, and get less off it than their ancestors did in Scotland.

On the other hand, there was then, and is now, little good tillage land in many of the Scottish shires.

There was probably, in cases, cruelty on the part of landowners and factors; but such cruelty and injustice exists in some form in Canada and the United States to-day. In the vicinity of the capital of Canada there are now large tracts of land held by speculators and others who refuse to sell it unless extravagant prices are paid, and which literally places the privilege of owning a portion of the soil of this country out of the power of many of our Canadian citizens.

But, be the reasons for their leaving Scotland what they may, those hardy Highlanders bade farewell to their straths and glens, and sailed to the westward, feeling that if their position was to be improved at all, they must seek homes abroad.

Those good Zorra pioneers were a fine and superior stock. They were, as has been said of the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, the sifted wheat, chosen men. They had a good education, or in its place a proper estimate of its value in the preparation of a life career. Wherever they settled there rose the walls of a schoolhouse; and the few books brought into the wilderness were of a high standard and deeply valued. The names most common in this prominent Scottish settlement were those of Mackay, Sutherland, Morrison, Gordon, Murray, Bruce, Ross, McLean, McDonald, Gilchrist, Matheson, Fraser, Gunn, McKenzie, and Munro. Many bearing these names have gone forth from the pioneer community and made themselves prominent places in the life of our country and in that outside its borders. There has been a great group of distinguished Churchmen, scholars, financiers, and others who have made the Zorra community noted in the history of Canada.

Probably no Canadian community has made its influence felt over a wider sphere of action and effort than has the Zorra settlement and its adjoining groups of Scottish families.

It has been especially noted in the missionary world; so much so, that it might be called a nesting-ground for preachers of the gospel. This has been owing largely to the fact that the men and women of Sutherland were, in the pioneer days of Canada, and before then in the Old Land, the most earnest, God-fearing element in the north of Scotland.

But scholarship, and literature, and the more worldly interests of life have had worthy followers in the sons of this the most distinctive Scottish settlement of Western Ontario. In connection with the history of such a settlement as this of Zorra a great lesson is taught Canadians; and it is this, that we are liable to forget the great influence which heredity and the social influences of the Old Land have had on our whole community. It is true that the Scottish race has been a peculiarly strong, hard-headed, careful, cautious, and deep-thinking people. But much of this is the result of their peculiarly strong, deep nature, which has been influenced as perhaps that of no other people by a long-continued conservative training in a severely spiritual school. Religiously speaking, to know God inwardly and to keep His commandments has been the great impulse and national intent of the Scottish people; and grave as are their weaknesses, no people on earth have developed so deep and self-punishing, self-searching a conscience as have this people. This is true of both Highlanders and Lowlanders, and of that large community of Scottish folk who are a mixture of both.

The Rev. W. A. Mackay, in his interesting little work “Pioneer Life in Zorra”, says: “No Zorra boy to-day is ashamed of either the porridge or the Catechism on which he was reared.” He also adds: “The motto of the typical boy is ‘Don’t sleep when you ought to be awake; don’t stay awake with eyes closed and hands folded; work with your hands; think with your head; and love with your heart; and never forget that character is capital.’ ” The best result of this creed of life has been such noted men as Archdeacon Gody; the late Hon. James Sutherland; Rev. C. W. Gordon (“Ralph Connor”); and the distinguished Eastern missionary, “Formosa Mackay.”

Like the Glengarry settlement, the Zorra community was, in its day, a little Highland Scotland in itself. But, as in the other, the Macdonell clan, the great Roman Catholic Highlander of the Western Isles predominated; so, in Zorra and its surrounding settlements, it was the great northern, Protestant, Presbyterian clan Mackay that formed the bulk of the population. It is remarkable, after all, how alike Highlanders are. Though separated in creed, both of these were fighting clans; and both produced great soldiers and “saints of God.”

Strange to say, these two clans contributed the two most famous of the Scottish Fencible regiments. The first Lord Reay, the chief of the Clan Mackay, was the commander who made the Reay Regiment famous in the fighting annals of Europe. Lord Reay was one of the first baronets of New Scotland, and his uncle, Sir Robert Gordon, was Premier or First Baronet of Nova Scotia.

General Hugh Mackay of Scourie was William the Third’s Captain-General of his Scottish forces, and met Claverhouse at Killiecrankie. A ballad of that day ran:—

Mackay of Scourie was a great Christian soldier; and without doubt he saved Scotland for William. He died afterwards in the action at Steenkirk fighting the French. The King attended his funeral, and when the body was laid in the grave said, “There he lies; and an honester man the world cannot produce.” Comparing Mackay with another general who was also killed in the same action, William said: “Mackay served a higher Master, but the other served me with his soul.”

In 1798 the Glengarry Fencibles and the Reay Fencibles were both ordered to Ireland to quell the rebellion there; which they did in a short time. It may not be known that a granddaughter of the commander of the Reay Regiment which went to Ireland, lived and died in Woodstock, and is buried in the Scottish graveyard there in the heart of the Zorra settlement of “fighting Mackays.” She was a descendant of the great Lord Reay and of the family of Hugh of Scourie, his famous cousin. Her father-in-law and cousin was the last Mackay of the family who owned lands in Scourie.

Thus is the Zorra Mackay settlement, as is the Glengarry settlement with the great Macdonald chiefs, closely associated with the great Mackay names in Scotland’s history and that of the Empire.

The Glengarry settlement was, as has been pointed out, closely associated with the Macdonald settlements in Prince Edward Island.

The Zorra settlement was also linked to the great Pictou settlement of Mackays, many of the latter of whom removed to Zorra from Nova Scotia on the decline of the shipbuilding trade.

The men of Zorra are now to be found scattered all over the Dominion, in the far west and middle west, and some in the republic to the south. But all are bearing witness to the splendid ideals and fighting qualities of the great race to which they belong.

THE HURON AND BRUCE SETTLEMENTS

Two leading ideas are for ever closely associated in our minds with patriotism, and they are the land of our birth and upbringing and the race or stock from which we have sprung.

In these two respects the hardy sons and the fair daughters of Huron and Bruce are, without doubt, among the highly favoured of earth’s peoples.

Nowhere in the world is there to be found a more healthful and beautiful region than that bordering upon Lake Huron, where it forms the coast-line of those two picturesque and progressive counties.

With a splendid soil, productive of fine fruits and grains, and rich in pasturage for cattle, a climate at once invigorating and salubrious, it is a region of pleasant meadows and sloping hillsides, delightful streams, and a bold and, in many places, sublime coast-line of cliffs and bays and jutting promontories, facing one of the most splendid sweeps of fresh water in either hemisphere. It is a region in all respects the fit cradle for a hardy, self-reliant, and happy race of men and women—fit home alone for the indomitable and nobly strong.

But dear as is the soil whereon we tread, and the waters and lands and hills and skyline of the region of our birth and youth, even dearer to us all must ever be the thought and memory of the race or stock to which we belong, and from which we have sprung.

If of late we, as a people, have failed to realise this idea, it is not because it is not a sacred obligation thrust upon our higher nature, as the proper attribute of any great and heroic people, but rather because our life in a new country has so exaggerated the stern necessity and the ephemeral achievement of the present, that all natural and fine feelings and ideals have been forced into the background. If we only go back to the days of our grandparents we will enter a condition of society where it was quite common to have three, and even four, generations dwelling under one roof; and we will witness a community where for generations all were knit in the same bonds of blood and kinship, where the joys and sorrows, the good and ill, the faith and speech and song were those of one people, when the rich and poor, the great and humble, were all, though remotely, of a common stock or origin.

On this Western continent of aliens from many lands, in this hurried day of constant change and mutual struggle, it is difficult for us to understand the conditions of society just described. But if we pause to remember and consider, we must realise that it was from just such a stock that we have sprung.

When, less than three-quarters of a century ago, the pioneers of Huron and Bruce began slowly at first an influx of settlement, which continued up to the latter end of the last century, into what was then a wild and lonely region of almost trackless forest, they came in for the most part in companies—sons, fathers, and grandfathers, new from the more strict, more narrow, but ideal society of the loved Old Land of mountain and misty glen.

Whatever of good, whatever of hope, whatever of ideal and character they brought out and established in the New World was the product and gift of the Old Land and the old days. The very manner of life, the quaint accent of speech, the wonderful old Gaelic tongue, the stern faith in God, the very manner of prayer and praise were, and have continued ever since as, the blessed gift of the old homeland away a whole ocean apart from the new, yet ever near and dear to the remembering heart and the Celtic imagination.

It is impossible for the observant traveller to visit this region of a sturdy, happy, industrious, and intellectual people and not see, down every roadside and village street, in the school, the church, the market, and home, strong evidence, even yet, that the bone and sinew, the brain and ideal, the faith and energy, that have made these counties what they are to-day, are the product of the great Scottish and Ulster-Scottish race, cradled for a thousand years in the storied land of Wallace and Burns and Bruce and Bannockburn.

While we are all Canadians in this promising young land, yet it is well that we should not forget how much of our blood is of the old Scottish and Ulster-Scottish stock—that people of the iron will and the dourest, sternest, most uncompromising Christianity in the whole world. While we lead in the mart or senate, or guide the ship or the plough, or weld the character or the iron at the anvil, it is for our good to remember that the faith in earth and heaven is still at root the old faith; that even though we may forget the Old Land and the old accent, the old slower, sterner, narrower ways, that we have to think of God as did our fathers, and that though in a stranger and far land He leads us still.

In this connection it is but due to our ancestry if we, not in any spirit of boasting, but of reverence and thoughtfulness, remember what Scotland has meant to our sires and grandsires in this land of their adoption, and of what it may yet mean to us in the present and the future.

It is significant to recall that the first British connection with Canada was a purely Scottish one, and that the first name given to the Maritime Provinces and all of Quebec south of the St. Lawrence was New Scotland, or Nova Scotia. This vast territory was, by act of the Scottish Parliament, made an adjunct of the Scottish kingdom, and Sir William Alexander was constituted its Governor. Nearly three hundred years have passed since then; and during all this time there has not been a portion of what is now under our vast Dominion that has not been conquered, reclaimed, and settled by members of our hardy race.

From Sir William Alexander, the first Governor of New Scotland, and Abraham Martin, the brave old Scottish pilot who guided Champlain’s ship up the St. Lawrence, to Lord Strathcona, we have had a long list of mighty men in all walks of life, prominent in the upbuilding of Canada, bearing the clan and family names of our race—such as Macdonald, Mackenzie, Galt, Fraser, Mowat, Campbell, Drummond, Ross, Cameron, McLean, Logan, Fleming, Wilson, Grant, and Smith. Indeed, there is not a clan or family name of Highland or Lowland Scotland that has not been in some way associated with Canadian development from sea to sea.

The people of Huron and Bruce have been specially favoured in this respect. It is true they have a notable proportion of English, Irish, and German stock among their population who have borne witness to the fine qualities of their stock; but it is not any the less a fact that the greater portion of the two counties is settled by direct Scottish or Ulster-Scottish stock. Everywhere in the towns and country places of this beautiful lakeside region are met the characteristics of the Scotsman, either direct from the old land of Burns and Scott or from that first great Scottish colony of sturdy Scotsmen, Ulster; where Edward Bruce, the brother of the famous Robert, made the first Scottish invasion, and where, throughout the centuries since, the Scotsman has settled and made the land his own, and where to-day he is more Scottish, and his Presbyterianism is more of the old school, than anywhere else in the world.

The very name of the more northerly of these two counties is significant and fitting. The name of Bruce will ever be associated with Scotland and Scotsmen, and is synonymous with the cause of liberty and national freedom; and as the great Scottish royal hero and patriot fought against oppression without and ills within, so may the sons of Bruce and Huron ever be found on the side of true liberty of thought and action, and enemies of all tyranny and ill in the community and State.

Goderich, the leading town of the county of Huron, was founded by a noted Scottish writer and coloniser, that remarkable man John Galt, who was second only to Sir Walter Scott as a novelist, and who had so much to do with the pioneer settlement of Western Ontario. The present city of Galt bears his name, and Guelph was founded by him and named in honour of the Royal Family. He called the beautiful capital of Huron County after Lord Goderich, the Colonial Minister for that day. Associated with Galt in his early settlements for the Canada Company was that eccentric and original character Dr. Dunlop, another Scotsman, who personally built the first building erected at Goderich.

In his autobiography Galt describes the first appearance of the Huron coast and the site of Goderich:—

The chief agents in the early settlement of the county of Bruce were Scotsmen. The townships have nearly all Scottish names, the rest being mostly Indian. The Scottish ones are Lindsay, Arran, Carrick, Bruce, Culross, Elderslie, Greenock, Kincardine, and Kinloss.

The surrenders of the lands from the Indians were procured through Scotsmen. Lord Elgin, for whom Bruce was named, was the Governor of the day. His Secretary was Lawrence Oliphant, a noted Scottish writer who was the author of the account of Elgin’s mission to China. The village of Oliphant, on the Huron shore opposite Wiarton, was named after him. Oliphant also held the position of Superintendent of Indian Affairs. He effected in 1854 the surrender to the Government of what is called the Saugeen Peninsula, comprising the greater part of Northern Bruce. He had as coadjutors three noted Scotsmen—James Ross of Belleville, a well-known lawyer; Charles Rankin, a noted land surveyor; and Alexander MacNab, the Crown Lands Agent, who resided at Southampton, and was father of Mr. John MacNab of that place.

In 1848 the Lake Huron shore in this region was surveyed by Alexander Murray, Assistant Geologist to Sir William Logan. One of the earliest pioneers of Bruce was Capt. Alexander McGregor of Goderich, who, in 1831, developed the fishing trade at the famous Fishing Islands above Saugeen. The old stone building—now a ruin—on Main Station Island, opposite Oliphant, was the first permanent building erected in the county of Bruce. Doctors Dunlop and Hamilton of Goderich formed a new company to exploit these fisheries. Another fishing company of Scotsmen of Southampton was that formed in 1848 by Captains Spence and Kennedy, who purchased the rights of the Goderich Company. Capt. Kennedy was a Scottish half-breed. He went in command of a party to discover Sir John Franklin. Spence was an Orkney man, probably of the Selkirk settlement. The present writer knew Spence. He died in 1904. He was a cousin of Mr. William Houston, the well-known journalist and compiler of the Constitutional Documents on Education.

One of the two pioneer settlers of Kincardine landed at that place in the spring of 1848. His name was Allan Cameron, or “Black” Cameron. The pioneer settler on the Durham Road was a young Scotsman named John Beatty. His sister, Miss Beatty, was the first white woman to undertake the hardships of bush life in Bruce County. The Beatties walked on foot from Owen Sound by way of the Indian trail to Southampton, and from there they followed the beach to Kincardine. This was in 1848.

This year more Scotsmen began to come into the Kincardine district. They were Alexander McCallay; William Dowall; three brothers, Donald, Alexander, and John McCaskill; George McLeod; two brothers, James and Alexander Munro; and Patrick Downie. The following year Capt. Duncan Rowan and his brother John arrived, and the land was gradually taken up. In 1849 the first free-grant lands in Huron township were settled by a Scottish group—Duncan and Alexander McRae and Findlay McLennan and their families.

Among the pioneers of Brant township were John Lundy; Thomas Todd; Jos. L. Lamont; and three Stewarts—Archibald, Alexander, and Moses.

Up to 1852 the settlers were mixed, with a good average of Scotsmen; but in that year 109 families, from the Island of Lewis, in Scotland, settled in the township of Huron. They were mostly fishermen, shepherds, and crofters, who only knew Gaelic, so that they had a hard time for many years. The Island of Lewis is in the Western Hebrides, is a part of the shire of Ross, and is a famous place.

From there have gone forth many adventurers into our West and North-West, and into all parts of the world. The people are a hardy crofter and fisher-folk, who have endured much from Nature in the past and have looked mostly to the sea for a living, and often a burial. The land of the Island of Lewis was, in the past, largely in the hands of certain families of the McLeods, Mackenzies, Rosses, and McIvors, with some McDonalds, all of whom were connected with the Hudson’s Bay Company.

The people who came to Bruce were a simple, God-fearing, and steadfast folk, but who had all their troubles ahead of them by reason of their utter ignorance of farming as it is carried on upon this continent. A complete list of the Lewis emigrants is given in Robertson’s “History of Bruce County.” Of the 109 heads of families there were 29 Macdonalds, 16 McLeods, 10 Mackays, 11 McLennans, and 7 McIvors. These people were mostly fishermen, and had their passage provided by the proprietor of the Island of Lewis.

There were many other Scottish Highlanders settled in Bruce besides the Lewis emigrants, and so numerous were the “Macs” that all sorts of nicknames had to be given to distinguish individuals—such as Little, Big, Black, Red, Long, and Short; and Robertson says of one school section the John Macdonalds were so plentiful that they had to be separately designated by a letter of the alphabet, as John A, John B, until John U closed the list.

With such a stalwart and enduring stock, it is not to be wondered at that these counties became noted among the finest of the Canadian communities. They not only produced able local representatives in all walks of life, but they also sent their sons and daughters out to the settlements of the Far West, and had their part in the building up of that part of Canada. The youth of Bruce and Huron distinguished themselves in South Africa, as well as in our own North-West Rebellion.

From the first settlement the Bruce people were loyal and ready to defend their country. The earliest Militia rolls of 1859 show that the majority were of Scottish origin. A list of these veterans is interesting: Col. Alexander Sproat; Richard Mclnnis; Neil McLeod; John MacNab; Donald Campbell; William Walker; James Hogg; George Hamilton; Alex. Angus; Peter Angus; Donald McPherson; James Calder; Alex. McIntosh; James McIntosh; Edward Ferguson; Andrew Laurie; Thos. Smith; Edward Kennedy; Wm. Chisholm; James Jack; James George; Thomas Sharp; Thomas Montgomery; John Murray; Alex. Munro; Peter McGregor; James Fleming; James Mason; Duncan Ross; Thomas Adair; James Orr; Alex. Robertson; John Spence; W. S. Scott, M.D.; Neil Campbell. This comprises the Scottish members of No. 1 Company, 1st Battalion of Bruce in 1859.

When the Militia Act was amended in 1868, the following year three Bruce Scotsmen received commissions—Lieut.-Col. Andrew Lindsay; Major John Gillies; and Major James Rowand.

The Captains of Companies were also all Scotsmen: Robt. Scott; M. McKinnon; J. H. Coulthard; John McIntyre; James Stark; Andrew Freeborn; and James Allan.

In the Riel Rebellion of 1870 the Scotsmen from Bruce were Capt. Hunter; Capt. Thos. Adair; A. McIvor; Jas. Glendenning; Wm. McVicar; Duncan Kerr; James Gilmour; J. Gilroy; Donald Robertson; George Smith; Robt. McFarlane; and John Kerr. In 1885 the second North-West Rebellion broke out, and the Bruce battalion distinguished itself under Capt. Douglas.

In South Africa, Bruce gave a hero to the Empire in Trooper Gordon Cummings, of Kitchener’s Horse. He was born in Saugeen in December, 1875, and was killed at the Battle of Nooitge-dacht on December 13, 1900, while gallantly striving to procure ammunition for his column.

An account of some noted residents of the county of Bruce of Scottish extraction must close this brief essay.

Lieut.-Col. Alexander Sproat, who was one of the earliest settlers, was of Scottish descent, a graduate of Queen’s College, a provincial land surveyor; then a bank manager; County Treasurer, 1864 to 1873; first Member for Bruce in the Dominion Parliament; and Colonel of the 32nd Battalion. He was made Registrar of Prince Albert, North-West Territory, in 1880, and died in 1890.

The Rev. John Eckford was born in Scotland, educated at Edinburgh University, and came to Canada in 1851. He was a noted preacher in Bruce County, Reeve of Brant in 1857, and Superintendent of Schools up to 1871.

Alexander Shaw, K.C., came to Bruce in 1858; was County Solicitor in 1867; was elected to Parliament in 1878 in the Conservative interest.

Donald Sinclair was born at Islay in Scotland in 1829, and came to Bruce in 1853. He taught school, became a merchant at Paisley, and was elected to the House of Assembly from 1867 to 1883, and was appointed Registrar that year; a Liberal.

William Gunn was born in 1816 near Glasgow. In 1852 he came to Kincardine from Napanee. He was a merchant; then Superintendent of Schools from 1853 to 1858; and Deputy Clerk of the Crown to 1894. He was also a Commissioner to Scotland on the Herring Industry.

Henry Cargill, Esq., M.P., was of Ulster-Scottish stock. He was born in 1838, and educated at Queen’s College, Kingston. He became a successful lumber merchant in the county of Bruce, and was elected to Parliament for East Bruce from 1887 to 1903. He was a Conservative.

Alexander McNeill, Esq., M.P., was a distinguished Member of the Canadian House of Commons, where he represented North Bruce for eighteen years in the Conservative interest, being noted as a leading Imperialist. He introduced the first motion in the Canadian House of Commons leading to closer commercial relations with the mother country. He was born in Larne, county of Antrim, Ireland, of Ulster-Scottish and Scottish stock. His father’s family was a branch of the McNeills of Gigha, who went into Ulster with the Scottish settlements and had lands in Antrim. His mother, his father’s cousin, was a sister of the famous Duncan McNeill, Lord Colonsay, Lord Justice of Scotland. Mr. McNeill’s maternal grandfather was McNeill of Colonsay. He studied for the Bar at the Inner Temple, London, England, but came to Bruce County about 1870, and has been a successful farmer. His residence, “The Corran,” near Wiarton on Colpoys Bay, is one of the most beautiful places in the county. He is an earnest and able student of all public questions concerning both Canada and the Empire.

Alexander MacNab was born in 1809. He was appointed Crown Lands Agent for Bruce, and was for thirty years connected with the Land Office in the county. His son, John M. MacNab, residing at Southampton, is an authority on the county history.

John Gillies, Esq., M.P., was born at Kilcalomnell, Argyllshire, Scotland. He came to Canada in 1852; was Warden of Bruce in 1863, 1869, 1870, 1871, and 1872; was elected to Parliament from 1872 to 1882, when he was defeated by Alexander McNeill. He was a strong Liberal.

John Tolmie, Esq., M.P., the present popular Member of the Dominion House for North Bruce, is a Scotsman by birth, having been born in the parish of Laggan in Scotland in 1845. His mother was Mary Fraser. Mr. Tolmie came to Canada in 1868, and has been a farmer and salt manufacturer. He has been returned to the House of Commons four times in the Liberal interest for West and North Bruce.

James Ernest Campbell, Esq., J.P., merchant and manufacturer, of Hepworth, is a prominent man in the county. He was nominated three times in the Liberal interest in North Bruce. Mr. Campbell is of Ulster-Scottish stock, being a son of the Rev. Thomas Swainston Campbell (Anglican), of Wiarton, whose father, the Rev. Thomas Campbell, M.A., of Glasgow University, and first Rector of Belleville, Upper Canada, was son of James Campbell, Esq., of Kilrea, of a cadet branch of the House of Argyll. Mr. Campbell was appointed by the Canadian Government as Commercial Agent for Canada at Leeds and Hull, England, but declined the position. His elder brother, Thomas Francis Campbell, M.D., of Hepworth, is a well-known local physician.

THE GOVERNORS-GENERAL OF SCOTTISH EXTRACTION CONNECTED WITH CANADA

No stronger link has bound Canada to the Motherland than that of her Governors-General, who have so ably and faithfully represented the British Sovereign in the Western world. It must naturally be a matter of pride to all men of Scottish descent in Canada to realise that the greater majority of our viceregal representatives have been of Scottish birth or extraction. Certainly, in a work of this nature, it is but right to lay stress upon this remarkable fact, which is but one more witness to the proof that Canada is, indeed, newer Scotland.

When we go back in our Canadian history to the first quarter of the seventeenth century, down a period of nearly three hundred years, we find that Canada, or New Scotland, is made part of, or an outlying extension of, Scotland; that even then our country was connected with the Scottish race; and the object of movements and ambitions arising among and influencing that ancient people. Ever since, in some manner, Canada has been connected with Scottish success or Scottish failure. Scottish dreams, having their birth in the Old Land of mountain and glen, have had more than their fulfilment in the forests and plains and seaports of the Caledonia of the West. From Alexander to Strathcona Canada has been closely woven into the web of Scottish life and its trusteeship of the outer-lands of the broad earth. Likewise can it be said that the history of Canada is but an extension of that of Scotland, and that during a period of three hundred years past the secret of the greatness and weakness of the greater portion of our Canadian peoples is to be sought for and found, not so much in our borders, as in the misty mountains and glens, the castles and sheilings of the loved Old Land. The pride and race-ideal of the Canadian boy and girl should, if truly inculcated, go back beyond Wolfe and Brock and Queenston and the Heights of Abraham to Bruce and Bannockburn. Truly if the race and the blood count for anything (and if they do not, what else should?), the greater majority of our people have in their veins that fierce and hot blood which brooked no conqueror, either martial or religious, for the glorious period of a thousand years of Scotland’s greatness; and it would seem worse than madness to expect to build up on this continent a new race-patriotism from which so much of splendid achievement and venerable race-memory were excluded.

Therefore, from this important standpoint, it will be more than merely interesting to the Scottish Canadian to know that the greater number of our viceregal representatives were of Scottish blood, and connected with, or representatives of, families renowned in the splendid history of North Britain.

Whatever may be the future fate of the country now called Canada, she will never, so long as the present race predominates, be separated from the history and dominant spirit of Scotland; and if we but travel from Nova Scotia to the Fraser River, we will find many a name of place or treasured chronicle as lingering witness to the conquering will and fearless spirit of those, her missioners of material advancement and intellectual and spiritual enlightenment, whom she has sent forth into all lands.

The first Scotsman appointed a Governor in Canada was the famous Raleigh, of Scotland; Sir William Alexander, Viscount Canada, and Earl of Stirling, who was in 1621 by James the Sixth and the Scottish Parliament appointed hereditary Lieutenant of New Scotland. Alexander’s Governorship was over all that country now known as the Maritime Provinces, including Prince Edward Island and all the islands in the Gulf, except Newfoundland, with all of what is now Quebec south of the river St. Lawrence. Canada has every reason to look back with pride upon this her first Governor, who was also her first founder.

It is about time that a statue to this great man should be erected in the Dominion; and it is no credit to the Canadians of Scottish extraction and no witness to their exact knowledge of Scottish and Canadian history that long ere this no monument to him as the real founder of British Canada has been thought of or deemed necessary.

It is a disgrace to British Canadians to have to say that while monuments to Champlain have been erected in the Maritime Provinces and Quebec—and one is soon to be placed in the capital at the expense of the Canadian Government—that no monument has ever been suggested to this great Scotsman.

The second Governor, if we except the second Earl of Stirling, who, like his illustrious father, was deeply interested in the founding and colonisation of early Canada, was Sir David Kirke, another distinguished man of Scottish extraction.

The first Governor of Canada under British rule after the capture of Quebec was another Scotsman, General Murray, a brother of Lord Elibank, who succeeded to the command on the death of Wolfe; and when the civil Government was formed in 1763 he became the first civil Governor. In 1782 Henry Hamilton, a Scotsman, was Lieutenant-Governor; and he was Administrator in 1784. In 1805 Thomas Dunn was President and Administrator of the Government of Lower Canada. In 1797 Peter Hunter was Administrator of Upper Canada; and in 1814 Sir Gordon Drummond, a distinguished soldier, occupied the same position.

The Duke of Richmond, who was Governor-General from 1818 to 1819, when his able career was ended in so sudden and tragic a manner, was of royal Scottish extraction on the paternal side, being descended from Charles the Second, while his mother was the daughter of the fourth Marquess of Lothian, head of the great House of Kerr. When the Duke died in so sad a manner, the result of the bite of a mad fox, he was on a journey through the Ottawa district, studying the country in the interests of development and emigration. The privations consequent on his journey in the wilderness, where he succumbed, must have added much to his sufferings in his last hours. He died literally in the performance of his duty, as so many faithful Britons have done in connection with the upbuilding of Canada.

The Duke’s daughter, the Lady Sarah Lennox, married Sir Peregrine Maitland, a scion of another noted Scottish family. He became Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, and was Administrator of the Canadian Government in 1820, following the Duke’s death. He was fated to govern in a difficult period when restless spirits, suffering under some real grievances, were being influenced by less sincere intriguers to break the bond to the Motherland. There is proof that ever since the early years of the nineteenth century, when Wilcox was sent over from the United States as a paid emissary of insurrection, there was always such an influence in the country.

Lord Dalhousie was appointed Governor-General in 1820, as successor to the Duke of Richmond. He was the representative of the noble Scottish House of Ramsay, and his mother was of the old family of Glen in Linlithgowshire. He was a distinguished scholar and statesman, and a successful Governor in that difficult period which preceded the Lower Canadian Rebellion. History shows this Governor to have been a kindly and refined gentleman, with a fine mind and a strong ideal to serve his Sovereign and the country well. Lord Dalhousie was recalled and sent to India as Governor, where his son, the tenth Earl, went later, in 1847, and remained until 1856.

Lord Gosford, who became Governor-General in 1835, and remained up to 1837, was of the ancient Scottish family of Acheson of Gosford, county of Haddington, Scotland; from which place the family take their title as Earls of Gosford, though the title belongs to the Irish peerage. He was also a baronet of Nova Scotia. His ancestor, Sir Archibald Acheson, of Gosford in Haddington, was one of the noted undertakers for land in the great Scottish settlement in Ulster in the seventeenth century.

Lord Gosford was fated to be a Governor in a critical period of our history, when no Governor could cope with the extreme conditions which existed in both Upper and Lower Canada, and which evidently had to come to a sharp ending in the Civil War which ensued. It has now been proved that much of the so-called misrule of the Governors was really traceable to the local politicians, whose several factions each strove to use the Sovereign’s representative for their own particular uses. Lord Gosford strove to do his duty under a trying ordeal which neither he nor any other single man could prevent. In Lower Canada it was a plain case of a clever demagogue and his short-sighted allies, who foolishly dreamed that they could destroy British rule and set up a pocket republic of their own on the St. Lawrence. The “representative Government” plea as the cause of this rebellion was just as much a pretence as was the “no tax without representation” of the American rebels in 1776. In Upper Canada it was different; but the Upper Canadian Rebellion would never have come to a real active head had there been no previous outbreak in Lower Canada.

Lord Cathcart, 1845-46, was the next Scottish Governor. He belonged to one of the oldest Scottish families, who were Barons since 1447. His mother was of the Border Scottish family of Elliot, and was first cousin to the Earl of Minto. His connection with Canada was during the interesting period of the Union, the last and vain political experiment before Confederation. During this period the seat of Government was removed from place to place in both provinces, and the continual race jealousy between Upper and Lower Canada was becoming stronger year by year. The truth was that the great growth of the Upper Province demanded an adequate representation not agreeable to the claims and privileges of the Lower.

Lord Cathcart’s successor was Lord Elgin, during whose tenure of office the party and race feeling reached their climax for the second time. Lord Elgin was one of the finest of our Governors; but he was made the victim of extreme party hatred, and was hooted and insulted in the streets. In spite of this he did his duty as he conceived it; and history has justified him and now condemns the actions of both parties in the country, who made his position as Governor almost impossible. The idea has been instilled into the minds of our people that the whole trouble arose out of what was called the family compact, and the cruel tyranny of withholding from the people the free boon of responsible Government. Since Confederation we have had this glorious gift so much expatiated upon by cheap orators. But alas for human consistency and the much-be-praised democracy! Has it improved matters? Have we not now even more than formerly of party strife and mutual abuse? Does not the Press of each party continually educate us into the idea that the party in power is robbing and ruining the rest of the country? Have we not had enough land-grabbing and fraud on the part of public officers ventilated in our present-day Press during the last twenty years to totally eclipse all the charges brought against any Government official since that arch-grafter, Benjamin Franklin, first inaugurated such nefarious practices upon this unfortunate continent? Then, when we think of the present day and the much-abused family compact of the 1837 period, it is much to be feared that if Lyon McKenzie were living to-day he would feel that the intermarried ruling class of his day sank almost into insignificance before its counterpart of the present time.

It is for the Scottish-Canadian to correct this grave evil, and to explain this strange failure in the infallibility of this democracy, which he has so long regarded as the sole panacea for all social and political ills. It is now becoming realised that the early British Governors in this country had a good deal of right on their side, and had often only acted for the best. Lord Elgin’s experience of Canada was, however, not a pleasant one; and he was glad to leave the country, where he had striven to do his duty. He was in no way to blame for the stormy period, as both Provinces had, at the Union, one responsible Government; and Elgin had full instructions to consult his Ministers. The whole difficulty was in the people themselves. His distinguished father-in-law, Lord Durham, who had so much to do with the granting of responsible Government, had an equally disagreeable experience as Governor.

Lord Elgin was male representative of the famous family of Bruce, renowned in Scottish history, because one of its greatest kings, Robert Bruce, whose daughter married a Stuart, and through lack of male heirs of Robert Bruce carried the royal line of Scotland into that family. Lord Elgin’s ancestor was a cousin of the illustrious monarch whose name is immortal in Scottish history.

The next Canadian viceregal representative of Scottish extraction was Lord Lisgar, 1868-72.

This statesman and nobleman was in the male line the descendant and representative of the Scottish family of Young of Auldbar, who removed into Ulster at the settlement of that province. He was also descended of the Houses of Douglas and of Knox of Ranfurly, kinsman of John Knox. Lord Lisgar thus was strongly Scottish in his descent, and whatever good he did for Canada was owing to his Scottish blood. He was the first Governor-General under the Canadian Confederation, and proved himself a dignified and competent representative of the Queen in the new Dominion of the West.

He was succeeded by one of the most popular of all our Governors, and one who was, like himself, of the Ulster-Scottish stock, Lord Dufferin. In previous accounts these Ulster Governors have been classed as Irishmen. But, as in this chapter I have taken the trouble to show for the first time, this is neither correct nor fair to the Scottish race as a race. Therefore, as this work has for its object to deal with the Scottish peoples in connection with Canada, it is necessary to point out very definitely the true facts in the cases cited.

Lord Dufferin, though exceedingly proud of his Hamilton descent, was paternally of the Scottish family of Blackwood, of whom the famous Edinburgh publishers of that name are a noted branch. The Blackwoods were originally a Fifeshire family, and Lord Dufferin’s ancestors came into Ulster at the Settlement.

On the maternal side the distinguished Governor was representative and senior heir-general of the Hamiltons, Earls of Clanbrassil. The first of the family to leave Scotland for Ulster was James Hamilton, son of the Rev. Hans Hamilton, Vicar of Dunlop, in Ayrshire, who became the first Viscount Clanbrassil. While Lord Dufferin’s titles were Irish, he was very much of a Scotsman in blood and tradition, and it is interesting to Canadians of Scottish stock to remember that he was Governor at a period of our country’s history when the two pre-eminent leaders of Canadian party politics were also of Scottish stock—Sir John A. Macdonald and the Honourable Alexander Mackenzie. It is not necessary in this chapter to go into the whole career of this noted statesman and diplomat, as it is well known to all Canadians.

Other members of the noted clan or family of Hamilton have been associated with Canadian history. One family of merchants of the name were prominent in our history and were associated with Quebec and Hamilton in Upper Canada. The Honourable Robert Hamilton, Member of the Upper Canada Legislative Council, was a leading member of this Canadian family, and the present venerable Anglican Archbishop of Ottawa is of the Quebec branch of this Scottish-Canadian family.

Lord Dufferin had for his successor another distinguished Viceroy, and the heir of one of the few Scottish princely houses. The Marquis of Lorne, now Duke of Argyll, is of royal extraction not only by descent from Robert Bruce and the royal house of Stuart through many female ancestors, but it is not generally known that he is the male representative of the old princely line of O’Duin, Kings of Ulster and Argyll in an ancient period of Scotland’s history. Even down to the days of Mary Queen of Scots the Earls of Argyll lived in regality within their own borders, and were regarded by the Scottish monarchs rather as powerful allies than as subjects. In the time of Queen Mary, the Earl of Argyll was living as a prince in Argyll, with barons or lords under him, of whom the three mentioned in history were Lord Glenorchy, ancestor of the Marquess of Breadalbane; Lord Auchinbreck, head of that noted house of soldiers and baronets; and Lord Ardkinglas; the heads of the three great cadet houses of the family, and all Baronets of Nova Scotia.

The present writer has seen an original letter written by King Charles the First to the great Marquess of Argyll, in which he treated him rather as an important ally and influential Scottish leader than as a subject; and appealed to him to give his aid and influence to the Royal cause in the trouble with the Roundheads. Down to that period the chiefs of Argyll had held the hereditary justiciary-ship of all Scotland, which placed them in an almost regal position. This, the eighth Earl and Marquess resigned into the hands of the King, retaining, however, to himself and his heirs the jurisdiction of the Western Isles and Argyll, and wherever else he had lands in Scotland, which was ratified by an Act of Parliament in 1633. It was, therefore, quite meet that the heir of such a great historic house should marry a princess of the reigning Royal House. But it was especially interesting to Canadians that they should be sent to represent the monarch in the young Dominion. The Marquis of Lorne and the Princess Louise did much in Canada to forward the intellectual and material interests of the country. He had much to do with the opening up of the Far West, which he traversed to the shores of the Western Ocean at a time when it was a most difficult undertaking; and he has keenly appreciated the great lifework, in this connection, of his close and distinguished friend and fellow Empire-builder, Lord Strathcona.

HIS GRACE THE NINTH DUKE OF ARGYLL, K.T.

The Duke of Argyll, like his distinguished father, is a statesman and a scholar, and is one of the ablest and greatest Imperialists in the British Empire. He has, ever since his viceregal term in Canada, been deeply interested in the welfare of this country. In his many speeches, when here, and since on Imperial occasions, he has ever expressed a firm belief in the great possibilities of this country as a nation in the Empire. In addition to his other notable qualities he possesses the poetical gift in no small degree, a gift that seems hereditary in the blood of the great family of which he is the head. Some of his finest verses were written about Canada, and during his stay in this country. Notable examples are his poem, the finest ever written on the subject, “Quebec,” and his “Hymn for Confederation.” He and the Princess were the founders of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and the Royal Society of Canada.

The Duke’s ancestors and the cadet houses of his family contain a long list of noted statesmen, patriots, soldiers, scholars, and divines who have been closely associated with the history of Scotland and the Empire. Many of his name, and some of his blood, have borne a prominent part in the history of Canada; and thousands of good Canadian citizens bear his name and are worthy members of the famous clan.

The Earl of Aberdeen, who was Governor-General from 1893 to 1898, was also the head of another distinguished Scottish house, and the male representative of the great clan Gordon. This name, like that of Campbell, has for centuries been connected with the history of Scotland, as represented in the noble houses of the Dukes of Gordon, the Earls of Huntly, Sutherland, Aberdeen, and Kenmure. To merely mention those houses is to suggest to the reader of Scottish and British history a whole host of associations with all that is noble, chivalrous, tragic, and moving in the past centuries of Britain.

A few personalities stand out prominently on the frescoes of memory, such as George Gordon, fourth Earl of Huntly, the famous “Cock of the North,” who virtually held Northern Scotland in his grasp, and was, for all his sad end, considered to have been the wealthiest, wisest, and most powerful subject in Scotland in his day. His famous ancestor, Sir Adam Gordon, who in 1305 sat at Westminster as one of the representatives of Scotland; Sir George Gordon, first Earl of Aberdeen, Lord High Chancellor of Scotland; the famous poet, Lord Byron, whose mother was a Gordon of Gight; the great Earl of Aberdeen, grandfather of the present Earl, Premier of England; and last, but not least, the famous General Gordon of Khartoum, one of the greatest saints and heroes in British history. Lord Aberdeen has had a distinguished career as a viceregal representative—twice in Ireland and once in Canada. He is also Lord-Lieutenant of Aberdeenshire. He and his noted Countess were among the most intimate friends and followers of the famous Liberal leader, the late Right Hon. William Ewart Gladstone, whose son has become the first Governor of United South Africa. (It might be not out of place here to mention that Gladstone was of Scottish descent. His father’s family were Gledstanes, of Southern Scotland, and his mother was a Robertson of Stornoway, Isle of Lewis. Her maternal grandfather was Colin McKenzie, Bailie of Dingwall, of the Coul family of McKenzie. There are members of this family living in Canada.) Lady Aberdeen, who is known throughout the world as an active leader in many organisations to raise and alleviate humanity, comes also of a noted Scottish stock. Her father was Sir Dudley Coutts Majoribanks, first Lord Tweedmouth, and representative of the old family of Majoribanks of Holly and Leuchie and that Ilk; and through her mother she is of the Ulster-Scottish branch of the Hoggs and Swintons of Berwickshire.

Lord Aberdeen’s military secretary in Canada was another noted Scotsman and a scion of an ancient Caithness family, Captain John Sinclair, since then Member of Parliament for Forfarshire, and now Secretary of State for Scotland, lately raised to the peerage as Lord Pentland. He is married to Lady Marjorie Gordon, only daughter of Lord Aberdeen. Lord Pentland has had a successful career as a statesman, and is a fine scholar. He is of the Dunbeath branch of the family of the Earls of Caithness. His father was the late Capt. George Sinclair. Lord Pentland was also Member of Parliament for Dunbarton County and Assistant Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for War and a Captain of the 5th Lancers, and also a member of the London County Council.

It is very significant of Scotland’s part in the building and destiny of Canada to turn from the historic families of Gordon and Sinclair to that of Elliot.

The Earl of Minto, who succeeded the Earl of Aberdeen as Governor-General, represents this old historic Scottish house. Like Lord Aberdeen, he is also a Baronet of Nova Scotia. His ancestor was Gilbert Elliot, of Stobs, who was also ancestor of the famous Lord Heathfield, the defender of Gibraltar. Lord Minto’s ancestors were distinguished jurists, governors, naval and military officers, and ambassadors. Prominent in his family were Sir Gilbert Elliot, Lord Justice Minto; the Honourable Andrew Elliot; Admiral George Elliot; the Right Honourable Hugh Elliot, Governor of Madras; the first Earl of Minto, successively Viceroy of Correa, Ambassador at Vienna, Governor of Bengal, and President of the Board of Control. The present Earl has been one of the most successful Viceroys both in Canada and India. His first connection with our country was as military Secretary to the Marquess of Landsdowne, from 1883 to 1886. Lord Minto is Viscount Melgund of Melgund, County Forfar, and Baron Minto of Minto, County Roxburgh, and Earl of Minto. Lady Minto is a sister of Lord Grey, the present Governor-General of Canada; and is through her mother of the old Scottish family of Farquhar of that Ilk.

The present distinguished Governor-General of Canada, Earl Grey, has accomplished a great deal for the welfare of the Empire in Africa, England and Canada. He is, to-day, one of the most noted personalities in the Empire. As Governor of Canada, he has not only wisely and firmly represented his Sovereign, but he has also from the first held before the Canadian people a high ideal of citizenship and responsibility to the Empire and the Canadian community. Lord Grey, while, as is well known, the representative of a great historical house of Northern England, noted for its statesmen, soldiers, and sailors, is also, on the maternal side, of Scottish extraction, his mother being a daughter of Sir Thomas Harvie Farquhar, Baronet, representative of the ancient family of Gilmanscroft in North Britain. When one visits the beautiful county of Northumberland, on the borders of Scotland, the ancient home of Lord Grey’s paternal ancestors, and his present family seat, and sees the wonderful heather-clad hills extending down over the border, well into the middle of the northern county, it is hard to realise that one is not in Scotland. And when we remember that the name of “Grey” has been a great one in Scotland from the earliest days, and that original Scottish origin is claimed for this noted family, it is not difficult for our Scottish historian to lay some claim to our distinguished Governor as a representative of the great mother of peoples scattered throughout the world. Lord Grey has also added to his many achievements in a unique way by his memorable journey overland to and through the famous Hudson Bay and Straits, being the first Governor-General of Canada to essay or accomplish this difficult journey. The result of this trip has been, however, to show to the outside world that Canada has a great ocean gateway in the north that may some day rival the St. Lawrence, and become a great shipping port for the grains and other products of the ever-growing West. Lady Grey, who has so endeared herself to the Canadian people, is also through her mother of the blood of the great historic House of Lindsay of Balcarres, one of Scotland’s most noted families.

Our next Governor is to be of the Royal Stuart blood, in the person of his Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught, uncle of the King. This will add but a more illustrious example to the long list of Viceroys of Scottish blood who have represented their Sovereign in this the Scotland of the New World.

THE SCOTSMAN AND EDUCATION

It has been truly said that perhaps the strongest instinct of the Scottish people is that well-known intense craving which they have ever had for knowledge and learning. This instinct is not limited to the scholarly class alone, but is widely shared by the whole people to a greater extent than is found in any other nation throughout the world. It is especially strong in the natures of the great financial adventurers in the Old World and the Colonies. This accounts for the fact that so many of them, like Andrew Carnegie, Lord Strathcona, and Sir William Macdonald, have endowed learning and literature so largely. It was no uncommon thing to find among the necessarily limited personal effects of an early pioneer Scottish merchant of Quebec, Hudson Bay, or Virginia, of the eighteenth century, a number of well-chosen and well-thumbed volumes of the classics. Even such a writer as Horace was not excluded. Many of these men led lives of hard, exacting, material, counting-house toil. They were men in whom, from all appearances, literary inclinations were the last thing to be expected. They were plain, hard-faced, often sordid or commonplace appearing dealers in the virgin markets of the material world; and yet underneath that outer husk of exacting mercantile ambition there lay hidden the kernel of the intellect and imagination, that strangely associated characteristic which has so often rendered the successful Scotsman such a mystery to his fellow-beings who could not see below the surface of the everyday man. It has been said that somewhere in every real personality there lurks hidden the soul of a poet. Certainly this is largely true of many Scotsmen famous in the successful outways of the material world. This larger wisdom, this under-dream, this deep sympathy with the finer things of life, which so many of these men have carried with them into the dreary northern wilds, or other remote places of rude and almost savage pioneer life, explains why so many of them have proved to be Nature’s true gentlemen, with such fine instincts for culture, on their return to the purlieus of civilisation. This subtly ingrained or hereditary love of scholarship and refinement will also explain why so many of our Canadian Universities and other seats of learning have been founded by Scottish merchants and financiers, from whom, as a class, in no other nationality would such an intellect-worshipping impulse be expected, or even regarded as possible.

It is this remarkable use or trusteeship of his wealth, here and in the Old World, that sets the Scottish millionaire or merchant prince apart from all others of his class. By reason of his innate knowledge or desire, from the very first, how to use his wealth when it has been acquired, he reveals himself as a scion of the old Scottish aristocracy. The desire to go back, to own the land, to be a lord or laird, to found or aid a college or university, is more than the mere material ambition of success. It shows a deeper spirit. It is often the spirit of a Highland mother acting through her son of a Lowland name. It is often the longing or harking back of a strain of gentle, lordly, religious, military, or scholarly blood, still working in and influencing the otherwise plain, dour, practical business man of the present. This may explain why the chief builder of the Canadian Pacific Railway and a leading spirit in the Hudson’s Bay fur trade sent a regiment to help his Queen and the Empire in South Africa. But this spirit in the Scotsman goes back even farther in the blood than we suspect. Can we wonder at this refined impulse and instinct in the race when we know that before the days of Charlemagne a great wave of the intellect went out from the ancient kingdom of Caledonia, whose capital was at Inverlochy in the Scottish Highlands, and influenced the civilisation of Europe. From those remote days down to the period of James the Fifth and the great John Knox have Scotsmen had high ideals of scholarship and the intellect.

Since then nowhere outside of Scotland have the children of the ancient mother shown this remarkable characteristic more than in Canada. In all grades of our educational development, from the University to the common school, the personality and influence of the Scotsman have been prominent. It is a significant fact in our intellectual history, and one remarkable in the history of any young country, that all of our leading Universities, with scarcely one exception, and our other higher institutions of learning, have been from the first established and controlled by Scotsmen. This fact, more than any other, shows to how great an extent Canada has been a New Scotland in character and ideal, and certainly justifies the publication of a work of this nature.

It can easily be understood that the colleges in connection with the Presbyterian Church had a Scottish origin. But when it is known that not only the Anglican, Roman Catholic, Baptist, and Methodist Colleges, but also the two great independent Universities, have had a similar origin, the importance of this becomes extremely significant.

Without doubt the most prominent Scotsman in connection with Canadian higher education was the Honourable and Right Rev. John Strachan, who, in addition to his work as a divine and statesman, was Canada’s greatest educationalist of the first half of the nineteenth century.

When the narrow mists of religious and party prejudice have cleared away, it will be acknowledged that the omitting of a biography of this remarkable man from a series of works entitled “Makers of Canada” was not merely a rank injustice to the memory of a great man, but was robbing our people of a knowledge of one of the most important personalities in the history of their country.

It has not heretofore been pointed out that this strong and militant scholar was the founder of two of our leading Universities—Toronto and Trinity; that he was intended by the founder, another Scotsman, to be the first Principal of a third—McGill; that he was also the founder and teacher of the first collegiate school in Upper Canada, was also the founder of Upper Canada College; and, by his influence, established the first group of grammar schools in Upper Canada.

When this is realised by the great mass of Canadians, they will wonder that so unique a fact has been so long unchronicled and that his name has remained unhonoured. Dr. Strachan, an Aberdeen and St. Andrews’ man, came out to Canada for the especial purpose of taking charge of the new college, which was one of the chief dreams of that wise and earnest Governor, John Graves Simcoe. This project, however, did not mature; and this, among other disappointments, caused Simcoe to resign and leave the country before the arrival of Strachan. But the latter did not despair, though it was not until many years after, when he had become a distinguished educationalist and divine, that he was able to carry out his original educational ideal.

THE HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND JOHN STRACHAN, D.D., L.L.D.

In the year 1827 he procured a charter and acquired 500,000 acres for the endowment of what was then called King’s College, now the University of Toronto.

Not only was this college the result of his untiring exertions, but he became its first President from 1827 to 1848, when he was succeeded by another learned Scotsman, the Rev. Dr. McCaul, who had been, from the opening of the college, a leading professor, holding the chairs of Classic Literature, Belles Lettres, Rhetoric, and Logic. In the list of the first students fully one-half bore Scottish names.

Many noted Scotsmen have since been identified with Toronto University, among them Sir Daniel Wilson, who succeeded Dr. McCaul as President; Professor Young, the greatest Canadian metaphysician; Presidents Loudon and Falconer, the latter the present distinguished Head. All the Presidents of Toronto University have been Scotsmen or men of Scottish ancestry.

The Canadian Almanack for 1877 gives the following list of Scottish members of the University Senate:—Visitor: Hon. D. A. Macdonald, Lieut.-Governor. Senate: Hon. Thos. Moss, Rev. John McCaul, G. R. R. Cockburn, W. T. Aikin, M.D., John Fulton, A. McMurchy, Hon. J. C. Morrison, Hon. A. Crooks, G. P. Young, R. Ramsay Wright, John Boyd, J. McGibbon, J. H. Richardson, M.D., Jas. Bethune, Q.C., Jas. Loudon, M.A., J. Thorburn, M.D., T. Kirkland, M.A., James Fisher, A. F. Campbell, T. W. Taylor, Laughlin McFarlane, Rev. Neill McNish, Hon. Wm. McMaster, John McDonald, M.P., Daniel Wilson, LL.D., Rev. Daniel McDonald, Hon. C. S. Patterson.

To-day the University has greatly increased in size and importance. But the list of Scottish names associated with the senate and faculty has also increased accordingly. Such distinguished names as Falconer, Ramsay Wright, Macallum, and McLennan are among those of a host of noted scholars who to-day stand high in the world of learning.

Toronto University, then King’s College, was the one educational institution for the whole province, and was started under favourable auspices. As the years went on, however, controversies arose, chiefly because the college, under its original charter and the influence of Dr. Strachan, was distinctly a Church of England institution, the Anglican being then the State Church of Upper Canada, as the Roman Catholic was and still remains that of Lower Canada. This condition of affairs naturally caused a good deal of ill-will and discontent, and the other Churches demanded, and finally accomplished, the complete separation of King’s College from the Anglican Church.

Dr. Strachan, who had put so much of his lifework into the founding of the college, might, if he had been a man of less determined character, have acquiesced in the fate of his college and have allowed the idea of a purely secular college to dominate the life of the province. But he was made of sterner stuff, and was too true to the principles of his Church, as he and others then viewed them, to stand idly by and see no Church of England college for the training of the youth of that communion. He went to work once more, and, after some more years of strenuous effort, saw Trinity University rise up under his hands as the representative of the ideals and culture of the Church he loved in the province.

The complete revolutionisation of King’s College by the University Act of 1849, in spite of his earnest protestations, would have broken the heart of a feebler and less persistent man. He was of those—and there are many in this country of his mind—who believe that religion and the University life should not be divorced. He was then in his old age, in his seventy-second year, when he proceeded to England to raise funds for the new Church of England University; and he succeeded, though in the face of many obstacles.

The third President of the University of Toronto was Sir Daniel Wilson, the noted ethnologist, whose “Prehistoric Man” ranks high in the world’s literature of anthropology. He was one of a noted Scottish family of scholars and scientists, and his name will long be remembered in the history of the University as one of its most distinguished heads.

Professor Young, another noted teacher of Scottish extraction, was a man of remarkable intellect, and, had he only devoted his time to writing works of philosophy, would have ranked among the greatest metaphysicians on this continent. He had in his nature all the best elements of the thinking Scotsman, and in his time wielded a great influence in leading the students to think seriously and elementally regarding the problems of existence, and to regard their studies as a part of the development of their own character and their outlook on life.

Professor Ramsay Wright is distinguished in scientific research.

Professor A. B. Macallum is regarded to-day as our greatest biologist, and has received recognition throughout the European scientific world. A Canadian of Scottish parentage, he has all of the elements of the pure Scotsman in his strenuous individuality.

Professor John Cunningham McLennan, Director of the Physical Laboratory and Professor of Physics, is another noted Canadian scientist of pure Scottish extraction who is pre-eminent in his own field.

Professor Lash-Miller, a noted chemist, makes a fourth Scotsman in the gifted group of scientists.

President Falconer, like Dawson and Grant, is a distinguished Nova Scotian, or New Scotland man, who has become a scholar and educationalist. Like Grant, he had the great advantage of education in the Motherland. He studied when a lad at the well-known grammar school in Edinburgh, under the famous Professor Masson, the teacher of Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Drummond, Barrie, and a host of other notables, and who was later Professor of Literature at Edinburgh University. Masson’s Life of Milton is the one great work on the immortal poet, and his knowledge of Sir Walter Scott and Edinburgh was the result of a labour of love extending over a lifetime. I had the good fortune to know him in his latter days, and he seemed like a more genial and saner Carlyle. I will never forget his summing up of his pupil Stevenson in the following words: “He strove to accomplish with hard labour what Scott and Thackeray achieved with ease.”

It must have been a great boon to Dr. Falconer to be educated under such a man and in such a company and atmosphere at this formative period of his life. Thus we have, after a century of colonial development, in Falconer and Peterson the distinguished heads of our two great Canadian Universities, two noted products of Scottish Education both of the youth and the mature man.

McGill University, like Toronto, had Scotsmen for its founders; and, like Toronto, continues to-day to have a Scotsman as its head, and to have Scotsmen in Canada its principal benefactors.

Like Toronto, it is a great secular University, bearing the same relationship to English-speaking Quebec that Toronto does to Ontario, save that McGill is not a provincial University.

In the year 1813 the Honourable James McGill, a prominent and wealthy merchant of Montreal, died, and left by his will to four trustees a parcel of land as a site for a university or college—“With a competent number of professors and teachers to render such establishment effectual and beneficial for the purpose intended.”

He left, on the same conditions, the sum of 10,000 dollars to be expended in founding and maintaining the college. He made but one proviso, that his name should be given to the college, showing the natural ambition of the Scotsman to be identified with learning. The names of the four trustees were those of prominent Scotsmen. They were John Richardson, James Reid, James Dunlop, of Montreal, and the Rev. John Strachan, who was then the Rector of Cornwall in Upper Canada.

The original idea of McGill was that the Rev. John Strachan should be Principal of the Institute, as the one man qualified to carry out his ideas. This included the stipulation that the college should be a Church of England University.

Sir William Dawson, in his sketch of McGill and the University, says, with regard to this matter: “Mr. McGill’s resolution to dispose of his property in this way was not a hasty death-bed resolve, but a mature and deliberate decision.” Sir William gives as the two principal reasons for his action, first, “The long agitation on the part of some of the more enlightened English colonists in behalf of the establishment of a University and a system of schools”; and of the influence of Dr. (afterwards Bishop) Strachan, Sir William adds: “It seems at least highly probable that Strachan had a large share in giving to Mr. McGill’s wishes the form which they afterwards assumed.” It will be seen also that Strachan was the only scholar on the board of trustees, the other three being Montreal merchants.

James McGill, the founder of the University, was a native of Glasgow, Scotland, where he was born on October 6, 1744. He came to Canada before the American Revolution, and was early engaged in the North-West fur trade. With his brother Andrew he became one of the leading merchants of Montreal. He was Colonel of the City Militia, and in 1812 was made a Brigadier-General of the Reserve. He was also a member of the Legislative and Executive Councils. He died in 1813.

The after-history of McGill University showed the constant supervision, care, and benevolence of Scotsmen. The delay in the foundation of the University, caused by litigation, prevented Dr. Strachan becoming its head; and another noted Scotsman, and an Anglican divine, the Rev. John Bethune, became its first Principal. He was a son of the Rev. John Bethune, the Presbyterian pastor of Williamstown, and had been a pupil of Dr. Strachan; hence his conversion to the Anglican Church.

Senator Ferrier was President of the college Council in 1852, and in 1855 there was a revival of its fortunes, and Dr. (afterwards Sir William) Dawson, the noted scientist and educationalist, became its head. Dr. Dawson was a native of Pictou and a pupil at the famous academy there. He became as noted in the field of geology as Sir Daniel Wilson was in anthropology. Under his able management the University developed during the middle and latter years of the nineteenth century, without any State assistance, into one of the greatest Universities in the Empire. On its senate and among its professors were many Scotsmen famous in finance and learning.

In 1881 the treasurer was Mr. Hugh Ramsay, and the benefactors of that date included Sir William Macdonald, Mr. David Greenshields, Mr. Andrew Stuart, and Miss Scott. The first Dean of the Medical Faculty was the noted Dr. George W. Campbell, and a great friend of the University was Sir William Logan, the eminent geologist.

But another great Scotsman was to arise for the weal of the college in the well-known Scottish-Canadian financier, Peter Redpath. He was born in Montreal in 1821. His father, John Redpath, was, says Sir William Dawson, “one of those strong, earnest, pious, and clear-headed men of whom Scotland has supplied so many to build up the colonies of the Empire.” Of the son Sir William says: “As an educational benefactor, the name of Mr. Peter Redpath will ever be remembered in connection with the Museum, the Library, and the University chair which bears his name.”

Appointed as Governor of the college in 1864, he gave of his means and time to the work; even after his removal to England in 1880 his interest in the University never flagged.

The corner-stone of the Museum was laid by Lord Lorne, the present Duke of Argyll, in 1888, and the Library was opened in 1893 by Lord Aberdeen. Mr. Redpath’s distinguished career as a financier and philanthropist closed in February, 1894, at his place, the Manor House, Chislehurst, England. He died in his seventy-third year, widely mourned on both sides of the ocean. The Rev. Dr. McVicar, the venerable and distinguished Principal of the Presbyterian Theological College, and one of Canada’s greatest Scotsmen, said, in his address at the public funeral service held in Montreal in Mr. Redpath’s honour: “He was a man of good ability, sound judgment, refined and elevated taste, and excellent culture; a lover of literature and art, and, what is infinitely better, a lover of truth and the God of truth. . . . Gentle, amiable, yet where purity and principle were concerned he was as firm as a rock.”

Among many other noted Scotsmen connected with McGill were the Hon. Alexander Morris, Rev. Dr. Cook, Rev. Dr. McVicar, and the Rev. Dr. Douglas, one of the greatest divines and the leading orator of the Canadian Methodist Church.

We now come to the latest period in the life of McGill, and with it we find associated four noted men, three of them distinguished Scottish Canadians—Lord Strathcona, his noted cousin, Lord Mountstephen, Sir William Macdonald, and Principal Peterson.

Lord Mountstephen, who has done so much for education and the general alleviation and improvement of life in Montreal, is a distinguished financier. He has lived for many years in England.

His famous cousin, Sir Donald Alexander Smith, Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal, is the greatest living Scottish-Canadian, and, with Sir John A. Macdonald, stands pre-eminent among men of Scottish birth who have been builders of the Canadian portion of the Empire.

On October 31, 1889, he, then Sir Donald Smith, was inaugurated as Chancellor of McGill University. The Governors, at that date, of Scottish extraction were P. Redpath, H. McLennan, E. B. Greenshields, and S. Findlay. The Principal was Sir William Dawson. The Fellows were Professor A. Johnson, Rev. Dr. McVicar, J. R. Dougall, Rev. Dr. Clark-Murray, Rev. Dr. Henderson, Dr. G. Ross, Rev. James Barclay, Dr. Robt. Craik, and the Rev. Dr. Barbour.

Sir Donald A. Smith succeeded the Hon. Senator Ferrier, who had long been an able and earnest chairman of the affairs of the University. All these names, it will be seen, are Scottish, and significant of the Caledonian nursing of McGill.

Among other generous benefactors the name of one other man stands forth pre-eminent as a great friend of education in Lower Canada, namely, Sir William Macdonald. This able and generous Scotsman has been more than princely in his donations to McGill and its important adjunct, Macdonald College. He has been an ardent follower in the footsteps of McGill, Redpath, Strathcona, and Mountstephen. It is remarkable what a keen interest all these great and successful Scottish financiers have taken in intellectual institutions. But in none has it been so strong a personal matter, one might almost say an inspiration, as in the case of Sir William Macdonald. As Strachan influenced James McGill, so there is no doubt that McVicar, in the past, inspired Sir William, or at least showed him how much could be done in the direction his benefactions have taken.

McGill has had many other friends, such as the late Sir George Drummond, who was one of Canada’s leading merchant princes and financiers, Senator Robert Mackay, and others, who have aided the cause of education in Montreal.

Sir William Macdonald has a strong ally and friend in his schemes for McGill in the present able and learned Principal William Peterson, C.M.G. Principal Peterson is a distinguished Scottish educationalist, late of Dundee University. He was born in Edinburgh in 1856, is a graduate of the famous Edinburgh High School and Edinburgh University, and a student of the Universities of Göttingen and Oxford. He is a trustee of the Carnegie Foundations for Learning, and a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George. He has charge of one of the largest Universities in the Empire, and is a great administrator and possesses the unique power of interesting others in his work and gaining the co-operation of practical men.

Under his guidance the influence of McGill is spreading abroad over the Dominion, and is closely affiliated with the smaller Universities in the Maritime and Western Provinces.

Another noted University, which is perhaps more than any other distinctly Scottish in its origin, is Queen’s, the great Presbyterian University of Canada. Just as Toronto University means largely the work of Strachan and Wilson, and McGill stands for McGill, Strachan, and Dawson, so the history of Queen’s means largely the life struggles and ideals of another great Scottish-Canadian, the late Principal Grant. Like Dawson, he was a scion of the Pictou stock, and thus the New Scotland or Nova Scotia of Sir William Alexander, though not so noted in the world of commerce or agriculture, has been a remarkably intellectual mother to Quebec and Ontario, giving them, as she has in succession, four leading University Presidents and distinguished educationalists—Sir William Dawson, Principal Grant, and, latest of all, President Falconer, of Toronto University, and Queen’s present able Principal, Dr. Gordon. It is a remarkable fact concerning Nova Scotia that her Scotsmen from Alexander down have not only been scholars and men of letters, but also strong individualities, men of the world and battlers for the right. They have been splendid administrators and organisers, and prominent among Canadians in this respect was he who was, perhaps, Canada’s greatest all-round University head, Principal Grant.

PRINCIPAL GRANT.

It is true that Grant had the faculty of grouping other great workers about him. One in particular, his great life-long friend and brother Scotsman, Sir Sandford Fleming, upheld his arm and did great service for Queen’s. But she owed most, as Sir Sandford himself has testified, to the marvellous all-round ability and human personality of George Munro Grant. Our University life may have had more profound scholars, but as a man who wrought for all the best ideals of a Scottish University, religious and national, Grant stands alone in our national life.

When one thinks of Grant, beautiful old Kingston, the Aberdeen of Canada, with its solid old Scottish stone buildings in their beautiful lakeside park with its stately elms, is brought to mind. It seems like a sort of instinct that Presbyterianism should have fixed upon Kingston, the ancient capital of Upper Canada, as the seat of its own particular University. It may have been the vicinity of so much good building stone (for Scotsmen dearly love a good solid foundation to their dwellings as well as to their faith and philosophy) which guided them to this place. But at any rate, of all Canadian cities Kingston has been, in her own peculiar way, a city of Scotsmen and has been governed by Scotsmen.

From the days of the Scottish United Empire Loyalists this particular breed of men have made it their home. So much is this so that the one noted family, the Cartwrights, would stand out alone as an exception were it not that they are closely allied with sturdy Ulster-Scottish stock, and were the first friends and allies of the famous John Strachan, who here found his sole welcome and encouragement on landing from the mother country. On viewing these solid, plain, dignified University buildings, standing on their great slope among the splendid old elm-trees facing the lake, one is struck by the whole Scottish atmosphere of the place. But the visitor wonders at the massive, quaint old stone residence of the Principal, and at the strong likeness, inside and out, to an old Scottish manor-house, until he is informed that it was built by and was the residence for years of that other old Scottish Episcopalian divine and Churchman, the Venerable Archdeacon Okill Stuart, who was one of Kingston’s earliest leading citizens, and a prominent Churchman and divine of old Upper Canada.

Here in this old city three distinguished Canadians were reared, educated, and started their careers, namely, Sir John Alexander Macdonald, Sir Oliver Mowat, and Sir Alexander Campbell.

The first of these three remarkable men was one of the founders of Queen’s, being present at the meeting held in St. Andrew’s Church, Kingston, on December 18, 1839, for the purpose of organising and raising funds for the endowment of the college. Sir John’s name is also among the following twenty-six on the charter granted to the University, under date October 16, 1841: Revs. Robert McGill, Alexander Gale, John McKenzie, Wm. Rintoul, W. T. Leach, Jas. George, John Machar, Peter Colin Campbell, John Cruikshank, Alex. Matheson, John Cook, the Hon. John Hamilton, Jas. Crooks, Wm. Morris, Archd. McLean, John McDonald, Peter McGill, Ed. W. Thompson; Thos. McKay, Esq., James Morris, Esq., John Ewart, Esq., John Steele, Esq., John Mowat, Esq., Alex. Pringle, Esq., John Strange, Esq.

The result of the efforts made was that the college was first opened on March 9, 1842, in a small frame house on Colbourn Street. The staff consisted of two professors, who had charge of eleven students. The first Principal was the Rev. Dr. Lidell, who was also Professor of Philosophy, Natural and Moral Logic, Hebrew, Church History, and Theology. Dr. Lidell’s only assistant was the learned and brilliant Rev. Peter Colin Campbell, who afterwards became Principal of Aberdeen University, and who was Professor of Classics. A list of the first students will be interesting. They were Thomas Wardrope, Lachlan McPherson, John McKinnon, Angus McColl, W. A. Ross, Robert Wallace, John B. Mowat, Wm. Bain, John Bonner, H. A. Farndon, and Wm. Kerr. During the second season Professor Williamson was added to the staff, and Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Wardrope as Assistant in Classics. The college soon moved into a more commodious building on Princess Street, opposite St. Andrew’s Church, and the Preparatory School was formed. The Presbyterians of Upper Canada donated generously, and soon, with Dr. Sampson as leader, a medical faculty was established. In the drawing-room of Mr. John A. Macdonald’s residence a meeting was called, and there was settled the basis of the School of Medicine to be affiliated with the University. Queen’s claims to be the first University opened in Ontario or Upper Canada, and its first registered student was George (afterwards Dr.) Bell, since Registrar of the University. It was the first University in the country open to students of all creeds. For years Queen’s struggled with difficulties, financial and otherwise; yet in 1868 it had 107 students, 14,000 dollars revenue, and 35,000 dollars in capital. At this time the Rev. Dr. Snodgrass was Principal.

During the next twenty years, under the Principalship of Dr. Grant, the University made her most marvellous advance, until in 1889 she had 425 students, nearly 40,000 dollars revenue, and 500,000 dollars capital.

Principal Grant’s personal appeal to the Presbyterians of Upper Canada was one of the most remarkable efforts for University education ever made by a single man in Canada. In 1887-8 he raised for the Permanent Endowment Fund the sum of 250,000 dollars.

In December, 1889, this University held its first Jubilee celebration, and granted an honorary degree to Lord Stanley, the Governor-General. Among the leading speakers were His Excellency the Governor-General; Sir John A. Macdonald, a founder, and Premier of the Dominion; Mr. (afterwards Sir) Sandford Fleming, the able and indefatigable Chancellor of the University; Sir Alexander Campbell, Lieut.-Governor of Ontario, and the son of one of the founders; Major-General Cameron, Commandant of the Royal Military College; Sir James Grant, of Ottawa; the Hon. G. W. Ross, Minister of Education for Ontario; Rev. J. A. McDonald, Hon. Wm. McDougall, and the Rev. Principal McVicar, of Montreal College.

The growth of Queen’s has kept pace with the development of the country, and one at least of her professors, Dr. Watson, has a world-wide reputation as a thinker. In Principal Grant the University had a head whose herculean labours in the college hall, as well as among the many benefactors of the college and in public affairs, made him one of the most prominent personalities in the Dominion. He and the distinguished Chancellor developed the institution in a spirit of loyalty to the British Crown, and to the Dominion as a part of the Empire.

In 1902 Principal Grant died, mourned by all, his death proving a great loss to the intellectual life of the whole Dominion. He was succeeded by Dr. Gordon, also a Nova Scotian, the present scholarly and able Principal, who has done much to carry on the work which Dr. Grant made possible by his energy, wisdom, and dominant will.

THE SCOTSMAN AND EDUCATION

(continued)

The Roman Catholic Church in Upper Canada also owes its early foundation and development to a great Scotsman, the Right Rev. Alexander Macdonell, its first bishop in the province.

Bishop Macdonell, like Bishop Strachan, was from the first an earnest and persistent worker in the cause of education. He was a very distinguished man, and the Roman Church owes much to this great Highlander, who was the pioneer apostle of its tenets and ideals in what is now the Province of Ontario.

He was of good birth and old Highland lineage, and yet a man who had a great love for the wide mass of humanity about him; and the memory he left behind him at his death was one that showed how universally beloved and respected he had been by all classes and creeds of the community. Bishop Macdonell was born on July 17, 1762, in the Glen of Urquhart, Loch Ness, Scotland. Sent abroad for education with the idea of orders, he spent some time at Paris and Valladolid, in Spain, where he was ordained to the priesthood in 1787. The story of his regiment and its coming to Canada is told in the account of the Glengarry settlements. This gave him the name of the Warrior-priest, which he so well deserved. He made his headquarters at St. Raphael’s, where he later raised another regiment, the Glengarry Fencibles, of which he was chaplain throughout the war of 1812-15. For his general patriotic services he received a pension from the British Government, which ultimately reached the sum of £500 a year, at which amount it was continued to his successors in office in the Bishopric of Kingston. In the year 1819 he was created Vicar-General and Administrator of Upper Canada, with the title of Bishop of Rhoesina. In 1826 he was appointed first Roman Bishop of the Upper Province, taking the title of Bishop of Regiopolis, or Kingston.

Here he founded in 1837 the College of Regiopolis, which afterwards, in 1866, was granted powers as a University. The Bishop did much for this institution, and was in reality its sole founder and friend, and in this work was succeeded by his nephew, the Rev. Angus Macdonell, who became ultimately head of the college. Bishop Macdonell worked hard for Catholic education in the province, and succeeded in getting grants from the British Government for Catholic school teachers throughout the province. There is a vast amount of correspondence in the Canadian State Papers relating to the Bishop and his work. He stands out prominently as a man, a statesman, and a scholar; and belongs to that golden age of the Empire and Canada when some of the leading spirits who guided and controlled the community were scholars and divines and were not all politicians. In his day he had several compeers; and chief among them was his fellow-Scotsman, fellow-scholar, fellow-divine, and, like himself, a Member of the Provincial Government, the Hon. and Very Rev. John Strachan. These two men had much in common and worked together for the common good.

Another friend of the Bishop was the Anglican Archdeacon Okill Stuart, of Kingston, another Scotsman, who wielded a great public influence; and another was the Ulster-born Scotsman, the Rev. Thomas Campbell, the first Rector of Belleville, and a distinguished graduate of Glasgow University. Mr. Campbell was a special friend of the Bishop, and they had a mutual regard for each other, as men of Highland blood and birth usually have, though one was a Macdonell and the other a Campbell. They were both, in a way, statesmen and men of affairs, and gentlemen of the old school of a fine culture, who regarded their cure of souls to extend to the weal of the whole community as well as of the mere individual. Both had a great influence in the common community, and they were on the same side with strong political affiliations, and had very positive opinions as to the importance of a good classical education. It was a day, in spite of certain traditions held to-day concerning it, of a broad religious toleration on the part of men of culture, and a time when religion was more respected than it is to-day, and when it had a greater influence through the whole community. The Roman Church has great reason to be proud of this distinguished and faithful prelate, whose life should be written as a testimony to the work of the man himself and his relationship to the important events of his day in the old Upper Province.

We have already shown the Scottish origin of many of our Canadian universities; and we now come to another one, connected with the great Baptist Church of Canada, McMaster University, which, like Dalhousie and McGill, carries its story in its Scottish name.

It will have to be more and more recognised, as time goes on, that religion and education have ever been, and must still be, closely connected.

This has been proved in the past by the fact that our leading educationalists and founders of colleges and universities have been divines. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the history of the Baptist Church in Canada, and in the life and ideals of the Rev. Robert Alexander Fyfe, who was to some extent the John Strachan of the Baptist Church in this country. Like Strachan, he was of Scottish parentage, but, unlike him, was born in Canada. His parents had come from Scotland in 1809, and the noted divine and educationalist was born near Montreal on October 20, 1816.

His parents were evidently Presbyterians, as he joined the Baptist Church in his nineteenth year, and then left a mercantile life for the ministry of that Church. The necessity he was under of having to go to the United States to prepare for his life’s work must have early impressed him with the idea of the need of a college for his denomination in Canada. However, after a year of study at Madison College, New York State, he entered the newly established seminary at Montreal, where he spent two years. Then, after five years in American Baptist colleges, he was ordained at Brooklyn, Massachusetts. But his strong patriotism, which was ever a marked characteristic of the man, drew him back to Canada. He at once took an active part in the vexed question of King’s College and the clergy reserves, and soon rose to prominence. After some years in pastoral and academic work at the Montreal seminary, he in 1859 founded the paper the Canadian Baptist. Dr. Fyfe’s lifework was the founding of Woodstock College. This was a residential seminary for young people of both sexes, with a theological department for those who desired to enter the ministry. In 1857 this college was founded, and was granted a charter under the name of the “Canadian Literary Institute,” which was afterwards changed to that of “Woodstock Academy.”

Dr. Fyfe became its first Principal; and for eight years was its sole teacher of theology.

The Toronto Baptist College, now McMaster University, was, as its name shows, the result of a Scotsman’s liberality and ideal.

This important institution of learning was founded in 1881 as Toronto Baptist College by the Honourable William McMaster. This gentleman had been for years a generous contributor toward the support of Woodstock College. In 1887 it was incorporated as McMaster University, representing the Baptist Church of Canada.

This University is now well equipped with an able staff of scholarly and earnest men. The building, a fine structure, stands at the north of Queen’s Park among the large group of colleges that has made the old park so famous as a place of education.

Even Victoria University was influenced, though indirectly, by Scottish educationalists.

The founder of the University was really that noted educationalist, Dr. Egerton Ryerson. But it is interesting to know that Dr. Ryerson was educated as a boy and youth under James (afterwards Judge) Mitchell, a noted Grammar School master, who came to Canada from Scotland with Dr. Strachan.

Thus we see that this wonderful influence of Scottish learning permeated the whole early life of all parts of the Dominion, and has continued to do so ever since.

It is also interesting to know that the first corner-stone of Victoria, then the Upper Canada Academy, was laid on June 7, 1832, by a Scotsman, Dr. Gilchrist, of Colborne.

The Province of Nova Scotia is also well equipped with Universities, the principal one being Dalhousie, at Halifax. All of these Maritime halls of learning were founded by Scotsmen, and carried on largely by men of Scottish extraction and education.

Dalhousie College had the honour of being founded by one of Canada’s finest Governors, Lord Dalhousie, who was then Lieutenant-Governor of that province. He is referred to in the chapter on the Governors-General. He was a man of broad mind and scholarly attainments, and was desirous of advancing culture in the New World. Before he was appointed Governor-General of Canada he was for a year Governor of Nova Scotia (1819-20).

During the war of 1812-15 with the United States the port of Customs in Maine was seized and held for some time by the Governor of Nova Scotia, Sir John Sherbrooke. The Customs revenues, collected during that occupation, were set aside by the British Government for expenditure within the province. Lord Dalhousie, who succeeded, was authorised to expend it as he pleased on any local improvement. Following the bent of his inclination, he saw his opportunity, and determined to found a seminary for the higher branches of education on the plan and principle of the Edinburgh Academy, such an institution being then much needed in the province. In 1821 the college was founded and given the name of Dalhousie College, after its noble patron and founder. It was designed to be non-sectarian, and “open to all occupations and sects of religion.”

The original Board of Governors, appointed by the Crown, consisted of the Governor-General of British North America, the Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, the Anglican Bishop, the Chief Justice and President of the Council, the Provincial Treasurer, and the Speaker of the Assembly. Lord Dalhousie’s intention was to establish one single non-sectarian University for all Nova Scotia. With this idea in view, the Board of Governors strove unsuccessfully to form a union with King’s College.

It was not until 1838 that the college was organised under a Scottish President, the Rev. Dr. McCulloch, who in 1816 had founded Pictou Academy. He was one of Canada’s great pioneers of learning. Dr. Mackay says of him: “He was the power in the country from his advent. He made Pictou a centre to which colonists came. The clergy looked to him as their natural leader and supported his educational propaganda.” He was, in short, much such a man as Strachan was in the Anglican Church in Upper Canada. Dr. McCulloch was a hard and energetic student and a noted naturalist. His death came as a great loss to Nova Scotia.

It must be admitted that though Dalhousie was avowedly non-sectarian, that its head and professors were all of the Church of Scotland. University powers were conferred in 1841. President McCulloch died in 1843, and the college was soon after temporarily closed. It was not until 1863 that the present University was re-established, an Act being passed carrying out as nearly as possible the design of its original founders. In 1868 a Faculty of Medicine was organised, and in 1883 a Faculty of Law. The Rev. James Ross, another fine Scottish scholar, who had studied under Principal McCulloch at Pictou and had been head of Truro Academy, was made Principal of the college. He was Professor of Ethics and Political Economy. He was the son of a clergyman from Alyth, in Forfarshire, who settled at Pictou in 1795. Dr. Ross was born there in 1811. Many professorships were endowed in the college by successful Scotsmen—five by Mr. George Munro, a Nova Scotian in New York City; and three by Mr. Alexander McLeod, of Halifax.

The University of King’s College, the oldest University in Canada, was founded by a distinguished Ulster Scotsman, the Right Rev. Charles Inglis, the first Anglican bishop of Nova Scotia.

A sketch of Bishop Inglis’s life is given in the chapter on Churches. He was a learned divine and a great missionary bishop to a poor and scattered people of the United Empire Loyalist stock, and was, in a sense, the founder of the Anglican Church in Canada. The life of such a man should be written. It would cover a valuable period in our early history, and would be of great service in stimulating the hearts and minds of coming generations. He was a scion of the great Scottish House of Inglis, which has produced some noted men. His branch had gone into Ulster at the Scottish settlements early in the seventeenth century. He got a charter for King’s College, which was granted by George the Third in 1802. It was, and still is, distinctly an Anglican University, and, for this reason, has never been able to compete with Dalhousie, which has been largely non-sectarian.

The chief Roman Catholic college of Nova Scotia, St. Francis Xavier’s College, was also founded by a Scotsman, the Right Rev. Dr. McKinnon, Bishop of Arichat. It was established at Antigonish in 1854, and in 1866 was created a University.

The University of New Brunswick was founded largely under the direction and advice of one of its commissioners, Mr. J. W. (afterwards Sir William) Dawson, the distinguished Scottish-Canadian Principal of McGill University.

Mount Allison Wesleyan College and University of New Brunswick has owed its existence to the benefaction of a noted merchant of Sackville, C. F. Allison, of Scottish extraction and a worthy member of that noted old South Scotland family.

One cannot close this short account of Maritime educational institutions founded by Scottish ideals and enterprise without a word for that remarkable old seat of pioneer learning, Pictou Academy, which was founded by the Rev. Dr. McCulloch, and which was, in a sense, the “Eton” of many noted Scottish Canadians, such as Dawson and Grant. It was in many senses the pioneer school of Scottish scholarship in the Maritime settlements, and should not be forgotten even in this day of vast technical institutes called Universities, where the once loved “humanities” are crowded out in the interests of monetary considerations.

Noted professors of Scottish extraction are numerous in all our colleges. Dr. Paxton Young was a distinguished metaphysician. He has already been mentioned.

The Rev. Michael Willis, D.D., LL.D., was one of the Principals of Knox College. He was born at Greenock, Scotland, in 1798, and educated at Glasgow University. With Dr. Willis were associated at Knox College the Rev. Dr. Burns, Professor Young, and the Rev. Dr. Caven, who succeeded him. He retired in 1870. The Rev. William Caven was born in Kirkcolm, Wigtownshire, in 1830. He came, on both sides, of Covenanter stock. Dr. Caven came to Canada in 1847 with his parents, and studied for the ministry under the Rev. William Proudfoot and the Rev. Alexander McKenzie. William Proudfoot was born in Scotland in 1787 and died in 1851. He was an early missionary in Upper Canada and the founder of the Presbyterian Church at London, Ontario. Vice-Chancellor Proudfoot and the Rev. Dr. Proudfoot were his sons.

The Rev. John Hugh MacKerras was Professor of Classics in Queen’s University. He was born at Nairn, Scotland, in 1832. His father was a schoolmaster. The Rev. D. H. McVicar, Principal of the Presbyterian College at Montreal, was born near Campbeltown in Kintyre, Argyllshire, in 1831. He was one of the most distinguished divines of the Presbyterian Church in Canada.

Among the most important and interesting of Canada’s educational institutions was the old Toronto Grammar School, now known as the Jarvis Street Collegiate Institute.

This school was founded by a Scotsman, and has been conducted for over a century largely by Scotsmen. In 1807 an Act was passed establishing district Grammar Schools in Upper Canada. The Home District School was located in the town of York, and the trustees were, with two exceptions, all Scotsmen. These were the Rev. George O’Kill Stuart, John Small, Duncan Cameron, Samuel Smith, and William Graham. It was the first public school in the county of York, and was opened on June 1, 1807. The first master was the Rev. George O’Kill Stuart. He was born at Fort Hunter, on the Erie Canal, in 1776. His father, the Rev. John Stuart, was a clergyman of the Church of England, the son of a Presbyterian family of the Ulster Scotsmen in the North of Ireland. His history will be given in the chapter on the Scotsmen in the Churches.

He was succeeded, as master of the school, in 1812 by the Rev. John Strachan, who was succeeded in turn by the Rev. Samuel Armour, born in Scotland, who had charge until 1825. Another Ulster Scotsman, Marcus C. Crombie, became head-master in 1838. He was born in 1800 in Dungiven, County Derry, Ulster. His family had removed from Scotland. In 1872 Dr. Archibald MacMurchy was appointed Rector, and he has carried on the best traditions of this famous school.

Among later trustees were David Buchan, the Rev. Dr. Barclay, of old St. Andrew’s Church, and the Honourable John McMurich.

The school has a long list of distinguished graduates, who fill important positions in all walks of life throughout the Dominion.

It will be of additional interest in surveying the field of common school education to discover that nearly all the heads of education in the different provinces are Scotsmen by descent, as instanced in the Superintendents of Education for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick and the Deputy Minister of Education for Ontario.

Dr. A. H. Mackay, the able and energetic Superintendent for Nova Scotia, is a scion of that great fighting clan of Northern Scotland, and his ancestors lived in Rogart, Sutherlandshire, the home of Sir John A. Macdonald’s forbears. He is an accomplished scientist, as well as an educationalist, and has done much for education and learning in his province, being also a prominent member of many learned societies. He is the editor for Nova Scotia of the Educational Review.

Dr. Hay, Superintendent of Education in New Brunswick, is, like Dr. Mackay, another noted Scottish educationalist and scholar. Like Dr. Mackay, he is a prominent Fellow of one of the scientific sections of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the editor, for New Brunswick, of one of Canada’s finest educational journals, the Educational Review.

Dr. Colquhoun, Deputy Minister of Education for Ontario, is a man of high ability as a writer, scholar and librarian. He was intimately connected with Canada’s grand old librarian, another noted Scotsman, Dr. James Bain, late head of the Toronto City Library, and the founder of Canada’s finest Reference Library. Dr. Colquhoun has taken a deep interest in all questions connected with the intellectual development of the province which he so ably serves.

In closing this necessarily imperfect account of the Scotsman in Canadian education one could give, were there room, an immense list of professors and teachers and institutions like the famous Galt High School largely founded and served by Scotsmen. There is great need of a good history of education in this country, and when it is written it will be found that in this important field the Scotsman has largely predominated.

Reference must also be made to a new and important development in our country in the direction of technical education, as so far evinced in the Macdonald College, and in this connection the most significant movement is that made by the Hon. W. L. McKenzie King in establishing the Commission on Technical Education, which is now engaged in studying thoroughly the whole question in Canada and in outside countries.

What is most remarkable about this Commission is the fact that not only is the founder a prominent Scottish-Canadian statesman, scholar, and public servant, and the virtual founder of our Labour Department, but nearly the whole Commission is made up of noted Scottish Canadians, such as Professor Robertson, Professor Bryce, and the Honourable John Armstrong, assisted by three other able Scotsmen, Gilbert Murray, David Forsyth, and James Simpson. It is expected that this Commission will do much to aid the cause of technical education in Canada. That its members should happen to be Scotsmen is additional witness of what Scotsmen are doing for Canada.

Professor Robertson is widely known as a noted educationalist and an authority on nature-study and agriculture. He was the originator of Macdonald College, the first school of its class in Canada. Dr. Bryce, who is the author of the second volume in this history, that dealing with Western Canada, is the best living authority among Canadian writers on Western Canada. He has had a long and successful career as an educationalist and scholar and writer on historical and other subjects. He belongs to a noted Scottish-Canadian family, one of his brothers being Dr. P. H. Bryce, the accomplished head of the Dominion Health Department at Ottawa. Professor Bryce was one of the founders of the University of Manitoba, and has for years been identified with education in that province. He is a Past-President of the Royal Society of Canada and is a member of the British Association. The other members of the Commission are also men who have made a close study of the question of education. Thus we see that from its earliest history to the present day Scotsmen have been prominent in the educational development of our country.

THE SCOTSMAN IN THE CHURCHES

In dealing with the Scotsman in Canadian religious life, we must necessarily commence with the great Presbyterian Church, which, nohap how the larger portion of its members may gird strongly against the union of Church and State, yet has been for centuries virtually the State Church, and for centuries will remain the National Church, of Scotland. To think of Scotland as apart from Presbyterianism is, as it were, to contemplate a man apart from his soul. The greater history of the rugged Old Land is that of Knox and Chalmers, Drummond and Carlyle, and a host of other spiritually-minded souls who have guided Scotland, or set her by the ears in all the rancour of theological and metaphysical strife.

In spite of many weaknesses—one strong one of to-day being that she has ceased to act as a community—Canada has good reason to admire the great Church of Scotland within her borders. No religious organisation to-day shows such a splendid group of strong, individual, intellectual personalities as does the Presbyterian Church among her clergy, and this is especially notable in a Church famous for the active part taken by her laymen in Church work.

In dealing with this and other Churches we are confronted with the fact that as many of the leading representatives of the Bar and Bench will be treated under the subject of Politics, so some of our very greatest divines are elsewhere referred to in the chapter on Education and the Universities. Such men as Bishop Strachan, Grant, Fyfe, and Bishop Macdonell are examples of this, whose notable careers are dealt with elsewhere.

Owing to the great host of good earnest and faithful representatives of Scottish Christianity in the history of the Dominion, it will be impossible to more than mention certain prominent men, and perhaps groups of men, in the different Churches in the several provinces. Then, several groups of the clergy, as in the case of those of Prince Edward Island, have already been referred to in the histories of the settlements.

It goes without saying that the clergy were among the earliest active influences in the national development. We will find them from the chaplains of the fighting and disbanded regiments to the early devout missionaries among the savages and the pioneers; and, as was usual in other vocations, the Scotsman bore his own part in this spiritual work. The early annals of the privations of the rude settlements are jewelled with accounts of venerable men of God, who went side by side with the fighter and the winner of the soil; the pioneer, teacher, and the lawgiver. Among the earliest buildings in the sparsely cleared settlements were the church and the log schoolhouse, those two grand witnesses to the soul and mind of Scotland’s advance guard in the New World. When the shadow of the forest yet darkened the Young Land, in many a rude place of pioneer worship rang out the soul-stirring strains of the Hundredth Psalm.

There is a petition to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty in 1822, from “His Majesty’s most faithful and loyal Ministers and Elders in connection with the Established Church of Scotland in Upper and Lower Canada,” presenting the great disadvantages under which they laboured in consequence of there being no legal provision made by public authority for the Church’s support.

The petition is signed for Quebec City by James Harkness, D.D., Minister of St. Andrew’s Church; and Jos. Thompson, James Ross, John Munro, Wm. Morris, Daniel Wilkie, David Ross, Alexander Badenoch, James Thorn, J. Ross, Probationer; Jos. Morris, M.D., John Anderson, Joshua Whitney, and Andrew Paterson, Elders.

For Cornwall, by Harry Leith, Minister, who has just arrived, and no Elders ordained. December 26, 1822.

For Williamstown, by John McKenzie, Minister; and Neil McLean, D. Cameron, Allan McMillan, John McLennan, and Hugh McDonell, Elders. December 27, 1822.

For Kingston, by John Barclay, Minister of St. Andrew’s Church; John McLean, Sheriff Midland District; Lieut.-Col. Donald McPherson, late 4th R. O. Bn.; Anthony Marshall, J.P., H. Macdonald (father of Sir John A. Macdonald), Samuel Shaw, and John Mowat (father of Sir Oliver Mowat), Elders. December 18, 1822.

For Lochiel, by John McLaurin, Minister; and Alex. McLeod, John McPhee, Roderick McLeod, John Campbell, and Donald McGillivray, Elders. December 26, 1822.

For Montreal, by J. Somerville, H. Esson, and Hugh Urquhart, Ministers; and George Gordon, Thos. Porteus, Philip Ross, J. Leslie, Robt. Armour, James Carswell, H. McKenzie, and Thos. Blackwood, Elders. December 12, 1822.

During the same period the clergy of the Independent Presbyterian Church were: Rev. Jos. Johnston, educated at Glasgow University, ordained in Ulster, stationed at Cornwall and Osnabruck. Rev. Wm. Smart, Missionary at Brockville; Rev. Wm. Bell, educated in Scotland, settled at Perth; Rev. Robt. McDonell, ordained in the United States, settled at Bay of Quinte; Rev. Jas. Harris, educated at Glasgow, Licentiate of Ulster, settled at York.

The Rev. Dr. William Reid, who came to Canada from Scotland in 1839, mentions the leading Scottish clergy of the Church of Scotland who were in active service in Upper and Lower Canada when he arrived in the country. They were Dr. Cook, of Quebec, afterwards of Morrin College, who aided in the foundation of Queen’s; Rev. Dr. Mathieson, a stalwart champion of the Scottish Church; Rev. H. Esson, also of Montreal, afterwards of Knox College, Toronto; Rev. Dr. Urquhart, of Cornwall, then Moderator of the Synod; Rev. Peter Colin Campbell, of Brockville, an accomplished classical scholar, first Professor of Classics in Queen’s, and afterwards Principal of King’s College, Aberdeen; the Rev. James Cruikshank, of Bytown (now Ottawa); Rev. W. Bell and Rev. T. C. Wilson, of Perth; Rev. G. Romanes, Smith’s Falls, afterwards of Queen’s College; Rev. Dr. Machar, of St. Andrew’s Church, Kingston, and Rev. H. Gordon, of Gananoque; the Apostolic Rev. Robert McDowall, one of the earliest pioneers of the Church; Rev. Thomas Alexander, of Coburg; Rev. Dr. R. McGill, Niagara; Rev. Dr. Bayne, of Galt; Rev. D. McKenzie, of Zorra; Rev. James George, of Scarborough, afterwards of Queen’s; Rev. M. G. Stark, of Dundas, an accomplished scholar; Rev. Wm. Rintoul, of Streetsville, afterwards died as a missionary in Quebec; Rev. Dr. Neil Seymour. Among other Presbyterians, not of the Church of Scotland, were Rev. Dr. Taylor, of Montreal, and Rev. Mr. Boyd, of Prescott.

Many of the most noted Scottish clergy of the Presbyterian Church have been referred to under the chapter on Education, and it will suffice to speak generally of the origins of the various principal congregations or great Church centres, giving some lists and sketches of early missionaries.

Among the earliest of these was the founder of the first Presbyterian Church in Old Canada, the Rev. George Henry, who was a retired chaplain of a Scottish regiment. He organised the first congregation in Quebec City in 1765, and the first place where services were held was a room in the old Jesuit barracks.

Mr. Henry’s successor was the Rev. Dr. Sparks, who was, for years, the leading Presbyterian divine of that city. He received his education at the Montreal Grammar School and at Aberdeen University.

He came to Canada in 1788, and was ordained by the Presbytery of Elders in Scotland before his departure. He came out as tutor in the family of Col. Caldwell, and succeeded the Rev. Mr. Henry at the Scottish Church. In 1804 he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity at Aberdeen University. In 1810 the first Scottish church at Quebec was opened. Sir James H. Craig gave the ground, and the building was called St. Andrew’s. Dr. Sparks delivered many stirring sermons during his long and eventful pastorate. He died on March 17, 1819, greatly regretted.

In the latter part of the eighteenth, and the early years of the nineteenth century there were but few ordained ministers of the gospel in the colonies. But those few had a tremendous work to perform.

Among these was another noted divine of Prince Edward Island, who merits special mention—the Rev. Donald McDonald, who died as late as 1867. He was born on January 1, 1783, in Perthshire, Scotland; was educated at St. Andrew’s University, and ordained in 1816. In 1824 he came out to Cape Breton, and in 1826 arrived at the island, the scene of his life’s labours. He soon became noted, not only as an earnest clergyman, but as an eloquent and convincing preacher. Probably no man ever accomplished so much for the Scottish Church in that part of Canada as this earnest missionary. He always took a deep interest in the public affairs of the day, and never forgot to deal with them in his discourses, which were considered to be quite on a level, in their effect, with those of Whitefield and Irving. He was also a deep thinker and a writer of stirring hymns. His parish extended from one end of the island to the other, and he was universally beloved. He died, greatly regretted, in his eighty-fifth year, and was buried at Uigg-Murray Harbour Road Churchyard.

The first Presbyterian Church in Montreal was founded on March 12, 1786. It was inaugurated by the retired Army officers, members of the North-West Company, and other merchants of the city, who were all Scotsmen. They were, many of them, veterans of the Fraser and Murray Highlanders, who had so much to do with the conquest of the country.

The leading spirit in the movement was a remarkable man and the first of a very noted Scottish-Canadian family, whose members have been prominent in the Church and other life of the Dominion. This leader was the Rev. John Bethune, who was the father of Presbyterianism in Old Upper Canada and in the city of Montreal. He was a fine type of Scottish United Empire Loyalist, and one who had suffered much for his loyalty. He was born in the Isle of Skye, in Western Scotland, in 1751, and was educated at King’s College, Aberdeen. Emigrating with his family to South Carolina, he became, at the outbreak of the revolution, chaplain to the Royal Militia of that colony, which was settled by Scotsmen. Taken prisoner, after many hardships he regained his liberty, and arrived in Nova Scotia. In Halifax he became one of the leading organisers of the noted Highland Emigrant Regiment, which was made up largely of Gaelic-speaking Highlanders from the 78th and 42nd Regiments. On the regiment being mustered in 1775 Mr. Bethune was made chaplain, and became a Christian warrior. His career was almost identical with that of his future friend and fellow-missionary, Bishop Macdonell, of the Glengarry Highlanders.

The Highland Emigrant Regiment became the mainstay of the defence of Quebec in 1775 against Montgomery. In 1782 the regiment was disbanded, and Mr. Bethune, with many of the officers, settled in Montreal, where he became one of the leading Loyalists of the city. A man of fine presence and much culture, he rallied around him the best men; and among his first efforts was the foundation of St. Gabriel’s Presbyterian Church.

He ministered here from March, 1786, until May, 1787, when he removed to Williamstown, in Upper Canada, and founded there the first Protestant Church in that province.

The British Government had granted large tracts of land to the Loyalists and the members of the disbanded Scottish regiments. The 84th was, when disbanded, settled on the banks of the St. Lawrence, in Upper Canada; and Mr. Bethune, as chaplain, and as the father of many children, received a large tract of land in Cornwall, Charlottenburg, and Lancaster, and settled at Williamstown, so called after Sir William Johnston. Though a large landed proprietor, Mr. Bethune at once resumed his ministerial work, and organised the numerous and prosperous congregations at Williamstown, Martinstown, Cornwall, and Lancaster. He proved a faithful and zealous missionary; and it is said he baptized 2,379 persons during his ministry in what afterwards became the county of Glengarry. He married Veronica Wadden, a Swiss lady, and they had six sons and three daughters, two of the former of whom were destined to play a leading part in the English Church in Canada.

Dr. Bethune was a co-worker in the cause of Christianity and loyalty with Bishop Macdonell, in the district of Glengarry. He made loyalty a part of religion as one of its chief attributes. This accounted largely for the great spirit of loyalty evinced in times of danger by the inhabitants of this great Scottish community. On the Loyal Address by the inhabitants of Glengarry to Sir Gordon Drummond of December 21, 1814, at the close of the 1812-14 war, Mr. Bethune’s name is second, Bishop Macdonell’s being first. As an illustration of the happier times of those days, in a misunderstanding between Mr. Bethune and his parishioners, Bishop Macdonell was called in as a mutually chosen arbitrator; and he proved successful in convincing the people that their pastor was right. On September 7, 1800, his son, Alexander Neil, afterwards Anglican Bishop of Toronto, was baptized by the Rev. John Young, of St. Gabriel’s Church, Montreal. Mr. Bethune died on September 23, 1815, greatly regretted by the whole community. A monument was later erected to his memory by his six sons. On one side is the inscription: “Sacred to the memory of the Rev. Jno. Bethune, Pastor of the congregation of the Kirk of Scotland in Glengarry. He departed this life at Williamstown on the 23rd September, 1815, in the 66th year of his age and on the 44th of his ministry.”

On another side is: “This monument is erected as a work of filial affection to his memory by his six sons, Angus, Norman, John, James, Alexander, and Donald.”

Like that of other strong pioneers in Canada, Mr. Bethune’s influence upon the country did not cease at his death, but his memory lived after, and he still lives in his sons and grandsons.

His eldest son, Angus, born in 1783, entered the North-West Company. Norman, the first of the sons born in Glengarry, became a member of the Church at Williamstown. He and his brother James became partners in business with Alexander Henry.

Mr. Bethune’s daughter, Christie, married in 1817 Robert Henry, a merchant in Montreal, and his youngest daughter, Anne, married in 1815 Henry McKenzie. The careers of his two noted sons will be given in the account of the Anglican Church.

During all the years since the commencement of British occupancy the growth of Presbyterianism has kept pace with the growth of the city of Montreal. Yet, up to 1786, the Scottish Presbyterians attended the Established Church of England.

The next missionary who followed Mr. Bethune was the Rev. John Young. He was born at Leith, in Scotland, and was educated there. Licensed to preach the gospel as a probationer by the Presbytery of Irvine in 1785, he emigrated to the State of New York in 1787, and ministered there. In 1791 he came to Montreal and assumed the duties of a pastor. He it was who urged the Protestant citizens of Montreal to erect St. Gabriel’s Church for the worship of the Church of Scotland. Six years before, in 1786, the Honourable James Cathcart, of Castle Hill, Inverness, Scotland, and Seignior, of Berthier, built the first building dedicated to Protestant worship since the British conquest in Lower Canada. It was called St. Andrew’s, and for two years services of the Church of Scotland were conducted by a Scottish clergyman, a tutor in Mr. Cuthbert’s family.

St. Gabriel’s Church in Montreal, founded in 1792, was the first opened for general worship. Since then seventeen parishes have arisen. The names of the original founders on the deed of purchase of the site were Adam Scott, William Stewart, Duncan Fisher, Alexander Hanna, Alexander Fisher, William England, William Hunter, and John Russell. That they were all Scotsmen is significant in connection with the beginnings of Presbyterianism in Canada. The building was truly Scottish and well built. It was of solid stone, and in keeping with the well-deserved reputation of the Scottish people as the most reliable and finest stonemasons in the world. Indeed, this, the first Scottish church in Canada, is yet a perfect picture of the old Scottish churches of the Reformation period; and is a worthy ecclesiastical monument to the strong, firm, solid character of the Scotsmen at home and abroad, the master-builders of the modern world.

Adam Scott, whose name is first on the deed, was a prominent merchant. He died in 1818. William Stewart, whose name appears second, was a native of Glasgow, and also a prominent merchant. He died in 1797, aged forty-four years. Duncan Fisher, whose name is third, was a native of Dunkeld, Perthshire, Scotland. He was the leading spirit of the congregation, and the whole community owed much to his zeal for the public welfare. He and his brothers, Alexander, John, and James, and a cousin, Finlay Fisher, came to Montreal at the close of the Revolution. He died in 1820, aged sixty-seven years. His wife was Catherine Embury, daughter of the Rev. Philip Embury, the noted pioneer of Methodism in America, and a woman of unusual character. Mr. Fisher has left many descendants prominent in Canadian life, among them being his grandson, the Honourable Sydney Fisher, who has been for the last fourteen years Minister of Agriculture for Canada.

William England was a native of Scotland. He came to Montreal in 1789. He had a large trade as a cooper. He died in 1822, aged eighty-four years. Alexander Hanna was a merchant. He was a native of Galloway, Scotland. He was also a United Empire Loyalist.

William Hunter came with his brother to Montreal from Kilmarnock, Scotland. They were merchants. John Russell and his wife, Grizell McKenzie, came from Tain, in Ross-shire. On her husband’s death his widow returned to Sutherland, in Scotland, and married the Rev. Mr. McKenzie, minister of Tongue.

The history of the Presbyterian Church in Montreal has since included many noted names of clergy and laymen. Among the former, those of the Rev. Henry Esson, Rev. Dr. Urquhart, Rev. E. F. Torrance, Rev. Dr. Wilkes, Rev. Wm. Rintoul, Rev. David Inglis, Rev. Wm. Somerville, Rev. Edward Black, Rev. John Crombie, Rev. Alexander Kemp, Rev. Dr. Mathieson, Rev. Robert Campbell, Rev. Dr. McVicar, Rev. Alexander Campbell, Rev. John Burn, Rev. James Fleck, Rev. Professor John Campbell, Rev. Robt. Irvine, Principal Story, of Glasgow University, Rev. Gavin Lang, Rev. James Edgar Hill, Rev. John McLeod, Rev. Dr. McGill, Rev. Dr. Snodgrass, Rev. Dr. James Barclay, Rev. Dr. Taylor, Rev. John M. Gibson, Rev. James S. Black, Rev. Donald Fraser, Rev. P. D. Muir, Rev. W. M. Black, and Rev. Dr. Baxter.

Many of the above clergy have been distinguished in clerical and collegiate life, and are known throughout the Dominion as strong exponents of the principles and ideals of the Scottish Church in Canada.

THE SCOTSMAN IN THE CHURCHES

(continued)

The history of Old and New St. Andrew’s in Toronto is likewise the chronicle of another great centre of Presbyterianism with a long list of names noted in Canadian history. Many of the clergy are referred to in the chapter on Education.

In 1821 there was a Presbyterian congregation in York holding services in a house on Richmond Street. The Honourable Wm. Morris, of Perth, called a meeting of Presbyterians on March 3, 1830, to consider the building of a church. John Ewart was in the chair, and the noted Dr. Dunlop, of the Canada Company, moved the resolution. The foundation-stone of St. Andrew’s Church was laid by Thomas Carfrae, jun., on June 24, 1830. The first trustees were James F. Smith, Thos. Carfrae, John Ewart, Hugh Carfrae, Walter Rose, Alexander Murray, and Jacob Latham. The first minister was the Rev. Wm. Rintoul. He was succeeded in turn by Rev. W. T. Leach, Rev. John Barclay, Rev. D. J. Macdonell, Rev. W. J. McLaughlan, Rev. Armstrong Black.

In the year 1848 the lists of the different branches of the Presbyterian Church were as follows:—

In connection with the Church of Scotland, Rev. Walter Roach, Moderator, and Rev. Andrew Bell, Synod Clerk.

Montreal Presbytery—Montreal, St. Andrew’s, Rev. Alex. Mathieson, D.D.; Quebec, St. Andrew’s, John Cook, D.D. Other places, Duncan Moody, Wm. Main, Jas. Anderson, Jas. C. Muir, Wm. Simpson, John Marlin, John Davidson, James Thom, Alex. Wallace, Robt. McGill (Montreal, St. Paul’s).

Glengarry Presbytery—Revs. John McKenzie, Hugh Urquhart, John Maclaurin, John Dickey, T. McPherson, Colin Grigor, Æneas McLean.

Hamilton Presbytery—Revs. Wm. King, George McClatchey, A. Bell, John Cruikshank, A.M., John Bryning, Alex McKid.

Bathurst Presbytery—Revs. John Smith, Geo. Romanes, Wm. Bell, Joseph Anderson, Alex. Mann, Thos. Fraser, G. Bell, Wm. Bell, John McMorine, John Robb.

Kingston Presbytery—Revs. Peter Ferguson, Peter Macnaughton, Thos. Johnston, John Tawse, Alexander Lewis, John McMurchy, J. Barclay, Alexander Ross, Samuel Porter, Wm. Brown, Wm. Barr.

There were many vacancies in all the Presbyteries, including the Pastorate of Bytown.

The Presbyterian Church of Canada.

Hamilton Presbytery—Revs. Andrew Ferrier, D.D., George Cheyne, Mark Y. Stark, John Bayne, Geo. Smellie, Wm. Meldrum, Wm. Graham, Alex. McLean, — McGregor, Ralph Robb, Robt. Lindsay, D. McKenzie, A. McIntosh, D. Allan, Robt. Peden, John McKinnon, Wm. McAllister.

Toronto Presbytery—Robt. Burns, D.D., D. McMillan, Jas. Boyd, Wm. Rintoul, Peter Gray, Jas. Harris, Henry Esson.

Coburg Presbytery—Jas. Douglass, W. Reid, Robt. Wallace, Alex. M. Steele.

Kingston Presbytery—Henry Gordon, W. Hamilton, — Greig, Robt. Reid, Robt. F. Burns.

Perth Presbytery—W. G. Johnston, Wm. Lockhead, Andrew Melville, — Blair, Jas. Finlay, Thos. Wardrope (Bytown), John Corbett.

Brockville Presbytery—Wm. Smart, Jas. Geggie, Robt. Boyd, W. J. McDowell, Alex. Luke.

Montreal Presbytery—John Clagston, David Black, Simon D. Frazer, John Frazer, Daniel Clarke, Thos. Henry, Wm. Leishman.

United Presbyterian Church of Canada.

Montreal Presbytery—Revs. Wm. Taylor, Andrew Kennedy, Alexander Lowder, Wm. Aiken, John Morrison.

Toronto Presbytery—Revs. John Cassie, Robt. Thornton, Wm. Fraser, Jas. Dick, David Coutts, Walter Scott.

Hamilton Presbytery—Thos. Christie, James Roy, Alex. Ritchie, Wm. Barrie, Robt. Torrence, Alex. Drummond, Geo. Fisher, David Caws, Jas. R. Dalrymple.

London Presbytery—W. Proudfoot, Jas. Skinner, George Murray, Alex. McKenzie, John McLellan.

Missionaries: A. Henderson, Jas. Pringle, John Porteous, John Proudfoot.

The Presbyterian Church of to-day in Eastern Canada is a very large body, and has many noted divines within its communion, many of them of Scottish extraction.

The officers for 1909-10 were: Moderator, Rev. Samuel Lyle, D.D., of Hamilton; Clerks, Rev. Robt. Campbell, D.D., Montreal, and Rev. John Somerville, D.D., Toronto.

Among so many able men, where there is no outward mark of distinction given, any selection would be invidious. However, all Canadians are familiar with the names of the following: The Revs. Dr. Barclay, Montreal; Dr. Armstrong, Ladies’ College, Ottawa; Dr. Ramsay, Ottawa; Dr. Ballantyne, Toronto; Dr. Robert Campbell, Montreal; Dr. Currie, Halifax; Dr. Eakin, Toronto; Dr. Fleck, Montreal; Dr. Forest, Halifax; Dr. Fowler, Kingston; Prof. Fraser, Montreal; Dr. Gandier, Toronto; Prof. Gordon, Montreal; Dr. Jordan, Kingston; Dr. Lyle, Hamilton; Dr. Maclaren, Toronto; Dr. McLean, Goderich; Dr. McMillan, Halifax; Dr. McMullen, Woodstock; Dr. McCrae, St. John, New Brunswick; Dr. Milligan, Toronto; Dr. Wm. Moore, Ottawa; Rev. J. Gibson Inkster, London. The latter is a gifted son of the Orkneys, and is an authority on the ancient history of Scotland, especially that of the far north. Dr. Murray, Toronto; Dr. Mackay, Toronto; Rev. Norman McLeod, Brockville; Rev. Robert Haddow, M.A., Editor of the Westminster, Toronto; Dr. J. A. Macdonald, Editor of the Globe, Toronto; Dr. Gordon (“Ralph Connor”), Winnipeg; Dr. Scrimgeour, Montreal; Dr. Shearer, Toronto; Dr. Somerville, Toronto; Dr. Stewart, Halifax; Dr. Torrance, Kingston; Dr. Wardrobe, Guelph; Prof. Welsh, Montreal.

The Churches in Halifax were represented by some noted divines of Scottish extraction. Among them were the following: Rev. Thos. Russell, Minister of St. Mathew’s Church, 1784-86. Rev. Andrew Brown, D.D., Minister of St. Mathew’s, 1787-95; wrote a history of Nova Scotia—the manuscript is now in the British Museum. He was the first chaplain of the North British Society, in 1791 Scottish Garrison chaplain, and afterwards Professor of Rhetoric at Edinburgh University. The Rev. Archibald Gray, D.D., of St. Mathew’s Church, 1799-1822. He was second chaplain of the North British Society. Rev. Mathew Dripps, of St. Mathew’s (assistant 1802); and Rev. Donald Fraser. Rev. John Scott, M.A., for thirty-seven years pastor of St. Mathew’s, from 1827 to 1864. He was joint chaplain of the North British Society, 1844-1863. Rev. James McIntosh, about 1837. Rev. John Martin, pastor of St. Andrew’s Church, 1822-65, a joint chaplain North British Society, 1844-65. Rev. Alexander Forrester, D.D., pastor of St. John’s Free Church, Halifax, 1848, Principal of Provincial Naval School, and the leader in the cause of education; died in 1869. John McIntosh, a layman, who was the leader in the Free Church movement in Nova Scotia in 1843. Rev. George Munro Grant, of St. Mathew’s, 1865, afterwards Principal of Queen’s University, joint chaplain of the North British Society. Rev. W. Maxwell, pastor of Chalmer’s Church, 1865. Rev. Charles Macdonald, Professor of Mathematics, Dalhousie College, 1863-1901. The Rev. Charles M. Grant, pastor of St. Andrew’s Church, 1865-70, chaplain North British Society, 1869. Rev. John Campbell, pastor of St. Andrew’s Church, 1869-1875, chaplain North British Society, 1870-75. Rev. Allan Pollock, D.D., pastor of St. Andrew’s, New Glasgow, 1853, Professor of History, Presbyterian College, Halifax, 1876, Principal, 1894. Rev. Thos. Duncan. Rev. A. Simpson. Rev. R. Laing. Rev. John Forrest, D.D., appointed Principal Dalhousie University, 1885, in charge of St. John’s Church for several years, one of the most noted Canadian educationalists. Rev. D. M. Gordon, pastor of St. Andrew’s Church, Professor at Pine Hill Theological College, now Principal of Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, an eloquent divine, and a noted educationalist and scholar. Rev. James S. Black, pastor St. Andrew’s Church, Vice-President North British Society, 1902.

The following interesting letter, dated October 10, 1836, and written to a clergyman in Scotland, will give an idea of Scottish Presbyterian life and conditions in Old Upper Canada during the first half of the nineteenth century. It is quoted in full and is now printed for the first time.

The writer (though the copy I have is not signed) was Kenneth McPherson, an old-time Scotsman of the good old school, who was for nearly thirty years postmaster and general merchant at Lancaster, in Glengarry County. He had been fourteen years in Canada at the date of the writing of the letter, having come out with others as a follower of a Mr. Duncan Cameron, of Thora, who had brought out quite a Scottish colony at that date, which had settled in that locality. Mr. McPherson’s father was John McPherson, from Badenoch, who took up land claimed afterwards by his son, Kenneth McPherson, married a daughter of Alexander Rose, a United Empire Loyalist and had a large family, one of which was the late Lieut.-Col. John McPherson, keeper of Militia stores for Canada. Mr. McPherson was evidently a prominent person in the Church as well as in other matters in his locality. The letter, which is endorsed in his own handwriting as a copy, is as follows:—

The history of the Anglican Church in Canada is also largely one of Scotsmen and Ulster Scotsmen. But it is more than this. It shows that the Anglican Church in early Canada owed much to the old Church of Scotland; for, strange to say, many of the leading clergy of the Church in Canada and the Maritime Provinces were originally Presbyterians, or the sons of Presbyterians.

The first bishop of the Anglican Church in Canada was an Ulster Scotsman, the Right Rev. Charles Inglis, of a noted Scottish family in Roxburgh and Perthshire, a branch of which had settled in Ulster. Bishop Inglis was the third son of the Rev. Archibald Inglis, Rector of Glen and Kilcarr, Donegal. The Bishop was born in 1734 in Donegal. He emigrated to America, and conducted a free school at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where many Ulster Scotsmen had settled early in the eighteenth century. Studying for Orders, he was ordained by the Bishop of London, and returning to America he became a missionary at Denver, in Delaware. In 1765 he was made assistant of Holy Trinity Church, New York City.

He was a strong Loyalist, and, removing to Nova Scotia at the Revolution, he was appointed the first Bishop of that, the original Diocese of British North America. His career is depicted in the chapter on Universities. His son was afterwards third Bishop of Nova Scotia.

The second Bishop of Quebec (or of both Upper and Lower Canada) was also a Scotsman and the member of a great Scottish House. The Hon. and Right Rev. Charles James Stewart, who succeeded the first Bishop Mountain, was a younger son of the Earl of Galloway. He was a man of a singular piety and a determination to spend his life for the furtherance of the cause of Christianity. He came to Canada as a young missionary, and subjected himself to the greatest privations in order to carry out his ideals. He became noted for his self-denying character and zeal as a missionary. When he succeeded to the Bishopric in 1826, on the death of the aged Bishop Mountain his diocese extended from Gaspe to the shores of Lake Huron. But he never spared himself, going from one extreme of this vast territory to the other, performing his work and encouraging the few thinly scattered clergy until his never hardy frame broke down under the terrible strain, and in 1837 he went home to die.

The Right Rev. John Strachan, first Bishop of Upper Canada, and the Right Rev. Alexander Neil Bethune, second Bishop of Toronto, with his brother, Archdeacon Bethune, of Montreal, were other prominent Scottish Canadians in the Anglican Church. The two latter were sons of the Rev. John Bethune, the venerable pioneer of Presbyterianism in Upper Canada. Another noted Scottish family were the Stuarts, father and son. The Rev. John O’Kill Stuart was a United Empire Loyalist, who came to Canada at the revolution from the American colony of Pennsylvania. He was chaplain to the forces, and the first head of the Old Toronto Grammar School. His son, the Rev. George O’Kill Stuart, was afterwards Rector of Kingston and Archdeacon of Ontario.

In the year 1827 an ecclesiastical chart was made, showing the number of Protestant clergy in Upper Canada. Of the Established Church there were thirty, eleven of whom were of Scottish extraction, and nearly all of these had been originally Presbyterians. They were Archdeacon Strachan, York; Archdeacon Stuart, Kingston; Rev. Thomas Campbell, Belleville; Rev. Mr. Burns, Richmond; Rev. John Grier, Carrying Place; Rev. Wm. Macauley, Coburg; Rev. Samuel Armour, Peterborough; Rev. J. Thompson, Cavan; Rev. Alexander Bethune, Grimsby; Rev. Mr. Green, Queenston; Rev. Mr. McIntosh, Kettle Creek. Of these, Archdeacon Strachan was educated at St. Andrew’s, and the Revs. Thomas Campbell, John Grier, and Samuel Armour at Glasgow University. Many of these were Ulster Scotsmen—that is, those whose families had come from Scotland and had lived in Ulster before emigrating again to Canada. The Rev. Thomas Campbell was doubly of that clan, his mother being also a Campbell of the same family as his father. The family were a cadet branch of the House of Argyll, and came originally from Inveraray. The Rev. Mr. Campbell was the second son of James Campbell, Esq., of Kilrea, and his wife and cousin Elizabeth Campbell. The year he died he had been appointed to a prominent Rectory in Londonderry.

The Rev. Samuel Armour came originally from Ayrshire, and the Rev. John Grier was of an Antrim family that emigrated from the Scottish borders. They were all, as was Strachan, the Stuarts, and the Bethunes, of Presbyterian families.

History shows that the Anglican Church in Upper Canada owes much to Presbyterianism and Scottish education and ideals; and, as has been shown, most of the leading clergy in the early days of the nineteenth century came of that stock and belief either in Scotland or Scottish Ulster. There is not a clan name in Scotland that is not now, or has not been, represented in the Anglican Church in Canada, among them being such distinguished prelates as Strachan, Inglis, Hamilton, and Mackray. All of these men had a great influence throughout the country, and some of them were prominent in spiritual, political, and educational affairs; and, as has been shown elsewhere in this volume, makers of laws and founders and controllers of universities, as well as preachers of the gospel and ecclesiastical dignitaries.

This was true not only of the prelates, but also of some of the clergy, who had parishes, or groups of parishes, under their charge almost equal in extent to small dioceses of the present day; and in some cases the clergy held a great power socially and politically. They were on the road committees, often chairmen of the educational boards, and, in a few cases, were the leaders on all matters in their local counties. They were, in some instances, applied to by the Lieutenant-Governor for an opinion when important local positions were to be allotted. Those were the days when a clergyman was a force in the land, and could exert an influence for good, before the party lay-politicians drove the Protestant Churches out of public affairs. Since then those Churches, while earnest and active with regard to the weal of the individual, have failed to exert themselves as great religious communities in the national life.

In Hugh Scobie’s Almanack for 1848 there is a list of the clergy of the United Church of England and Ireland in Canada, and in it are the following Scottish names:—

Diocese of Quebec.—Rev. George Mackie, D.D., Bishop’s Commissary. Montreal, Dr. John Bethune, Revs. W. A. Adamson, J. Ramsay, M.A., D. Robertson, G. F. Simpson, M.A. Other places, T. Johnston, J. J. Johnston, J. Scott, C. Reid, G. M. Ross, J. Reid, M. A. W. McMaster, J. Nichols, G. Milne, C. B. Fleming, J. Torrance, E. G. Ross, Wm. Anderson, R. Anderson, A. Balfour.

Diocese of Toronto.—Bishop Strachan; Archdeacon G. O’Kill Stuart; Archdeacon Bethune; Revs. John McCaul, J. G. D. McKenzie, Robt J. McGeorge, John Gibson, John Pentland, John McIntyre, J. L. Alexander, Wm. McMurray, J. Campbell Usher, Alex. Pyne, George Graham, Adam Elliot, Donald Fraser, John Anderson, G. M. Armstrong, James Stewart, R. F. Campbell, Wm. Ritchie, Fredk. Mack, F. Geo. Elliot, Andrew Jamieson, John Gunne, Dr. A. N. Bethune, Samuel Armour, T. S. Kennedy, John Grier, Wm. Macauley, W. Grieg, J. Antisell Allen, Harvey McAlpine, Mathew Ker, Henry Patton.

There are, to-day, many able and earnest clergy of Scottish and Ulster-Scottish extraction in the Anglican Church in Canada. Among the many names are: Bishops—Hamilton, Dunn, Mills, Richardson, and Anderson. Archdeacons—Cody, McKenzie, Ker, Davidson, Balfour, Richardson, Young, McMorine, Crawford, Houston, Smith, Forsyth, Clark, and Gilmour. Canons and Rural Deans—Carmichael, Scott, Maclean, MacNab, Mackay, Craig, Downie, Sage, Gunne, Sutherland, Henderson, Davidson, Simpson, Cowie, Young, and Machin. Professor Clark and Professor George McKinnon Wrong.

Methodism has also, though not as much as the other two Churches, her quota of Scotsmen and Ulster Scotsmen. Indeed, the two able editors of the Christian Guardian, Rev. Dr. Creighton and the Rev. Wm. McMullen, are of the good Ulster stock, and were of Presbyterian families.

The finest orator, and one of the greatest divines of the Methodist Church in Canada, was a Scotsman, the noted Dr. Douglas, whose noble utterances and apostolic appeals stirred the hearts of all Protestant Canada. A survey of the list of the clergy of the different Conferences will show a large percentage of Scotsmen taking their part in the active propaganda of this energetic and earnest branch of Protestant Christianity in Canada.

In the list of the Wesleyan clergy in 1848 the following of Scottish extraction are to be found: Rev. Mathew Richey, George Kennedy, Wm. Scott, Thos. Ratray, Samuel Rose, Kennedy Creighton, Geo. Ferguson, John Law, Lachlin Taylor, George Carr, Peter Kerr, Alexander Campbell, Wm. Graham, Jonathan Scott, Alex. MacNab, Hamilton Biggar, John Beatty, T. Hannah, Wm. McCullough, Wm. McFadden, Daniel McMullen, John Gourley, John Black, David Hardie, Cyrus C. Allison, Jas. Armstrong, Robt. Lockhead, Michael Baxter, Jos. W. McCallum, Wm. McGill, James Elliot, Wm. Pattyson, D. McDowell, John Armstrong.

Next to the Presbyterian, the Baptist Church is undoubtedly the most Scottish in its origin of all the Canadian Churches. In the early days Presbyterianism and Anglicanism, by reason of the paucity of their missionary clergy, lost thousands of their adherents in the newly settled districts, the former to the Methodists and the latter to the Baptists. No Church in Canada to-day has a more sturdy growth and a higher ideal of Christian work and influence than the Baptist Church has. Strong in her ideals, she holds her own, and she includes many of our finest scholars and divines among her preachers and teachers. In 1848 the following Scotsmen were among the Baptist clergy in Canada: Revs. Wm. Frazer, Hugh Reid, R. Boyd, Wm. Dick, Robert Dick, J. Campbell, J. King, John Edwards, S. McEachron, A. Cleghorn, A. Gillis, John Clark, E. Mitchell, P. McDonald, W. McDermid, Isaac Elliot, Jas. Dick, A. Stevens, Jas. Inglis, P. L. Davidson, D. McPhail, J. Gilmour, A. McLean, J. Baird, D. Curry, W. Gorrie, W. Drummond, T. Bailey, T. Mills, W. Hewson, J. Anderson, R. A. Fyfe, C. Stewart, J. Mitchell, C. McDermand.

The Congregational Church, which is essentially English Presbyterianism, has had also a number of Scotsmen among its clergy. The late Rev. Dr. McIntosh, of the first Congregational Church in Ottawa, and commonly called Bishop of the Congregational Church, was a Highlander of the Highlanders, and one of the noblest of men. His death was a great loss to the St. Andrew’s Society of Ottawa, of which he had been one of the most honoured chaplains. He has been succeeded by the Rev. G. Watt-Smith, late of Glasgow.

The Church of the Disciples of Christ, which is a branch of the Baptist Church, has also many adherents in Canada. It was founded by a learned divine of the clan Campbell, who went from Scotland to the United States, and its original adherents were called “Campbellites.”

The subject of the Scotsman in the Canadian Churches is one worthy of being dealt with in a large volume. Meanwhile I hope that the very inadequate treatment of this side of Scottish life in Canada in the two preceding, but necessarily brief, chapters may at least introduce the subject to the attention of the thoughtful Canadian reader and cause him to realise the very important part played by Scotland and Scottish ideals in the religious life of the Dominion.

W. LYON MACKENZIE AND BISHOP STRACHAN

The above lines constituted an epitaph written by the ill-fated Earl of Argyll on the evening before his execution.

It is a pathetic prophecy that the cause he died for would not fail, though he and others were to suffer seemingly in vain. This distinguished nobleman, who lost his life in the cause of the British Revolution of 1688, was the son of an equally ill-fated father, the great Marquess of Argyll, who also died for the same cause some years earlier in the same century. They were great Scotsmen, who, while of ancient lineage and power next to that of Royalty, were in sympathy and ideal and in close touch with the faith and ideals of the great body of the Scottish people, who had organised themselves for the triumph of their principles under the bonds of the “Solemn League and Covenant.” Strange to say, Argyll’s distinguished grandson, the famous Duke, lived to see all of the ideals of constitutional reform, for which the grandfather suffered, carried out.

WILLIAM LYON MACKENZIE.

Scotland has many martyrs of this nature, men who sacrificed all for the cause of the stern principles of right and freedom as seen and felt by the Scottish soul and mind. It seems to be a necessary development of a portion of her history that Scotland should produce a certain number of men who were doomed to suffer, by a sort of vicarious quality of spirit, for the failure of the great mass of the community to live up to its best ideals.

Of a similar nature to those illustrious martyrs of the seventeenth century, though keyed in spirit, by necessity and environment, to the ideals and requirements of a later date, was the personality of that most noted and most resolute, with one single exception, of Scottish Canadians of his period, William Lyon Mackenzie.

While he stood alone in his intense, almost fierce, antagonism to all that was not on the side of his ideals as a reformer, Mackenzie did not stand alone in the community. There were other men of commanding personality, and chief of these, and his leading rivals, if they might be so called, were two other strong Scotsmen, Archdeacon Strachan and Col. (afterwards Sir Allan) MacNab.

It is but additional evidence of the general dominance of the Scotsman in all periods of Canadian history that the three leading spirits on both sides of the struggle that largely occupied the period of the first forty years of the nineteenth century in Upper Canada were Scotsmen.

The third of this trio, MacNab, is dealt with in another place in this work. He was a strong and practical character, but without the peculiar ideals which controlled, though in a different way, the other two men. For this reason he was their inferior. But in spite of this he was a man to be reckoned with, and performed work for the young colony that could have been achieved by no other man. I have no patience with those mere party, or sectional, writers who see no good in the ideals and deeds of their party opponents. The one grave weakness of the Scottish and English peoples has ever been the curse of extreme party bigotry. Under this defect in our social conditions, where men are remembered only as leaders of rival factions, history becomes distorted and lacking in that frank, generous sincerity which it should have in the best interests of the highest good of the community. Because of this Sir Allan MacNab stands merely for the old pre-Confederation Toryism of the province, as represented by the much exaggerated ills of the family compact in the pages of many writers. The whole history of that period has yet to be properly written. The large amount of bitter party journalism upon the subject is neither history nor even healthy fiction. When we do produce an unbiassed account of that period all of these men, on both sides, will stand higher in the opinions of honest readers and students of our history. There were then, as now, no angels on either side. There were then, as there are, perhaps, a few now, men beating the wind of an indifferent public opinion for the redress of certain widely acknowledged grievances. There were then, as there are to an even greater extent to-day, people in high places who were intermarried and formed a network of official power as office-holders and controllers of wealth in the community. Strange to say, the persons who have in the last decade professed the greatest public adhesion to the struggle and principles of Mackenzie have been among the worst sinners in this family compact institution as we have it to-day.

There is no doubt, as John Morley (now Lord Morley) had to admit lately, that often what seems a broad and shining roadway may end in a mere cul-de-sac. He used this expression in voicing his disappointment at the failure of his fond ideal, the American Republic. But it might be put in other language in suggesting that it is easier to hurl imprecations and preach platitudes regarding equality and purity in opposition than it is to practise all these virtues when a party gets into power. It is a strange reflection on our modern so-called representative government and now exceedingly doubtful democracy, that the Reformers always seem to be the office-seekers and the wicked Tories and tyrants the office-holders. This, in Canada, applies equally to both parties, and the finest place to breed political cynics is the Gallery of the House of Commons, where the fervent reformers of to-day or yesterday, and the smug, smiling defenders of graft on the Treasury benches, seem to exchange their characters by merely crossing the House after an election. There is no doubt that the thinking people of the British race are more than sick of the really dangerous insincerity of the average political party, which is to-day quite ready to even smash all existing stability of government for the sake of achieving the reins of power in any country.

In spite of this very patent truth, even to-day there are fine men on both sides of the House, though the period does not seem to be kindly to the development of true statesmen. Even on the Treasury benches there are, and always have been, strong and able men, doing, as heads of departments, faithful and good work for the country. Also on the Opposition side there are, and always have been, clean, earnest men striving to better our conditions. But on both sides it is the man who is clean, and not the party. In fact, it is more. It is the decent man in spite of his party. If there is corruption on the Treasury benches, it is because of party. If there is hypocrisy and false clamour on the part of the Opposition, it is because the exigencies of the party success have supplanted the true weal of the whole community.

Likewise was it in the days of Mackenzie, Strachan, and MacNab. There was no such thing as a perfect phalanx for good or evil on either side. There was much to be deplored on the side of the Tories. But it was the system, as it is to-day, that was largely to blame. On the whole, bad as matters were, there was then in existence a class of men who did stand firmly for certain principles (would that we had such men to-day!), even though they may have sometimes exaggerated their importance. Strachan was a stern, uncompromising Churchman. He believed in the State Church as the necessary complement to the truly moral, truly stable government. He regarded it as necessary that the Church should have its place in the national life, and that the clergyman, as the representative of the Church, had his duty to perform in public life as well as the lawyer. He believed that the University and all education should be in close touch with the National Church. He realised that the Church of England was the National State Church of England, and that as such she should control the spirit of the University and college. He further held that the Church, to keep up her dignity, must be supported by the State, as it is in England. Believing all this, he, as the chief representative of the Church in Upper Canada, made a strong fight to maintain for her those rights and that status that she held under the Constitution.

That he believed and firmly held all this was certainly no crime on his part. On the other hand, it was, after all, but his common duty to his Church and his office. He should not be condemned for holding those views, any more than Bishop Macdonell should be condemned for having fought for and secured Catholic privileges along the same lines. He should be judged, rather, by his adherence or lack of adherence to his ideals and his methods of securing them. On the other hand, Lyon Mackenzie should not be condemned for being what he was, a fierce and uncompromising reformer. Strachan was accused of being over “canny” and shrewd, and of being well aware of the value of this world’s goods and power. But with this went a strong sense of proper authority and sound rule, a reverence for loyalty to the Sovereign and Church, which had a great effect for good upon many people who absorbed this ideal and needed it to render them good citizens; and it would be better if we had some of this influence in Canada at the present hour. The good Bishop was a firm administrator and a man of sound common sense, a safe man to control society and keep it in a good conservative reverence and respect for law and order. Then, he also could be fiery on occasion, and brave and militant and forgetful of self, as was shown in his daring treatment of the victorious American generals when they captured and sacked York in April, 1813. It was almost heroic, the uncompromising attitude of this stern little Scotch divine, when he rebuked Chauncey, the American leader, and his officers for their ill-treatment of the people of Toronto, and demanded, and secured it too, proper terms for the community.

His noted opponent, Mackenzie, has been accused of weaknesses the very opposite to those ascribed to Strachan. He, on the other hand, has been accused of being both impractical and impossible as a politician and statesman, because he was always ready to uphold principles, whether they were popular or not. It was said that he would not wait for the proper time to demand a reform; but so soon as he realised a wrong he made it his own at once. It can readily be understood that from the standpoint of the keen, practical party politician, who weighed all the chances of success or defeat for his faction, that such a man with such a temperament would be regarded as dangerous, if not impossible.

Such, indeed, is the summing up of such a character by the modern cynic type of man. But for those who—

who believe that—

there is a larger, truer appreciation of Mackenzie’s personality. To such persons, reading, without party or other bias, the tragedy of this man’s whole history (for it was a tragedy), William Lyon Mackenzie’s life rises above the mere personal struggle of one man for place or existence. It becomes rather the long-drawn out protest of a sincere soul against the whole miserable, second-best and cynic compromise of our age and conditions. Whether in the Commons in fierce declamation, or deserted and alone as he fled from the pitiable battle of Montgomery’s Farm, or in the prison-cell at Albany, Mackenzie was always separated by an insuperable wall from his fellow-men; and for the one simple reason that he was a fierce, burning consciousness far in advance of his own time. He was always to the end the same personality, a lonely voice crying in the wilderness of an unheeding and material world.

I do not justify the Rebellion. No sane man does, or could. Mackenzie himself did not. There is no doubt that, as he himself said afterwards, no one more bitterly regretted it than he did. It is only ignorance, class jealousy, and fierce faction hatred, bent on destruction at any cost, that would pretend to glorify any uprising against law and order. It is always a calamity even for the gravest reasons. Mackenzie did not make the Rebellion. It was only a pitiable episode in the whole miserable condition of his day and time, in which he was mixed up. It is true he had his weakness, as all men have; and his was that he allowed himself, through his bitterness of spirit, which at times verged on madness, to be made use of by vile cowardly plotters who had neither the soul nor the sincerity to openly avow what they secretly desired.

But when all is considered, this part of his career has been made too much of in Mackenzie’s life. Those who would immortalise him as the head of a poor abortive rebellion, which never at any time had the slightest chance of success, are his worst enemies. And while they pretend to represent him are really alien from the man’s own true spirit and ideals at his best. It will not be until the world forgets his part in the Rebellion that it will be able to see the true Mackenzie at his highest and finest. When this cloak of mere party mist is withdrawn, and the clamour of party invective is quelled, it will be found that he was in many respects a great man, a great Highlander, a seer, a holder of remarkable ideals, and a true benefactor of his kind. It was to a great extent because of this that he was considered to be a failure in his own day. He was, in a sense, always in the clouds; alone, withdrawn. Then, added to an exceedingly wide and clear vision as to how things should be, there was in his nature, as a natural result, a continual irritation at the imperfection of the life and conditions about him. He saw it continually in others and himself. This eternal weakness and the inability to cure or check it, immediately, bred in his sensitive nature a whole life’s unhappiness. He had a certain kinship to Carlyle, the true poet’s irritability at the eternal compromise with evil and imperfection and what is called the “mammon of unrighteousness.” When this is fully realised by the student of his life, Mackenzie will be recognised as more than the mere idol of a few narrow present-day Upper Canadian zealots of a cause that they do not even pretend to live up to. He will then be found to be one with the whole Scottish race, as a representative of one of its most characteristic types, the martyr reformer. It is remarkable to see here the similarity to the case of the Earl of Argyll and his grandson, where the tragic personality of Mackenzie is justified and complemented in the personality of his already distinguished grandson, the Hon. W. Lyon Mackenzie King, whose career of conciliation is dealt with in another part of this volume.

But the world needs different types of men to sustain it, or else civilisation would go to pieces. When Darwin was studying marine biology on board ship, and on one occasion so forgetful of mundane affairs that he was not aware for some time that he had been standing in a tub of water, he was engaged in a great work for mankind. But meanwhile some one was necessarily in command of the ship and watchful that all was safe while the great scientist carried on his researches.

And so it was in Upper Canada; while Mackenzie was voicing ideals of government, and suggesting reforms which have all been secured since (and which, sad to say, are, many of them, now obsolete), men like Strachan and MacNab were needed at the helm of State. For, imperfect as things may be, the world must be carried on from day to day. And, seer as he was, Mackenzie could not voice and improve all things. There was a side to life, and a very necessary side, to which he was, by reason of his very intense temperament, perfectly oblivious, but to which John Strachan was very much alive, and to which he ministered in no small degree.

To Strachan Canada owes a debt, as regards her culture and education, that she can never repay. He also stood for a much-needed conservatism, which was the strong anchor of British connection, and a very necessary one in a small fringe of provinces bordering upon a large, aggressive, and alien republic. He was, like Mackenzie, small in stature; but, like him, possessed a strong, dominant, and fiery spirit. Strachan was also somewhat of a poet. He wrote some very good verses and was a fine classical scholar. But his strong characteristic was his plain, common sense, conservative power of controlling a community, and his patience and determination in carrying his point.

In some things those two remarkable little Scotsmen were much alike. In an ideal state of society they might have worked together, and probably in the end did respect each other’s character, while by temperament antagonistic to what each considered the other’s ideals. After all, they had much in common, and might in time have discovered that their objects were identical. But they might each be said to represent two strong essentials to the success of civilisation, namely, individualism and the community ideal. Mackenzie was in all ways a fervent apostle of the rights of the individual; while Strachan stood rather for what he understood to be the good of the whole community. Both are in the end synonymous terms when taken rightly, as one depends on the other. But, herein, we have not done enough justice to men of the type of Strachan. He, like Mackenzie, though in a calmer temperament, was equally uncompromising. In this respect also there was something in common between the two men. Strachan had virtually founded King’s College, now Toronto University; and then he lived to see it gradually lost to the Church and all his greatest lifework seemingly in vain. In his old age he had to start out anew after a hopeless struggle, and found another Church college, that of Trinity. He also lived to see many of his cherished ideals shattered and destroyed. He has been wrongfully regarded by many as narrow, hard, and domineering. But he spent his whole life in the work of his Church, and was a great missionary of the Anglican Communion in Upper Canada. Strachan’s finest work for Canada, however, was in the direction of education; and when our true history is written, he will be remembered as our greatest pioneer in this branch of our civilisation.

Mackenzie also did much for the community. He was, in his ideas and ideals, far in advance of his time. He also was deeply interested in culture and education. He had many practical ideas regarding the progress of the country. In 1828 he suggested a scheme for the confederation of British North America, which was very much what was carried out afterwards. He, too, appreciated many conservative principles. He was a firm believer in the British Constitution. He had really in his nature and heredity many of the Old World ideals of good stable government and authority. It would surprise some of his superficial admirers, who have read more about him than is true, to find in his writings such strong, sane, conservative, old-fashioned British conceptions of many political and other matters. Finally, to close this comparison of the characters of Mackenzie and Strachan, it might be said that, as regards the community, Mackenzie was most deeply interested in its improvement, and Strachan in its stability. In this both were right, though both were perhaps partial in their several ideals. Realising this, we find that both were needed; that each performed a great work in his steadfast, earnest, life-long devotion to an ideal as each saw it. What more can any man do than this?

To both of these men Canada owes much; and all Canadians of Scottish extraction should feel a glow of pride that the two most outstanding personalities of Old Upper Canada, the two men who really acted for the good of the community, were Scotsmen of such fine fibre and high ideals of citizenship as are represented in William Lyon Mackenzie and John Strachan.

SCOTSMEN IN PUBLIC LIFE BETWEEN THE MACKENZIE AND MACDONALD PERIODS, AND SINCE

In the Parliaments of the United Provinces of Upper and Lower Canada from 1840 to 1867 there were many Scotsmen.

In the Parliament opened at Kingston on June 14, 1841, one-half of the Legislative Council or Upper House were of Scottish extraction. Their names were: James Crooks, Adam Ferrie, Adam Ferguson, Alexander Fraser, John Fraser, John Hamilton, Robert S. Jamieson, John Macaulay, John Macdonald, Peter McGill, Thomas McKay, and William Morris. In the Lower House were the following Scottish Canadians: Upper Canada sent Sir Allan McNab, John Sandfield Macdonald, J. McGill Strachan, Malcolm Cameron, James Morris, David Thornburn, E. C. Campbell, John Gilchrist, Donald McDonald, Alex. McLean, and Isaac Buchanan. Lower Canada sent John Hamilton, Colin Robertson, Robert Christie, Henry Black, David Burnett, John Neilson, and Michael McCulloch. A Scotsman, the Hon. Malcolm Cameron, moved the Address from the Throne, and another Scotsman, the Hon. John Neilson, answered for the French-Canadians in their protest against the Union. The prominent men of this period deserve some slight reference. John Sandfield Macdonald is referred to elsewhere. The Hon. Malcolm Cameron was Member for Lanark. His father, Angus Cameron, was a sergeant in the Army, who settled at Perth, Upper Canada, and kept an inn. The son started life as clerk in the distillery of the Hon. A. Graham. He was elected to Parliament for Lanark in 1836. He was made Inspector of Revenue, then Assistant Commissioner of Public Works, President of the Council, Postmaster-General, and was the first Minister of Agriculture. He sat during twenty-six years for several constituencies—Lanark, Kent, Lambton, and Huron.

Sir Allan McNab’s career belongs partly to the Lyon Mackenzie and Strachan period. In 1829 he was arrested for contempt of the House and sent to gaol; but was in 1830 elected for Wentworth. In 1841 he was elected for Hamilton, which he represented until he retired in 1857. During the Rebellion he was Speaker of the Commons. In 1842 he led the Conservative Opposition. In 1841 he was again Speaker; in 1848 he again led the Opposition against the Rebellion Losses Bill. In 1854 he became Premier. In 1856 he retired, being succeeded in the Upper Canadian Leadership by his brilliant young Scottish colleague, John Alexander Macdonald. He returned to England in 1856. He was created a Baronet; returned to Canada, and was elected to the Upper House, and was Speaker in 1862. He died that year at his residence, Dundurn Castle, near Hamilton. He was a man of faults, but also of great abilities and fine qualities. He was a leading and noted personality in the history of the first half of the nineteenth century in Upper Canada. With Mackenzie and Strachan he makes the third in a strong group of Scottish leaders in the young colony. He was a man who was headstrong and blunt, but he was loyal and with a single purpose, and had the generous heart of the Highlander. He represented, with Strachan, the best type of what was called the old-fashioned Tory in Upper Canada.

The Hon. William Morris entered Parliament in 1820. He became a champion of the Church of Scotland in the Clergy Reserves question. Elected for Lanark in 1836, he was appointed the same year to the Legislative Council. In 1837 he reorganised the Militia. As Receiver-General, under Lord Metcalfe from 1844 to 1846, he did good service for the country. He then became President of the Council, and died in 1848. He was noted for his honesty. He was born at Paisley, in Scotland, in 1786. His father came to Canada, but failing in business, became a farmer. The Hon. Wm. Morris had a son, the Hon. Alex. Morris, Lieutenant-Governor of Manitoba.

The Hon. James Morris, nephew of the above, was also born in Paisley, Scotland, in 1798, entered Parliament in 1837, and was appointed to the Legislative Council in 1844. He was Postmaster-General in 1858. He did much to reform the postal service. In 1853-54 he was Speaker of the Council. He died at Brockville in 1865.

The Hon. Adam Ferguson was a pioneer in Upper Canada in scientific agriculture. He was born in Edinburgh in 1783, being the son of Neil Ferguson, Esq., of Woodhill, of a noted Perthshire family. He founded the village of Fergus, in Wellington County. His country residence, near Hamilton, he called Woodhill, and he was a fine type of a class all too scarce in Canada, the gentleman farmer. His son, Adam Johnston Ferguson, was also prominent in Canadian public life, and represented in turn Waterloo and South Wellington. He was Receiver-General and Provincial Secretary in 1862. He inherited his mother’s family estates, and added the name Blair to that of Ferguson. At Confederation Ferguson Blair was made a Senator and President of the Council in the Cabinet.

The Hon. John Hamilton was a son of the Hon. Robert Hamilton, of Queenston, who was born in Scotland. The Senator was born in 1801. He was made a Senator at Confederation, and was President of the Commercial Bank. He resided at Kingston, and was called the father of the Canadian Senate.

The Hon. James Leslie, who was born at Nairn, in Kincardineshire, in 1786, was another Scotsman, being a son of Capt. James Leslie, of the 15th Foot, who was Assistant Quartermaster-General at the taking of Quebec under Wolfe. He was a prominent representative of Lower Canada.

In 1841 the election in Toronto had three out of four candidates Scotsmen. They were George Munro, Hon. J. H. Dunn, and Isaac Buchanan. Munro was a leading citizen of Toronto. The Hon. Isaac Buchanan was born at Glasgow in 1810. He became a prominent Canadian merchant and a leading Reformer of the moderate type, and was a member of several Governments.

The Hon. Joseph Curran Morrison was born in Ireland, but was the son of Hugh Morrison, of Sutherlandshire, Scotland. Called to the Bar in 1839, he became the partner of the Hon. W. H. Blake. He was elected to West York in the Reform interest in 1847. He became Solicitor-General in 1854 and again in 1860. In 1862 he was raised to the Bench in the Court of Common Pleas.

Chief Justice Sir Adam Wilson was a leading lawyer. He was born in Edinburgh, and came to Canada in 1830. He was the first Mayor of Toronto elected by the people. He represented North York, and from 1862 to 1864 was Solicitor-General.

Sir John Rose, Baronet, G.C.M.G., was a native of Aberdeen. Born in 1821 and educated at King’s College, he came to Canada and became a member of the Montreal Bar in 1842. He entered Parliament in 1851, and the same year became Solicitor-General, and Commissioner of Public Works in 1859. He served as an Imperial Commissioner, and in 1867 became Finance Minister. He retired in 1869.

The Hon. James Patton was born at Prescott, Upper Canada, in 1824. His father was Major Andrew Patton, of St. Andrews, Fifeshire, and the 45th Regiment. His brother was Rector of Cornwall. He removed to Barrie, where he practised law, and became a prominent Conservative. In 1856 he was elected to the Upper House for the Saugeen Division. He afterwards became Collector of Customs for Toronto.

The Hon. John Young was a native of Ayr, in Scotland, where he was born in 1811. He came to Canada, and became active in raising a regiment to put down the 1837 Rebellion. He became a prominent merchant and citizen of Montreal. Representing Montreal, he became Commissioner of Public Works in 1851. He was Harbour Commissioner of the port of Montreal, where he died in 1878.

The Hon. James Ferrier, a noted merchant of Montreal, was born in Fifeshire in 1800. A Conservative and a Methodist, he was noted for his energy and single-minded effort for good. He was appointed to the Upper House in 1867.

Hon. David Christie was born in Edinburgh in 1818. He entered Parliament in 1851 for Wentworth, Upper Canada. Elected to the Legislative Council in 1858, he became a Senator in 1867. He was Secretary of State in the Mackenzie Cabinet in 1873, then Speaker of the Senate. He accomplished much for Upper Canadian agriculture.

A list of some of the leading Scottish Senators since Confederation will include some notable personalities in the Upper Chamber.

One of the earliest was Lieut.-Col. the Hon. Walter Hamilton Dickson, representing Niagara. His father, a Scotsman, sat in the Upper Canadian Legislative Council. Col. Dickson was born in 1805, and was one of the first Dominion Senators.

The Hon. George William Allan, who became Speaker, was also a son of a former member of the Legislative Council of Upper Canada, the Hon. William Allan. Mr. Allan was born in 1822 in Toronto. He held many distinguished positions and was made one of the first Dominion Senators. There is a portrait of him in the Senate Gallery at Ottawa.

The Hon. David Lewis McPherson, a noted Canadian Highlander, was born in Inverness in 1818. He was a successful business man, railroad financier, and bank director. He was made Speaker of the Senate in 1880. His portrait is in the Senate Gallery.

The Hon. John McMurich was a member of the old Canadian Legislative Council. He was a prominent citizen of Toronto, though not a member of the Dominion Senate. His son, William Barclay McMurich, was twice Mayor of Toronto.

The Hon. Roderick Matheson, descended of that old Highland family of Ross-shire and Sutherland, was born in Ross-shire, and was a lieutenant in the Glengarry Light Infantry in 1812. He was called to the Senate in 1867. He died in 1872.

The Hon. John Simpson was born at Rothes, near Elgin. His parents were among the Scottish settlers at Perth, Upper Canada. He was a banker and founded the Ontario Bank. He was one of the original Dominion Senators in 1867. Of the first two Senators for Manitoba one was a Scotsman, the Hon. John Sutherland, of Kildonan. His father, Alexander Sutherland, was a Scottish soldier, who was of the Kildonan settlement in 1821.

A distinguished Senator representing British Columbia is the Hon. William John Macdonald, whose father was Major Alexander Macdonald, of Skye. Senator Macdonald is of a noted family in Western Scotland. He was born in Inverness-shire in 1832, and emigrated to British Columbia in 1851 as an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company. He became a prominent citizen of Victoria, and was called to the Senate in 1871.

Another Senator for British Columbia was the late Governor of that province, the Hon. T. R. McInnes. His parents were from Inverness and Paisley, but he was born at Lake Ainslie, Nova Scotia, in 1840.

The Hon. Adam Hope was born in East Lothian, Scotland, in 1813. He settled at St. Thomas in 1837, removing thence to London and thence to Hamilton, where he built up a prosperous business. He entered the Senate in 1877.

The Hon. George Alexander was born in Banffshire in 1814, and educated at Aberdeen University. He was a noted provincial agriculturist. He was called to the Senate in 1873.

The Hon. Alexander Morris was born in Perth, Upper Canada, in 1826. He was the son of the Hon. William Morris. His father came from Paisley. Mr. Morris was educated at Glasgow and McGill Universities, and studied law. He was a distinguished writer on public questions. He entered Parliament in 1861 and the Government in 1869 as Minister of Inland Revenue. He was, in succession, Chief Justice of Manitoba and Lieutenant-Governor of that province.

The following were some prominent Commoners of this period: Thomas Bain, Member for North Wentworth. He was born in Stirlingshire in 1834. He became Speaker of the Commons. David Blair, LL.D., born near Ayr in 1832, of an old family, taught school and studied law, elected Member for West York in 1872.

Lieut.-Col. James Brown, of Belleville, Member for West Hastings, was born in Scotland in 1826.

Daniel B. Chisholm was a Member for Hamilton in 1872 and in 1874. He was a son of Col. George Chisholm and grandson of Mr. Chisholm, who came from Inverness.

Robert Cunningham, elected in 1872 Member for Marquette, was born in Ayrshire.

The Hon. Peter White, P.C., born in Edinburgh, and son of Peter White, Esq., of Edinburgh, Scotland, represented North Renfrew for many years in the Commons. Chosen Speaker of the Commons under the later Conservative régime, he was one of the ablest Speakers Canada ever had. He was highly respected by men of all parties. His son has since represented the same constituency.

Sir James David Edgar, son of James Edgar, who emigrated from Keithock, Scotland, in 1840, was born in 1841 in the Eastern Townships, Lower Canada. He was Member for South Ontario, and elected Speaker of the Commons in 1896 and was knighted the same year.

Sir James Alexander Grant, K.C.M.G., Member for Russell County, was born in Inverness-shire in 1829. Was a son of Dr. Grant. He became a noted Canadian physician. He has had a long and active life, and has received many honours. He has just lately received the freedom of his own old city of Inverness. He has been president of many scientific and learned societies.

William Macdougall was born in Scotland in 1831; represented Three Rivers, Quebec, in Parliament.

Angus Morrison, son of Hugh Morrison, and brother of the Hon. Justice Morrison of the Ontario Bench, represented North Simcoe from 1858 to 1863 and Niagara in 1867.

Thomas Oliver, born in Scotland, represented North Oxford from 1866 to 1888.

The Hon. William Patterson, Minister of Customs for the Dominion, has represented South Brant since 1872. He was born in 1839. His father came from Aberdeen. He has long been one of the Liberal leaders for Ontario.

James Young represented North Brant in the Ontario Legislature. He was born at Galt in 1835, elected to Commons for South Walerton in 1867, and again in 1872 and 1874.

James Findlay was Member for North Renfrew. He succeeded a Mr. Rankin, another Scotsman. He defeated the Hon. Peter White, who afterwards represented the Riding and became Speaker of the Commons and a Privy Councillor.

We have since had many noted Senators of Scottish origin, among them the late Hon. Sir George Drummond, Hon. David McKeen, of Nova Scotia; Sir George Ross, late Premier of Ontario; the late Senator Lauderkin, Ontario; Hon. Robert Mackay, Montreal; Hon. Robert B. Angus, Montreal; Sir Richard Scott, Ottawa; Hon. Archibald Campbell, Ontario; Hon. R. Meighan, Montreal; the late Hon. David McLaren, of Perth; Hon. J. C. Edwards, Ottawa; Hon. Robert Jaffray, Toronto; Senator McMullen, Ontario; and the Hon. J. K. Kerr, K.C., of Toronto, the present able Speaker of the Senate.

Among the Members of Parliament Scotsmen have been represented in the different counties by some noted Commoners, many of whom have since gone to the Upper Chamber, to the Cabinet, or other positions, and have been mentioned in other chapters of this volume. Among the most noted of the later Commoners was the Hon. Justice Sutherland of the High Court of Ontario, who was one of the most accomplished and able Speakers of the House of Commons. He is a fine scholar, a brilliant lecturer, and an enthusiastic Scotsman. Justice Sutherland is one of the most distinguished members of the Canadian Bench. In the present Dominion Cabinet are four men of Scottish extraction—Hon. Sydney Fisher, Hon. William Patterson, Hon. George P. Graham, of Ulster-Scottish descent, and Hon. W. L. Mackenzie King. Another prominent Commoner is Mr. Guthrie, an able lawyer and speaker, who is likely to enter the Cabinet. His father was a well-known Scottish-Canadian Commoner in the Ontario Legislature.

In New Brunswick the late Hon. Andrew G. Blair, Minister of Railways and Canals for Canada, was a noted example. He had been for years Premier of New Brunswick, and was one of the ablest Canadian administrators. In Nova Scotia the Hon. W. A. Murray, who has been for many years Premier of that province, is another instance of able Maritime Scotsmen.

In Ontario the Hon. John Strathearn Hendrie, the Hons. J. M. Gibson (the present Lieutenant-Governor), Samuel Nelson Monteith, Arthur James Matheson, William John Hanna, and J. G. Mackay (leader of the Ontario Opposition), represent a host of men of Scottish or Ulster-Scottish origin who are active in Provincial public life.

SIR JOHN ALEXANDER MACDONALD

In treating of Canadian political life of the period before and during the quarter-century following Confederation, one figure stands out pre-eminently as the dominating personality—namely, that of the great Scottish-born statesman, the Right Hon. Sir John Alexander Macdonald. Though many distinguished and remarkable leaders throng the period, among them all with common consent, irrespective of party or other considerations, he stands out and makes the time particularly his own. So much is this so, that, as in the case of Lincoln, the great American, the history of the forty or fifty years of Canadian struggle and development of the last half of the nineteenth century might reasonably be called “The History of Sir John A. Macdonald and his Times.” Few men in the annals of the Empire have so dominated a whole period, and made it so much their own, as is represented in the career of this remarkable man.

The only other parallel cases are those of Disraeli and Gladstone in Britain. But even in those cases each had a rival in the other, whereas Macdonald had none to challenge his long political sway over the hearts, minds, and imaginations of a whole people. It is not denied that he had many contemporaries, such as Howe, Mackenzie, Brown, Blake, and Tupper, who might have challenged his supremacy in some respects, and others who were his superiors as orators, jurists, and scholars; but in some subtle way, by the very genius of an innate personality, he stood out and was acknowledged as the great political leader, who was so strong in the people’s hearts and so held their imaginations that they allowed him to accomplish much, and forgave him more than they have ever any other public man before or since. It would be absurd to say that Macdonald had no faults. Indeed, he was a man, like Burns, all compounded of faults. But, as in Burns’s case, they were the large, human faults of genius. So that even in his weaknesses he was brought nearer to the sympathy of his fellow-men. But this was not all. Men of the highest ideals and the straightest, narrowest life respected and honoured John Alexander Macdonald, because they felt that at core he was a man with the instincts of a true man and a gentleman, who respected and realised the best ideals of the British heredity and the British community. They felt that he was, in spite of all, a true British statesman and a loyal servant of the Crown and the Empire. Then, he had in himself by birth and environment, and he appreciated it in others, that innate refinement and love of culture which dominated his life and helped him in influencing the community of his day.

He never claimed the power of an orator with the wizard locks and the flashing eye, who welded Jove’s lightnings into his words. On the other hand, he generally spoke quietly and simply what he had to say. But when he had need to say anything important, there was a strange power of persuasion in his words and personality that carried weight where often his more rhetorical lieutenants and opponents failed. It was said of him that he picked other men’s brains. This in a sense might be true. There is no doubt he knew how to gather about him able followers, and that he organised and developed their gifts for the common good. But this is a sign of the highest genius in a leader or ruler; and few men had this gift more finely developed than Macdonald. To write at length of him is a work of supererogation; his whole distinguished career is so well known. But, in short, he was the greatest political leader that Canada has ever known, and one of the few great political personalities in the history of the Empire. He will live for ever in Canadian history as the supreme father of Confederation. Without being a student in any particular line of thought, he was a man of general reading and culture, and never appeared at a loss for a word or a phrase. He had a wide fund of anecdotes, and possessed the remarkable power of keeping silent until the moment for necessary speech arose. He was greatly admired in Britain, where he was considered to resemble Lord Beaconsfield. The real lasting greatness of Sir John A. Macdonald will be found to have its base in the fact that he was a great Imperialist and Empire-builder. In all of his work he never seemed to lose sight of this idea. His was a commanding, complete, and well-balanced greatness, which combined many subtly blended gifts of insight, resource, and tact with a commensurate knowledge of character. But two even greater qualities made the man what he was. These were a supreme intellectuality which, without intruding itself, permeated and controlled his life; and the other was a great human sympathy which only one other Canadian, Joseph Howe, possessed in so great a degree.

Macdonald’s Scottish origin is significant. Like many another noted Canadian, he hailed from the far north Highlands. His early friend, Oliver Mowat, came of Caithness stock. Macdonald’s immediate ancestors came from Sutherlandshire. To my mind, there is no more beautiful part of the world than this historical old Scottish shire, which stretches across Scotland in the far north, from Assint to the Dornoch Firth.

In the east of this shire lies the quaint old town or Royal Burgh of Dornoch, with its ruined Bishop’s Palace and ancient cathedral. Near here lies Skibo Castle, another ancient place, now the old-world home of that famous Scotsman, Andrew Carnegie. North of Dornoch is Dunrobin Castle, the chief seat in the north of the Duke of Sutherland; and south of Golspie, the station at Dunrobin, is a grim old glen or valley stretching down the hills to the sea called Rogart. Here, in the old days of the eighteenth century, was the first home in the north of this particular family of Macdonalds, who had moved north from Western Ross and the Isles, the great home of the Macdonald clan. Sir John had his book-plate in all his books, with the Macdonald arms and crest, the cross crosslet, and the galley, and the famous motto, “Per mare per terras.” But it is not known from what special branch of the clan his people descended. Sutherland, with Strathnaver, was the great country of the Mackays, who were, with the Sutherlands, the Macleods of Assint on the west and the Sinclairs on the north-east, the prevailing people. But into this great region of the clans of the cat and the muzzled bears several septs of western clans and southern families intruded. During the Breadalbane invasion of Caithness came some Campbells and Macdonalds. There was in this Reay country during the eighteenth century a famous Presbyterian divine, the Rev. Murdoch Macdonald, called the Apostle of the North, from whom some Macdonalds of Pictou, Nova Scotia, are descended.

It must have been of this stock that Sir John’s forbears in the Mackay and Sutherland county came or to which it had affiliation. In the thirty-sixth year of the eighteenth century John Macdonald, grandfather of the great Canadian Premier, was born. He was reared at Rogart, and early in his youth he was put to a business in the neighbouring town of Dornoch. He rose by prudence and patience to a high place in the town, ultimately becoming its Provost. He was married in 1778 to Miss Jean Macdonald, of Rogart, who was, no doubt, his own cousin. He had a large family, and died in 1822. His second son, Hugh Macdonald, was born in Rogart in 1782. He removed to Glasgow, and acquired a more extensive business. He married Helen Shaw, daughter of James Shaw and his wife, Margaret Grant.

They had five children, three sons and two daughters, all born in Glasgow; and one of them was the future Canadian Prime Minister. In 1820 Mr. Hugh Macdonald, finding his business affairs unsatisfactory, emigrated to Canada and settled in Kingston. John Alexander, the second son, was born on January 11, 1815, and was five years old when he arrived in Canada. Though his father was in a material sense a failure, the son was early equipped for his future life. Hugh Macdonald tried several places of residence, living for some years on the shores of the picturesque Bay of Quinte, in the county of Prince Edward, near Belleville. The biography of his distinguished son is well known to all; his life as a student at Kingston, his legal studies, local practice, and subsequent political career are all recorded.

This short account of his connection with the north of Scotland is all that is necessary for the purpose of this volume. Sir John Alexander Macdonald, like his great kinsman Sir William Alexander, was one of the few most remarkable and outstanding personalities of a breed of men unusually great in the history of Scotland and the world. In his passing we know that—

OTHER SCOTSMEN OF THE CONFEDERATION PERIOD

The public life of Sir John A. Macdonald was associated with the careers of many other noted men, some of them his lieutenants and others his opponents, in Canadian political life. It is not hard to understand, after all that has been shown so far in this volume, that many of these were Scotsmen or at least men of Scottish extraction. In the list of the Canadian Fathers of Confederation it will be found that the great majority were of Scottish extraction.

At the Charlottetown Conference of 1864, among the representatives from what was then Canada, aside from the two French-Canadians, Cartier and Langevin, all the delegates were of Scottish birth or extraction. They were Macdonald, Brown, Galt, Macdougall, Campbell, and McGee. These six men were among the most noted statesmen of their time in Canada. The Nova Scotia contingent sent to London to oppose the Union was composed of three delegates—Joseph Howe and two Scottish Canadians, the Hon. William Annand and Hugh Macdonald, both distinguished men. Nova Scotia, like Old Scotia in its union with England, stood out for better terms; and she got them in a million dollars more toward the Provincial debt, with other advantages. While Howe and Tupper were the chief political leaders, the greater portion of the others were of Scottish origin. Among these were Annand, Macdonald, McLellan, Stewart, Campbell, Sir William Young, and his brilliant brothers, George and Charles Young.

The Quebec Conference of 1864 was composed of thirty-three members from the different provinces and Newfoundland. Canada sent twelve, and of these eight were of Scottish extraction. Nova Scotia sent five, and four were of Scottish extraction. New Brunswick sent seven, and five of these were of Scottish origin; and Prince Edward Island out of her seven delegates sent three Scotsmen.

The names will be interesting in this connection: Canada—Hon. J. A. Macdonald, Attorney-General of Canada West; Hon. George Brown, President of Executive Council for Canada; Hon. Alexander T. Galt, Finance Minister; Hon. Alexander Campbell, Commissioner of Crown Lands; Hon. Thomas D. McGee, Minister of Agriculture; Hon. William Macdougall, Provincial Secretary; Hon. James Cockburn, Solicitor-General. Canada West—Hon. Oliver Mowat, Postmaster-General. Nova Scotia—Hon. William A. Henry, Attorney-General; Hon. Robt. B. Dickie, Hon. Adams G. Archibald, Hon. Jonathan McCully. New Brunswick—Hon. Peter Mitchell, Provincial Secretary and Premier; Hon. John M. Johnson, Attorney-General; Hon. W. H. Steeves; Chas. Fisher; Hon. J. H. Gray. Prince Edward Island—Hon. John Hamilton Gray, Premier; Hon. Andrew Archibald Macdonald, Hon. Thomas Heath Haviland.

As these men will be famous in our national history as the fathers, or representative makers, of Confederation, it is interesting and very significant to realise that the greater majority of these leaders were of Scottish origin. For this reason it will be well to give a short account of their careers and of their connection with Scotland. Associated with them were other noted men of this period who should also be added to this list, such as the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie, Sir John Macdonald’s noted opponent and leader of the Liberal Party, and the Hon. John Sandfield Macdonald, the leading political genius of Old Upper Canada of the Middle period.

The Hon. George Brown, like Sir John A. Macdonald, was a Scotsman born, and, like his great rival, brought the elements of Scottish life and tradition into Canadian politics. He also is so well known a personality in Canadian public life that, unless something new be added, it is superfluous to say anything.

Aside from all his other qualities as a public man and his great contribution to the cause of Confederation, George Brown will ever stand in Canadian history as the very heart and soul of the great old Liberal Party of Upper Canada. When there was such a party in the golden age of Canadian Liberalism, without doubt one man alone stood as its acknowledged leader, and his paper, the Globe, was its organ, and that man was George Brown. He had in himself all the true qualities, ideals, and prejudices of that strong and important element in our people. In his day, party did not mean merely the “ins” and the “outs.” It was a day of no compromise with the “scarlet woman” of Opposition. There was a strong element of the “no compromise” of William Lyon Mackenzie abroad. And of the staid, pious, sturdy, Globe-reading, Presbyterian Scottish Reformer George Brown was the one accepted and ideal leader.

I am not saying that this was the only good element in the community—far from it—or that there was no good in the other party. But if there was a weakness in the Conservative element, which might have proved dangerous to the public, it was a tendency to opportunism, which met a stern foe in the old-time Upper Canadian Reformers. They were, no doubt, narrow, and what is termed “hide-bound,” in some respects, lacking that suave spirit of easy toleration, or apparent toleration, which may often be spelled “indifference,” which sits so gracefully on the shoulders of some present-day politicians of both parties. But it was a part of the Scottish angularity and steady maintenance of Protestantism in Religion and State that stood out for its principles. The old-time free school and free education (free from the Church influence), the stern keeping of the Sabbath, the equality of man, the purity of public life, the right of the people to rule themselves, already voiced in a more extreme manner and finely accentuated by that great forerunner of Reform principle, Lyon Mackenzie, became established and crystallised in the Upper Canadian Reform Party under the influence and ægis of George Brown and his great organ the Globe. It was said of Brown that he was too narrow an Upper Canadian to be a true representative of the whole Dominion. But the same might be said of Howe, who was all for Nova Scotia. It can be said for Brown that he was just as much the crystallisation of the thought, ideal, and conditions of the great Scottish element of Upper Canada as was Howe of the New England element in Nova Scotia. He was a true Upper Canadian leader when there was a great Scottish Reform Party to lead. Cartier was no broader than Brown in that he stood solely and alone for Quebec and her rights and ideals in the Dominion. It must also be remembered that all these men belonged to a day when British North America was only a bundle of provinces, and when the idea of the Dominion was no more than a confederation of compromise. It is true that as a whole the Confederation was a good thing for all Canada. But it must not be forgotten that in some respects, with the exception of Quebec, every Provincial community has suffered as the result of the Confederation. In the history of that period such men as Brown, who had strong sectional and local affiliations and prejudices, must necessarily suffer in contrast with others who only cared for the large general result. But Brown has never been done justice to, and this is largely due to the fact that he would not give up his strong principles for the sake of passing popularity.

He was born in Edinburgh in 1821. His father was Mr. Peter Brown, formerly a merchant and bailie of that city, but ended his days in Toronto. They were a family evidently of journalistic ambitions. Peter Brown founded the British Chronicle in New York City in 1842; but his criticism of American institutions was not well received. He was a strong champion of Britain, and his “The Fame and Glory of England,” an answer to Lester’s “Shame and Glory of England,” shows his staunch loyalty to British institutions. George Brown removed to Toronto in 1843; and on March 5th of the following year the first number of the greatest Canadian weekly appeared. This organ of the Reform Party has ever since continued to be the leading mouthpiece of British Liberalism in Canada. His death at the hand of an assassin cast a gloom over the country, and the influence of a dominant spirit in Canadian public life was brought to a sudden termination on May 9, 1880. On the accession to power in 1873 of his friend the Hon. Alexander Mackenzie, Brown had been called to the Senate. The next year he was sent to Washington in connection with the Reciprocity Treaty. For the rest of his life his chief energies, outside of the Senate, were exerted through his paper the Globe.

He had certain qualities, those of fixed devotion to stern principles that made him impossible as a leader of a party in a mixed community like that of Canada after Confederation. But without doubt he was the real successor of Lyon Mackenzie, just as Alexander Mackenzie succeeded him. It is a remarkable fact, and one well worth realising, that these three noted Scottish Canadians, all born in the Motherland, who were the natural leaders of the Scottish Reformers of Canada, had much in common. They were all, to a certain extent, hampered in their success as popular leaders by their stern idealism and hatred of compromise. This characteristic in many ways constituted the real power and virtue of the old Canadian Liberalism. But it also prevented the party from being widely accepted as the ruling force in the founding of the Confederation and its early development; and this in spite of the fact that Lyon Mackenzie and George Brown were the earliest and most enthusiastic Confederationists. A noted Scotsman, who has been since George Brown’s day the real mainstay of the Globe, is Senator Jaffray. He is a man of the finest ideals and great ability and tenacity of character. Canada owes much to Senator Jaffray for his steady determination through many years to keep the Globe as a high-class Canadian journal and to maintain the best Reform principles in its columns.

The Hon. Alexander Mackenzie, who succeeded George Brown as actual leader of the Reform Party, was one of the most notable personalities in Canadian political history. He was the only real rival to Sir John A. Macdonald, whom as leader of the Opposition he succeeded in power from 1873 to 1878. He was born on January 28, 1822, at Logierait, in Perthshire, Scotland; so that he was a true Highlander. He was educated as a builder and contractor, and studied at Perth and Dunkeld. Being the third of seven sons, all of whom came to Canada, he had to shift for himself. In 1842 he and his elder brother, Hope Mackenzie, afterwards Member for Lambton, came to this country. He worked for some time as a journeyman builder at Kingston, before finally settling in Sarnia. In 1852 he started the Lambton Shield, which he edited; and in 1861 succeeded his brother, entering public life as Member for Lambton. A Whig in Scotland, he supported Sandfield Macdonald, and strongly favoured Confederation, but was opposed to any coalition of party for that purpose. On the defeat of Brown in 1867, Mackenzie succeeded to the leadership. In Ontario, 1871-72, he was Treasurer in Blake’s Administration of the Local Government; and in 1873 he became Premier of the Dominion, which position he held for five years.

Mackenzie’s name stands forth in our political annals for sterling honesty and a desire to serve the people faithfully. He has been ever since spoken of as the watch-dog of the Treasury; and by some his ultimate defeat has been ascribed to his too faithful guardianship of the public trust.

A noted Father of the Canadian Confederation, who was of Scottish extraction, was the Hon. William Macdougall. He and his father were both born in Canada. His grandfather was a Scottish soldier, who served in the Commissioned Department of the British Army, and settled at Shelburne, Nova Scotia, after the Revolution, and subsequently removed to Upper Canada on the founding of the province. William Macdougall was born on January 25, 1822, and lived to an extreme old age. Educated at Victoria College, he studied law, becoming an attorney in 1847. But he also entered journalism, and edited the Canadian Farmer, subsequently the Canadian Agriculturist. In 1850 he founded the North American, in opposition to the Globe, and proposed many radical changes in elective and municipal bodies, with other bold reforms. In 1857 his paper was merged in the Globe, and in 1858 he entered Parliament. In 1862 he entered the Macdonald-Sicotte Government. He took part in the Union Conferences in 1866-67. He early evinced an interest in the North-West, and had somewhat to do with the bringing of that part of Canada into the Dominion, and, as was fitting, became its first Lieutenant-Governor. His unfortunate experiences with the half-breeds is a part of our history. Of a cool temperament and logical mind, he was a noted debater, but was too much of a free-lance by nature to ever stay long in party trammels, and paid the penalty as a public man.

Sir Alexander Tilloch Galt was a distinguished Scotsman in our politics. He and his able brother, the Hon. Justice Galt, were noted sons of a noted father, the famous Scottish novelist and coloniser of Upper Canada, John Galt, founder of Goderich and Guelph, and for whom the city of Galt was named. Alexander Tilloch Galt was born at Chelsea, in England, in 1817, and showed at an early age literary proclivities, at the age of fourteen contributing to Fraser’s Magazine. At the age of sixteen he entered the British and American Land Company, operating in the Eastern Townships of Lower Canada, and by his energy improved its condition.

In 1839 he was elected Member for Sherbrook as a Liberal, but opposed the Rebellion Losses Bill, and was one of the signers of the notorious annexation manifesto of the same year. From that time he showed a strongly loyal spirit toward the Empire and British connection. He later became a Liberal-Conservative. He early showed his ability in finance. In 1858 Sir Edmund Head called on him to form a Government, but he refused. In the same year he became Inspector-General in the Cartier-Macdonald Government. In 1864 he was again made Finance Minister. From this on he was an active worker for Confederation, being a member of all the Conferences. In 1865 he went to Washington in connection with a reciprocity treaty. In 1867 he was made Finance Minister, but the same autumn retired through differences with the Government over financial conditions. In 1878 he was knighted by the Queen. He was on many international commissions, and was one of the suggesters of the national policy of Protection. He was afterwards High Commissioner for Canada in England. He was one of Canada’s ablest financiers and debaters. With a consummate tact he always commanded the respect and attention of Parliament and the public.

Two noted Scottish Canadians among the Fathers of Confederation, who were closely connected with Sir John A. Macdonald, were Sir Oliver Mowat and Sir Alexander Campbell. Their names are also coupled here with his, because, like Macdonald, they were educated and started their legal careers in what I have dared to designate as the Aberdeen of Canada, quaint and historical old Kingston. It is more than interesting that there in that classic old lakeside military and University town, called the Limestone city, three great Scottish Canadians made their first essay toward public and professional success; and that they were associated with a fourth noted Canadian, the Right Hon. Sir Richard Cartwright, the present Minister of Trade and Commerce for the Dominion, who, through his mother, is of Ulster-Scottish extraction.

Sir Oliver Mowat, who was for years one of the chief public leaders of Canada, being Premier of Ontario and afterwards Minister of Justice in the first Laurier Cabinet, was born in Kingston, Upper Canada, in 1820, his father, a native of Canisbay, Caithness-shire, Scotland, being a prominent citizen of that place. Sir Oliver was proud of the fact that he was a descendant of the Mowats of Bucholie Castle, in the extreme north of the northern shire of Caithness, in Scotland. Caithness is, with Orkney, the famed Norse country of Scotland, the land of the Sinclairs, Gunns, Swansons, and other peoples of almost pure Norse descent. This young Norse Scotsman was, from the first, a student, and had ambitions for a public career. Like Macdonald and Campbell, he chose the legal profession. He was also a Presbyterian, his father being one of the founders of Queen’s University and a prominent member of St. Andrew’s Church. Young Mowat studied for a time in John Alexander Macdonald’s law office. The two men had much in common, and possessed many similar qualities of mind which made them both such astute politicians. Here the similarity ended. Macdonald was tall, and had a striking personal appearance. Mowat was small and of no great oratorical or other powers to attract the superficial observer. But, in spite of this, there was something about this little, shrewd, kindly Scotsman that made men accept him as a leader of his fellows. He was “canny” and a man of few words, but had great political insight; and as a leader of Ontario Liberals soon made his great fellow-townsman respect him. While a Liberal in politics, Mowat was by instinct and ideals a good deal of a Conservative; and there was a great sympathy of ideas between him and Sir John. Mowat served his province and the Dominion well, and was always a staunch upholder of the Union of the Empire. In recognition of this, and for his long political service, he received from the late Queen the honour of knighthood, an honour but lately granted to his able lieutenant and successor, that eloquent and fervid Scotsman and astute statesman, Sir George William Ross, who is, without doubt, one of Canada’s strongest and most gifted public men now living.

Sir Alexander Campbell, the third in the noted political Scottish trio, was also a Kingstonian, though he happened to be born in England, in the year 1821. His father was Dr. James Campbell, of the great Argyll clan, who had removed into Yorkshire, whence he emigrated to Canada when his son was only two years old. Sir Alexander’s early education was at the hands of a Presbyterian minister at Lachine, Quebec, where his father first settled and practised medicine. On the latter’s removal to Kingston the future Minister and Lieutenant-Governor attended the Royal Grammar School at that place, which was taught by Mr. George Baxter, a fine classical scholar and the father-in-law of William Lyon Mackenzie. Campbell studied law, and in 1839 became a pupil of his great leader, with whom he remained as a student until 1842, when he became his partner. A distinguished and successful lawyer, he entered politics as a Conservative, becoming Member in the Legislative Council for the Cataraqui Division. In 1863 he became Speaker of the Council. In 1864 the Governor-General asked him to form a Government, Sir John A. Macdonald resigning in his favour. But he declined the honour, though accepting office in the new Government. This position he held in all the Coalition Governments until Confederation, in which he took an active part. He was the leading advocate of the movement in the Upper House. He was one of the first of those called to the Dominion Senate by her Majesty’s Proclamation in May, 1867, and became the Conservative leader in that Chamber. He was the first Dominion Postmaster-General, and, six years later, the first Minister of the Interior. He was sent to England in 1870 on diplomatic business, which resulted in the Washington Treaty. In 1878 he was Receiver-General in Sir John’s second Government; but soon after became once more Postmaster-General, and on May 24, 1879, was created by Her Majesty Knight Commander of St. Michael and St. George. He later became Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario. Sir Alexander Campbell, during his whole life, possessed the confidence of his great leader and friend, to whom he proved a valued and safe lieutenant in the Upper House. He was noted for a courteous urbanity to political opponents, and was very careful not to speak unless he had something special to say. He used his power with moderation and never was offensive to the minority.

It may be that had he entered the Commons, he might have made a greater name as a strong personality. But, on the other hand, he was a power in the Upper House, and aided, by his refinement, practical sense, and wide parliamentary knowledge, in justifying the existence of that Chamber. He was a successful financier and also prominent in law, being Dean of the Faculty of Law in Queen’s University.

A unique personality among the Fathers of Confederation was that of the Hon. Thomas D’Arcy McGee. It may be a great surprise to many that I have dared to include this noted Celtic orator, politician, and poet among my Canadian Scotsmen. This volume is, however, written with but one purpose in view—namely, to chronicle, in so far as I can, the history of the Scottish settlements and the lives of men of Scottish birth or extraction who have been connected with Canada; in short, to celebrate Scotland’s connection with the history of Canada. It has already been shown that the number of Scottish names connected in some way with our young country is almost countless; so that there is no reason to go out of the way or to strive by straining at all sorts of arguments to include men as being of Scottish origin who are not so. But while this is so, there is another side to this matter. This is a history of plain fact; and it would not be right, or doing justice to this subject, if any one of importance connected with Canada of Scottish extraction were ignored or left out. It is true that thousands of Canadians have been led to consider McGee an Irishman pure and simple; and it is equally true that McGee himself always prided himself in being Irish.

It is a fact that McGee was born in Ireland, and so were his parents and grandparents. But the fact that Lord Roberts was born in India did not make him an East Indian. In this whole matter we have to face the strict fact of a man’s stock or race. It is this fact that so many over-look. McGee was an Irish patriot, but Lord Byron was a Greek patriot, and the Marquess of La Fayette fought for the American cause. In spite of all I may say, the Irish will still claim McGee, and perhaps with some reason; but the fact remains that all of his stock which is known was Scottish and Welsh. His mother’s name was Morgan, which is certainly Welsh; and the story of the McGee family is soon told. There were certain septs of the great Macdonald clan in the Western Isles, and among these were the descendants of Aodh or Hugh Macdonald, now bearing the names of Macgee, Mackay, MacHugh, and Mackie. There is abundant proof of these peoples having a common ancestry.

Many Scottish histories and State documents could be quoted to prove this, but the following facts are authentic. In the island of Isla the great Macdonald chief had a council of lesser chieftains under him. Among these was McGee of the Rhinns of Isla, whose family and small clan occupied the lands in the south-western part of that island. Hill, in his famous “History of the Macdonnells of Antrim,” relates the manner of their coming into Ulster. He says: “The McGees came originally from the Rhinns of Isla, settled first in Island Magee, which has their name, and at the time of Coll Macdonnell’s marriage their principal family was in possession of the lands of Ballyuchan, adjoining Murloch Bay.” Hill further states that the first McGee was Alexander, and that he married Jane Stewart, whose father and mother were both Stewarts of Ballintog. Now, Thomas D’Arcy, McGee’s father, though of Wexford, was from Island McGee and of that stock; so that this is conclusive proof that this great Celtic scholar, poet, orator, and patriot, who was one of the Fathers of the Canadian Confederation, was largely a Scottish Macdonald and Stewart in his origin. No one will deny that he was a great Irish patriot. It would be folly to do so. He was a son of Ireland by birth and by education, and by religious and other affiliations. He was a poet of her griefs and her wrongs. He wrote, perhaps, the best modern History of Ireland ever written. But it would be equally false and foolish to deny the Scottish origin of this great man. He was in truth but another of the famous Ulster Scots who have done so much for the Empire and humanity at large. This bit of biography may startle some of my readers and surprise others; but it is the duty of a chronicle of this sort to tell the truth and correct any history which has been misleading.

While we are upon the subject it might be no harm to point out certain matters in connection with another noted Canadian family who have been generally acknowledged as being a pride to Ireland in Canada, that of the Blakes. The Hon. Hume Blake, the first Chancellor of Upper Canada, and his noted sons, Hon. Edward Hume Blake and the Hon. Samuel Hume Blake, have made the name noted in our history. Of this family the Hon. Dominick Edward Hume Blake stands in the forefront of Canadian statesmen, jurists, and orators, and was for a period of our history leader of the Liberal Party in the Dominion. It is not intended here to claim for this branch of the noted Western Irish family of the Blakes of Galway that they are anything else than Irish since the centuries ago when their ancestor Ap-Lake went from Wales to that country. But it is only right to point out that they have a connection with Scotland through their ancestors, the Humes or Homes, one of the great Scottish families. The Blakes themselves, while justly proud of their Irish origin, are equally proud of their descent from this noted Scottish stock. I am sure that my readers in Canada and outside will not accuse me of striving to make the most of my subject, but only doing strict justice to it in pointing out these interesting facts with regard to the real origin of some of our Canadian families.

One of the very ablest of Scotsmen in Upper Canada at the Confederation period was the Hon. John Sandfield Macdonald, who has been considered by many to have been the best Premier Ontario has ever had. He was of the Macdonald settlement in Glengarry, and was brought up in that famous community of Western Highlanders. He had from his early youth to struggle and provide for himself, and he set his hand to several employments when a mere lad until he determined to study law. At the age of twenty he entered the Cornwall Grammar School, and in 1835 he passed his first law examinations. He then entered the office of Mr. McLean, afterwards Chief Justice. As a young student and practitioner he soon attracted attention, and in a few years was a leading authority in the province. He was born at St. Raphael, Glengarry County, on September 12, 1812, the memorable year when his fellow-clansmen of that county were doing so much to withstand the invader from the south. His grandfather had come to the county in 1786 among the earliest settlers. In 1840 Sandfield Macdonald was called to the Bar, and was immediately elected to represent his native county in Parliament. Like his great fellow-clansman, Sir John A. Macdonald, Sandfield Macdonald’s career is well known to all Canadians. At first a Conservative, he afterwards became a Reformer through conviction, and carried his county with him. He appealed to his Highland people in their beloved Gaelic and also in English, and they followed him into the ranks of Reform. In 1849 he became Solicitor-General-West in the Baldwin-Lafontaine Government. In 1852 he was elected Speaker. But for a time he was alienated from his party, of which George Brown had become the head. In 1862 Lord Monck called upon him to form a Government, which was succeeded by a coalition Ministry in 1864. In 1867 he became the first Premier of the Province of Ontario at the head of a coalition Government. In 1871 he resigned, and died the next year at Cornwall. He was for years in poor health, yet through it all persevered in his career. He was one of Canada’s ablest administrators, but was blunt and outspoken as became his Highland blood. His brother, the Hon. Donald Alexander Macdonald, entered Parliament in 1857 and sat for the Dominion in 1867 and 1872, and became Postmaster-General in the Mackenzie Government and afterwards was Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario.

Another group of noted legal politicians in Upper Canada during and since the Confederation period included two members of another noted Scottish clan in Sir Mathew Crooks Cameron and the Hon. John Hilliard Cameron, both noted lawyers, and the former a distinguished jurist as well as a financial critic in the Legislative Assembly.

Sir Mathew Crooks Cameron, who was always a strong Conservative, was the son of Mr. John M. A. Cameron, of the Canada Company, of which John Galt was the leading spirit. He was born in 1823 at Dundas, Upper Canada, and received his education at Upper Canada College. Called to the Bar in 1849, he achieved a high reputation as a criminal lawyer. He entered Parliament in 1861 as a supporter of the Cartier-Macdonald Government. He was Provincial Secretary in the first Ontario Government. In 1878 he was made a Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench and was knighted by the Queen. He possessed a logical and large mind, and was one of the ablest of our Canadian Judges. This brief mention of his career must close this rough sketch of the leading spirits of this most important period of Canadian history, that of the Confederation.

SOME NOTED JURISTS, ADMINISTRATORS, PHYSICIANS, AND FINANCIERS OF SCOTTISH EXTRACTION

In writing a sketch of Scotsmen prominent in different epochs of Canadian history, the early period from about 1775 to 1820 is an interesting one. During this time many men of Scottish birth and extraction took an active part in the great struggle for the permanency of the British Empire on this continent. The greater number of these have been mentioned in the long series of chapters on the early settlements. There were others, however, of a later date, who were active adventurers in the New World of the Canadian provinces who should be at least noticed in a work of this nature. This included a class of men, such as early Lieutenants-Governor, Members of Provincial Governments, and other men prominent in the life of the colonies in the early days of the nineteenth century. Among such men were the following: Peter Grant, one of the early administrators of Upper Canada; Sir Gordon Drummond, head of the Forces and also an administrator in the same province during the later days of the war of 1812-1815; Alexander Henry, the discoverer and fur trader; Chief Justice Hay, in Lower Canada, who advised Carleton regarding the civil foundation of the province; Col. John Macdonell, of Glengarry, the first Speaker of the Upper Canada House of Assembly; Lord Selkirk, who in addition to his settlement on the Red River made settlements in Prince Edward Island, and was associated with enterprises in Upper Canada; Commander Barclay, of the British fleet on Lake Erie in 1812-15; Robert Gourlay, a Scotsman, who was the first Canadian agitator; Samuel Cunard, of Nova Scotia, founder of the famous ocean line of steamships of that name; Sir Hugh Allan, who was later the founder of the famous Allan Line of steamships, and founder of the great Scottish-Canadian family who were the pioneers of steamship traffic on the St. Lawrence. There is another interesting group of Scotsmen connected with Canadian shipping. It has been for years fully established that the first steamship to cross the Atlantic propelled entirely by steam was the Royal William, which was built at Quebec. It is also a fact that her commander was a Scotsman named John McDougal, who was born in Oban. George Black, John Saxton Campbell, James Goudie, and Joseph William Hervey, her builders, were all Scotsmen. Afterwards when this historic vessel was fitted out as a man-of-war, her first work was to save a Scottish Highland regiment in the action in the Bay of San Sebastian on May 5, 1836. James Goudie, builder of the Royal William, was the son of Mr. Goudie, the ship architect, who constructed the British-Canadian Navy on Lake Erie in the war of 1812.

Another class of early Canadian-Scottish pioneers were her Judges and other professional men. Among these were Sir William Campbell, an early Chief Justice of Upper Canada, who was knighted by William the Fourth. He was born in Caithness and belonged to what was called the Guoy Crook branch of the clan, who settled in Caithness when the first Earl of Breadalbane invaded that shire, having purchased the lands and earldom. Campbell was at first a soldier, then studied law in Halifax. He died in Toronto. Another was the Hon. Thomas Scott, also a Chief Justice of Upper Canada. Chief Justice Stuart was a noted Judge of Quebec, and Chief Justice Haliburton was a member of that distinguished Nova Scotian family. Since then, in Upper Canada, we have had Chief Justices Cameron, Harrison, Macaulay, and Wilson.

The Hons. Thomas Galt, William Proudfoot, and Kenneth Mackenzie were all noted Justices in Ontario. Among county Judges, Robert Dennistown, of Peterborough; Archibald Macdonald, of Wellington; Roland Macdonald, of Welland; Herbert Stone Macdonald, of Leeds and Grenville; David S. McQueen, of Oxford County; Henry McPherson, of Grey County; Alexander Forsyth Scott, of Peel; William A. Ross, of Carleton County; Jacob Ferrand Pringle, of Stormont; Daniel Home Lizars, of Perth County; and James Shaw Sinclair, of Wentworth, have upheld Scottish ability upon the Ontario Bench. To-day we have such men as the Hon. Justice Mabee and McLean on the High Court of the Railway Commissioners; the Hon. Mr. Justice Duff on the Supreme Court; and Judge McTavish and Judge Gunn represent Carleton County.

CHIEF JUSTICE HALIBURTON.
(At the age of 45.)

In Quebec the Hon. Alexander Cross, Robert Mackay, Thomas Kennedy Ramsay, and Frederick William Torrance have been prominent members of the Bench.

In New Brunswick the Hon. Charles Duff was a prominent Judge, as was the late Judge James Grey Stevens, of Charlotte County. Judge Stevens was through his mother a descendant of a cadet branch of the Campbells of Auchinbreck.

In Nova Scotia there have been many prominent Judges of Scottish extraction, who have already been mentioned in other portions of this work, among them the late Lieutenant-Governor Fraser, who has just died.

There is another class of men in every community who are as a class too often ignored, but who deserve more honour and respect than any other—namely, the members of the medical profession.

This important profession in Canada has, and has had, in its ranks a large percentage of Scotsmen; many of whom are, and were, among its ablest representatives. One only has to read the list of medical professors on any University board to note the great number of Scotsmen, or men of Scottish extraction, who stand high in the ranks of medicine in Canada. In the earlier days many physicians were surgeons in the different regiments, and a good proportion of these were Scotsmen. We have such men as Dr. Small and Dr. Walker of the Loyalist regiments; later were Dr. James Campbell, father of Sir Alexander Campbell, and Dr. Morrison and Dr. Neilson, both of the latter having participated in the “ ’37” Rebellion in Upper and Lower Canada.

Among noted Scottish medical men in Canada the following names of old-time practitioners in Upper Canada may be of interest: Dr. Joseph Adamson, born in Dundee, 1786, practised near Toronto, was brother of Col. the Hon. Seton Adamson, a Member of the Legislative Council of Upper Canada and a noted officer in the Peninsular War. Dr. Wm. Allison, of Glasgow, settled at Bowansville. Dr. Charles James Stewart Askins practised at Chatham. Dr. John Beatty, of Coburg, was a Professor at Victoria. Dr. Norman Bethune was born at Moose Factory, Hudson Bay, 1822; was grandson of the Rev. John Bethune, first of that noted family. He practised at Toronto. Dr. Edward W. Armstrong practised at Toronto. Dr. Charles Williams Buchanan, Ulster Scotsman, settled at Brockville. Dr. David Burn, Toronto. Dr. James Campbell, father of Sir Alexander Campbell, settled at Kingston. Dr. Duncan Campbell, born in Argyllshire, 1811, settled at Hamilton, then Toronto; he had a son, Dr. Lorn Colin Campbell, who died at Port Arthur in 1885. Dr. G. W. Campbell was born at Roseneath, Dumbartonshire, in 1810, and settled in Montreal. Dr. James Cathcart practised at York. Dr. Stuart Chisholm, surgeon in the Royal Artillery, Kingston. Dr. Robert Whichelo Clark was born at Leith in 1811 and practised at Whitley and Ottawa. Dr. James Cobban, born at Aberdeen, 1802, settled at London. Dr. George Cooper, born at Strathaven, Lanarkshire, 1794, settled in Belleville; his daughter married Dr. James Lister. Dr. Wm. Craigie, born in Aberdeenshire, 1790, died at Hamilton. Dr. George Gillespie Crawford, of Toronto. Dr. John Crumbie, born in Scotland, 1794, settled in Peel County. Dr. Wm. Dougall settled at Halliwell in 1799. Dr. William Dunlop, son of the Laird of Kippoch, was born at Greenock about 1795, was founder of Goderich. Dr. Wm. Durie, born in Fifeshire, practised at Thornhill. Dr. Wm. Ford, born near Montreal, 1807, of Lambton Mills. Dr. John Fraser, of Argyllshire, settled at Fonthill. Dr. Geddes, of Kingston; Dr. John Gilchrist, of Coburg; Dr. Samuel Gilchrist, of Port Hope; Dr. James Graham, of Woodhouse; Sir James Grant, of Ottawa; Dr. John Grant, of Williamsburg; Dr. Robt. Gunn, of Whitby; Dr. Robt. Douglas Hamilton, of Scarborough; Dr. J. Hamilton, of Niagara; Dr. T. Hay, of Peterborough; Dr. R. Kerr; Dr. Lithgow; Dr. Wm. McGill; Dr. D. E. McIntyre; Dr. A. McKenzie; Dr. R. McLean; Dr. J. McCaulay; Dr. Thos. Gibson, of Ottawa, who is a gifted musician as well as a noted physician.

Of later members of the medical profession many are mentioned in other chapters of this work, as many of our doctors, like our lawyers, have entered what is called public life, and others are connected with the Universities.

Some noted medical men who have won distinction outside of medicine are Sir James Grant, Dr. Tait McKenzie, Dr. Andrew McPhail, and Dr. W. H. Drummond, the Habitant poet. Dr. Frank Ferguson, late of Nova Scotia, is now a leading Professor in Bellevue College, New York City.

To enumerate cases of Scotsmen who have been successful manufacturers would be equally unnecessary. Sufficient is it to mention the names of Messrs. Goldie, of Galt and Hamilton; Capt. McCulloch, of Hamilton, the founder of the Canadian Clubs; and the Polsons, of the Polson Ironworks, in Toronto, as examples of thousands of Scottish firms throughout Canada. Among our leading merchants Scotsmen are the greater majority. Such merchant princes and financiers as Sir George Drummond, Senator Mackay, and John Macdonald and Senator Jaffray, of Toronto, are a few remarkable names in a long roll.

Among railway men, Mackenzie and Mann and Strathcona and Mountstephen are prominent examples. Of our many noted engineers, Sir Sandford Fleming is a distinguished representative as surveyor of the Intercolonial and the Canadian Pacific Railways.

It would be impossible to even catalogue the roll of Scotsmen among our agriculturists. The Hon. George Brown, Senator Gibson, and the Hon. Sydney Fisher are noted leaders in this important branch of our Canadian industries so far as Eastern Canada is concerned.

In the Civil Service of the Dominion and Provinces Scotsmen have more than held their place. The two Dominion Auditors-General have been Scotsmen; the first the well known honourable, able, and faithful guardian of the country’s revenues, the late John Lorn McDougall, C.M.G.; the present able holder of the position is a member of the great clan Fraser, which has given able and famous men to the service of the Dominion. Both of our Dominion Analysts have been Scotsmen born. Dr. McFarlane was a well-known chemist and an able writer on a wide range of subjects. His successor is a native of Scotland, Dr. Anthony McGill.

Among heads of Departments we have to-day John Fraser, I.S.O., Auditor-General; John McDougald, Deputy Minister of Customs; Robert Miller-Coulter, C.M.G., Deputy Postmaster-General; James B. Hunter, Deputy Minister of Public Works; E. R. Cameron, K.C., Registrar of the Supreme Court; Adam Short, M.A., F.R.S.C., Civil Service Commissioner; Dr. Rutherford, C.M.G., Veterinary Director-General; Brigadier-Gen. Macdonald; Archibald Blue, Chief Census Officer; A. W. Campbell, C.E., Deputy Minister of Railways and Canals; and Dr. King, Dominion Astronomer, are some of the prominent Scotsmen in the Canadian service.

In the world of finance are Sir Edward Clouston, Baronet, General Manager of the Bank of Montreal; Mr. George Burn, the able General Manager of the Bank of Ottawa; and Mr. D. L. Finnie, the Assistant Manager; W. H. Beattie, a Director of the Bank of Toronto; James Ryrie, a Director of the Metropolitan Bank; J. K. Macdonald, Secretary of the Confederation Life Association. This is a class of men who should more and more receive public recognition in the country. Few realise the great responsibility to the public borne on the shoulders of these faithful and hard-working servants of Canadian finance. Far too much prominence is often awarded to politicians who have far less real responsibility.

As has already been pointed out, the number of men of Scottish extraction in Canada who have done work in all walks of life is so great that it would be impossible to pretend to include even a small portion of them in a work of this kind.

Indeed, this is a volume dealing with communities rather than individuals. The community is, after all, of far greater importance than the mere individual. If the reader, by perusing the whole or even a portion of this work, may get some idea of many of the great pioneer Scottish communities in Canada, he may then, perhaps, take the trouble to study, more than he has done in Canada in the past, the individual in his relationship to the community and the family or parent stock. If individuals have been dealt with in the later chapters of this work, it has been largely in connection with their importance to the community. All really important men are only so in their value to the community and the age; and their biography is that of the people whom they have served.

SIR SANDFORD FLEMING, K.C.M.G.

In closing this chapter it would be wrong to omit the names of a few Scotsmen and men of Scottish descent of to-day in Canada who are, by reason of remarkable personality, unusual men even in a community of Scottish breed.

One of these men is Sir Sandford Fleming, Canada’s most distinguished engineer, and a great and noted Scotsman the world over. Few men have so well spent their lives as has this wise and faithful son of Fifeshire in the best interests of the vast Empire which he has so well served. Among Scotsmen over the world to-day, Sir Sandford Fleming is admittedly a great man. He is also a great Imperialist and Empire-builder. His long and arduous work for the accomplishment of an Empire cable and the All-Red Line would alone constitute a lifework for one man. If we add to this his agitation for cheaper postal and cable rates, and for a uniform time, we must not also forget that this great Empire-welder is also a path-finder of Empire, and that he was the man who surveyed the Intercolonial and the Canadian Pacific Railways. In this work there is but room to recognise his great work for Canada and the Empire and to point him out as a great Imperial Scotsman.

In Sir William Macdonald Canada has another great Scotsman, a soul of a marvellous tenacity for doing good and finding a great pleasure in so doing. The several colleges he has founded are an enduring monument to his deep interest in technical education in Canada, and his splendid benefactions to McGill University reveal a man who realises, as few men have done, his duty to his fellow-citizens in enabling them to make the best of life.

Lord Strathcona, a very great Scotsman, who has already been mentioned, is worthy of the respect of every Canadian. But his career will be dealt with more fully by Dr. Bryce in the second volume of this work. He with Andrew Carnegie, Sir Sandford Fleming, and Sir William Macdonald make a distinguished quartette of noted men that any race would be proud to own.

The late Sir George Drummond was also a rare character, a man who, in a quiet, unobtrusive way, did a great deal of good. He was a splendid influence in the country, and carried all through his business career a firm integrity. He was a man of a fine intellect, with a love for literature and the arts; and his magnificent private collection of paintings is the finest in Canada.

Mr. Ross-Robertson, of Toronto, is a Scottish Canadian who was born in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis. He is a man of artistic and literary tastes who has some fine collections of historical manuscripts, especially his Simcoe Papers, which are very important in connection with the history of early Upper Canada. His “Landmarks of Toronto” is a series of volumes of great value, and the result of much labour and research. But it is also as a philanthropist in a quiet way that Mr. Robertson merits recognition by Canadians. His Hospital and Home for Incurable Children is in itself an enduring monument to any man.

There is a young Scottish-Canadian whose career, so far, has been very remarkable; so remarkable, indeed, that it calls for special notice in a work of this nature—that of the Hon. W. Lyon Mackenzie King, the present Minister of Labour for Canada. If Scottish ancestry is an aid to a man, he certainly has it on both sides of the house. His father is Mr. John King, K.C., a well-known barrister, and Professor at Osgoode Hall, who is a profound and industrious writer on legal questions; and his paternal grandfather was an officer in the British Army of a regiment, strange to say, sent out to quell the Rebellion of 1837. Mr. King’s mother is the youngest daughter of William Lyon Mackenzie. With such an ancestry, it is no wonder that he has inherited that remarkable force of character, intuitive, original mind, and administrative ability, which in themselves are a surety of success. But he has inherited, what is even more important in a great servant of the State, an unusual sympathy with all classes of the community, especially the vast army of toilers. He has, therefore, made the Labour problem a life study and has already done much for technical education in Canada.

A thoroughly trained scholar with a brilliant University career at Toronto, Harvard, London, England, and Berlin, in Germany, he has an unusual intellectual foundation for the career of a Canadian statesman.

It might be said that, in the history of Canadian politics, no man, save in the cases of Sir John A. Macdonald and Sir Wilfrid Laurier, has so early shown such original talent and such splendid promise. His very manner of entrance into public life has been unusual. He began his career in building up a new and untried department and made it a needed institution throughout the country, and one that is being copied in other countries. He is the real inspirer and author of the famous Lemieux Bill, the one great bit of Labour legislation to-day in the world. He was also sent on important missions to China, England, the United States, and British Columbia; and this all before he was made a member of the Cabinet or had even entered the House of Commons. Little more need be said, save that he is, young as he yet is, one of the most remarkable men of Scottish blood whom Canada has produced.

The end of this work, so far as my part of it is concerned, is now in sight. With the chapters on literature and art and Scottish societies it will close. Now that it is finished, I see its many defects; but I now fully realise that the work undertaken is one even greater in extent than I had imagined. If what I have set down will be of some value in awakening, among those of Scottish descent and other students of history, an interest in the great Scottish colony in Canada, I will feel that my work has not been all in vain.

THE SCOTSMAN IN LITERATURE, JOURNALISM, AND ART

What is called Canadian literature contains many names of persons of Scottish or Ulster-Scottish origin. Among those which represent our verse-writing are such Scottish names as John Reade, W. H. Drummond, George Frederick Cameron, Wilfred Campbell, Isabella J. Crawford, Miss Machar, Charles Mair, Alexander McLachlan, William McLellan, George Martin, F. G. Scott, D. C. Scott, Philips Stewart, and T. C. Marquis.

Certainly these sound Scottish enough. Others of our Canadian poets and writers, like W. D. Lighthall, are also maternally of Scottish descent. Among our most gifted women writers Miss Dougal, Miss Duncan, Miss Jean Graham, Miss McMurchy, Miss McMannus, and Mrs. Brown bear names that are suggestive of the land of the heather. As has been shown elsewhere in this volume, D’Arcy McGee was also of Scottish extraction, and, like Reade, Drummond, and other Canadian poets, of Ulster-Scottish blood. Other poets of Scottish blood who have written of Canada in Canada and out of it are the Duke of Argyll, Evan McColl, and Alexander McLachlan. Two other brilliant Scottish and Ulster writers have settled in the Canadian North-West. One of these, Robert Service, a clever young bank clerk from Glasgow, in Scotland, has gone out to the Canadian Yukon and made it popular in his “Songs of a Sourdough”; and Moira O’Neill, of the “Songs of the Glens of Antrim,” is now living, or was lately living, in Manitoba.

Some of our very early verse-writers were Scottish. James Mackay, a young man from Sutherland, son of Mackay of Kirtomy, a cadet of the noble House of Reay, came out to Canada early in the nineteenth century, and wrote a poem on Quebec. A copy of this poem is now in the Canadian Archives. Among others who essayed the Muse was Bishop Strachan. The late Chief Justice Haggarty’s “Death of Napoleon” is a splendid piece of work. The Rev. Dr. McGeorge was a leading literary divine who held a charge at Newmarket, and wrote much in verse and prose. Evan McColl, like Heavysege, the English poet, can hardly be called Canadian. These two men came to Canada in the full maturity of their powers, but their names are associated with Canada because of their residence here. The Duke of Argyll, who has written the finest poem upon the subject of Quebec, might even more than these be regarded as a Canadian poet. Hunter Duvar, of Prince Edward Island, and A. J. Lockhart, Arthur Weir, and George Murray were all writers of Canadian verse bearing Scottish names.

Among our prose writers Haliburton was one of our greatest and most famous. He was the founder of American humour. Sir Daniel Wilson, a noted Scottish archæologist, was long connected with Canada as President of Toronto University.

Of our novelists, Norman Duncan, Miss Dougall, Dr. Gordon (“Ralph Connor”), W. A. Fraser, William McLellan, Miss McIlwraith, Mrs. Brown, and Robert Barr are among many whose names are sufficient to indicate their Scottish stock.

The Royal Society of Canada, founded by the Duke of Argyll, has included from its inception a host of noted Canadian writers of Scottish origin, many of whom are mentioned elsewhere. Among others such names as those of Professor Clark and Principal Loudon are significant. The Scottish names of Patterson, Bayne, Brymner, Honeyman, Murray, and Williamson are those of deceased members of the society. Prominent members to-day are: Sir Sandford Fleming, Sir George Ross, Sir James Grant, Professor Bryce, Professors McCallum, Watson, McLellan, Ramsay, Wright, Dr. J. H. Coyne, editor of the Talbot Papers and translator and editor of Galinee’s narrative, W. D. Lighthall, K.C., Col. Cruikshank, and Professor Wrong.

Other writers of prominence are: William Houston, whose “Constitutional Documents,” dealing with education in Canada, are of great value; the late James Bayne, Librarian of Toronto, a great book-lover and a fine scholar; and Mr. Justice McLean, of the Railway Commission.

Among Canadian historians are James Hannay, of New Brunswick; Duncan Campbell, of Nova Scotia; George Stewart, David Thompson, Judge Haliburton, McPherson, LeMoine, McGregor, Alexander, Patterson, Munro, Stuart, Rattray, Lindsay, Christie, Principal Grant, Dr. Bryce, and Col. Cruikshank—all of Scottish origin. For many years the Archivist of the Dominion was Dr. Douglas Brymner, an able Scottish writer, collector, and journalist.

In journalism the Scotsman from the first has been prominent. Lyon Mackenzie was a leading Upper Canadian journalist. Another very noted founder of Upper Canadian journalism was Hugh Scobie, founder and publisher of the first Reform newspaper and of Scobie’s Almanack. He was a son of Capt. Kenneth Scobie, of Ardvar, in Assynt, Sutherland. Capt. Scobie, a Scottish officer, was about to emigrate to Canada, where his rank in the Army entitled him to a large grant of land, when he was accidentally drowned. But his children came out and received his allowance of land in their own names, and Hugh Scobie was one of them.

George Brown was another noted journalist and founder of the Globe. Since then Sir Hugh Graham, of the Star; Senator Jaffray, publisher, and Dr. J. A. Macdonald, editor, of the Globe; Dr. J. S. Willison, F.R.S.C., of the News; Ross-Robertson, of the Telegram; John Dougall, of the Witness; Hugh Sellor, of the Huntington Gleaner; P. D. Ross, of the Ottawa Journal; Col. Morrison, of the Citizen; David Creighton, late of the Mail Empire; W. F. McLean, of the World; Newton McTavish, of the Canadian Magazine; Wm. Houston, of the Globe; McPhail, of the University Magazine, are but a few representatives of a very long roll of names of Scotsmen, publishers and editors of prominent Canadian journals and periodicals.

In the world of art in Canada Scotsmen have their place. Some very early artists connected with Canada were Scotsmen. Heriot, the first Deputy Postmaster-General of Old Canada, was a fine artist; and his water-colour sketches of the Canadian scenery are very exquisite. Sproule, another artist who was an Ulster Scotsman, has left some very fine sketches of Montreal and the Upper St. Lawrence. There is a fine original oil painting of Niagara Falls in the Archives at Ottawa, the work of Sir James Erskine. Among Canada’s most noted recent artists are many Scotsmen. We have Forbes, Bell-Smith, Forster, Wiley, Grier, Reid, Smith, McGillvray, all leading painters. Tait McKenzie has a wide fame as a sculptor; and in music Dr. Harriss is a genius who, by his beautiful compositions as a composer and his tremendous energy as a director, is becoming famous throughout the Empire. Through his mother, Dr. Harriss is a Duff of the old clan of the Thanes of Fife.

Much more might be said of the intellectual side of Canadian life, but sufficient has been pointed out to show the great Scottish influence in our Literature, Art, History, and Journalism.

SCOTTISH SOCIETIES IN CANADA

One of the most important and interesting sides of Scottish life in Canada is that of the many societies and associations which have their origin and object in the fostering and commemorating of Scottish patriotism and the memory of the Old Land.

There are many of these associations scattered throughout Canada, such as St. Andrew’s Society, the Sons of Scotland, Caledonian Societies, Clans of Scotland, and numerous clan associations, such as the Fraser Clan Society and the Caithness Association of Toronto. There is also the oldest and most solid Scottish association in Canada, the North British Society, in Halifax, which has had a long and honourable existence, and contains on its roll of members nearly all of the most noted Scotsmen in Nova Scotia.

Of all the Scottish societies in Canada the oldest, with the one exception noted, and the most important are the many St. Andrew’s Societies, which, though not federated as one organisation, are prominent in the life of all our leading cities and towns. Nearly every Scottish community has one, though they are not a development of the rural districts, being rather the organisation of leading Scotsmen in the chief cities and larger towns. The stronger St. Andrew’s Societies of Eastern Canada are those of Quebec, Toronto, Ottawa, Kingston, Hamilton, London, Brantford, Guelph, Galt, Brockville, Cornwall, St. John, New Brunswick, and Montreal. Those in Quebec and Montreal were the pioneer societies and were founded in 1835.

An old society is that of Kingston, which was founded on November 16, 1840. Article I. of the constitution then formed read, in part, as follows: “The name of the Society shall be the St. Andrew’s Society of the town of Kingston and Midland District of Canada.” Article II. says, in part: “Scotchmen and the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of natives of Scotland shall be admitted as resident members.” The list of officers published in 1841 included some leading Canadians. They were: President, the Hon. John Hamilton; First Vice-President, J. A. Macdonald, Esq. (afterwards the Right Hon. Sir John A. Macdonald); Second Vice-President, F. A. Harper, Esq.; Treasurer, R. McRose, Esq.; Secretary, Wm. Gunn, Esq.; Assistant Secretary, Mr. Donald Urquhart; Physicians, John McIntosh, R.A., Thomas Stratton, R.N.; Committee of Management, Jas. MacFarlane, Esq.; Francis Henderson, Hugh Fraser, Roderick Ross, Wm. McIntosh, Henry Sharp, Jas. Graham, Robt. Mathews, Hugh Calder, John Roy, Thos. Drummond, D. Christie, R. H. Rae.

The Glengarry Society was also an old one, being older than that of Kingston. The following document gives a list of some of the members in 1844:—

The subscribers are: Alex. Fraser, Hugh McGillis, John McV——, John S. Macdonald (Hon. John Sandfield Macdonald), A. Cattanach, Murdoch McPherson, K. McPherson, Murdoch Ross, Wm. McEdward, Jas. McDonald Glen, John Urquhart, Arch. Stewart, David Summers, John McLellan, Esq., R. S. Macdonald, Ronald McDonell, John Pettigall, J. E. McIntyre, Wm. McDonald, Donald McPherson, J.P., Jas. Dingwall, Benjamin Stewart, Duncan McIntyre. The amount subscribed was £25 17s.

The St. Andrew’s Society of Ottawa is also an old institution. Early in the thirties of the nineteenth century the Scotsmen of Bytown used to meet annually on St. Andrew’s Day and celebrate the occasion. On June 18, 1846, a meeting was called at the British Hotel and presided over by Sheriff Simon Fraser. Its object was to organise a St. Andrew’s Society. The first President elected was Wm. Stewart, Esq., and the Vice-President Sheriff Simon Fraser. The Secretary was Robert Harvey, jun., and the Chaplain the Rev. John Duff. The list of officers is not given. In 1848 the officers elected were: President, Hon. Thos. Mackay; First Vice-President, Wm. Stewart, Esq. Second, Robt. Harvey, jun.; Secretary, Peter Robertson; Treasurer, Andrew Drummond, Esq.; Standing Committee, Messrs. Wm. Morris, S. C. Kerr, J. L. Campbell, John McKinnon, and others. In 1859 the society was reorganised, with Sheriff Fraser as President. The sermon that year was preached by Rev. Mr. Spence, of St. Andrew’s Church.

This society has had the honour of welcoming many noted Governors of Scottish extraction. Its roll of presidents, chaplains, &c., include the names of some prominent Canadians. Among its first members in 1846 were, with the officers, Edward Mallock, Hon. Thomas Mackay, Dr. Christie, Jas. McIntosh, Danl. McLachlan, Jas. Fraser, Jas. Peacock, Wm. Sutherland, Edward McGillivray, Geo. R. Blyth, John Leslie, Robt. Lees, Andrew Drummond, S. C. Kerr, Jas. Robertson, John Fotheringham, Robt. Kenley, Donald McArthur, Peter Robertson, J. L. Campbell, Wm. Morris, Andrew Cuddie, Alex. Gray, John Porter, Alex. McIntosh, Alex. Calder, Jas. Robertson, Alex. Scott, Francis Thompson, Donald Grant. The Reception Committee at the grand ball given under the auspices of the society in honour of the arrival of the Marquess of Lorne and the Princess Louise in 1878 comprised Mr. McLeod Stewart (President), Sir John A. Macdonald, Sir Alexander Campbell, Hon. Jas. McDonald, Messrs. Thos. Reynolds, Dr. Grant, Sandford Fleming, Allan Gilmour, John Thoburn, Judge Ross, Wm. Smith, Robt. Cassels, jun., and Col. Thos. Ross.

Other noted persons connected with the society were: Rev. D. M. Gordon (now President of Queen’s University), Douglas Brymner, R. Cassels, Col. Allan Gilmour, Lieut.-Col. John McPherson, McLeod Stewart, Sir Sandford Fleming, W. D. Hogg, K.C., J. J. McCraken, P. D. Ross, Dr. Baptie, David McLaren, Esq., Rev. Wm. McIntosh, Rev. Norman McLeod, Rev. Dr. Wm. Moore, Dr. Rutherford, C.M.G., J. W. Turniff, M.P., Alex. Fraser, Esq. Some distinguished honorary members were the late Duke of Sutherland and Lord Dundonald.

For years this society has had a faithful Corresponding Secretary in Mr. H. H. Rowatt, the late President. The present Secretary is Mr. J. W. McKenzie.

The first Burns banquet was held in January, 1910, by the society, and able addresses were given by Sir George Ross, Dr. J. G. Rutherford, C.M.G., the Premier, and others.

Few of the societies have compiled histories of their work. The few are those of Halifax, Ottawa, and St. John, New Brunswick.

These histories are not only a valuable account of the life of the individual society, but, as in the case of the Halifax North British Society and the St. John St. Andrew’s Society, they are a splendid chronicle of the chief Scotsmen of the special community for fully a century.

The St. Andrew’s Society of St. John, New Brunswick, was founded at a meeting held in that city on March 8, 1798, 113 years ago. The officers elected were: President, William Pagan; Vice-President, William Campbell; Treasurer, Francis Gilbert; Secretary, John Black. The President was a native of Glasgow. He and his two brothers, Robert and Thomas, were Scottish Loyalists, and all settled in New Brunswick. William was a member of the first Legislative Assembly for St. John’s County. He was a prosperous merchant and one of the founders of St. Andrew’s Kirk at St. John. His brother Robert was active in the settlement of St. Andrews and Charlotte Counties, and also represented the latter for years in the Assembly. John Paul, one of the original members, was a native of Lanark, Scotland. He held a commission in the Royal Artillery, and fired the first gun on the Royalist side in the war of the Revolution. He was one of the first Elders of St. Andrew’s Kirk. William Campbell was born in Argyllshire in 1742. He also fought as a Loyalist in the Revolutionary War. He was Mayor of St. John from 1795 to 1816, and one of the founders of St. Andrew’s Kirk. He was also Postmaster of the city and a Commissioner in the Supreme Court. He died in 1823. Francis Gilbert was born at Corstorphine, near Edinburgh. He fought in the British Navy, and was Naval Officer for New Brunswick. John Black was born in Aberdeen. He was one of three brothers. The eldest, Andrew, was of Forest Hill, in Aberdeenshire; the other, William, joined his brother John in business in St. John. Dr. Robert Boyd was another early member. He, according to a tradition, was connected with the old noble family of that name. The Rev. George Burns, D.D., first minister of the old Kirk of St. Andrew’s, was a member of the society. The second President was a Colin Campbell, but which, of several persons of that name, is doubtful. There were four Colin Campbells resident in New Brunswick. One of these came from Scotland in November, 1784, with his wife and two sons, Alexander and Colin. He returned to Scotland in 1808. He owned property at St. Stephen. His first wife was a sister of Sir Howard Douglas, Governor of New Brunswick. His sons all had high positions in the Army and Navy. Another Colin came to St. John in 1783 with the Loyalists. He was Registrar of the Court of Admiralty. A third Colin Campbell was lieutenant of the 74th Regiment. A fourth was collector of Customs at St. Andrews in 1824.

In 1804 Andrew Crookshank was President of the society. He was one of the first of a noted family of Loyalists who have filled many important positions in the city.

Hugh Johnston, from Morayshire, was President in 1813. He was a merchant and bank director, and became Port Warden and a member of the Legislature. The Hon. Wm. Black was President from 1816 to 1823, with the exception of the year 1820. He was President of the Legislative Council of New Brunswick. He was a native of Aberdeen and a graduate of Marishal College. He was for a short time Administrator of the Government of New Brunswick. He had several sons, all noted in the province. Andrew S. Ritchie, who was President in 1820, was of a noted Canadian family. He represented St. John in the Assembly. His brother was a Nova Scotia Judge, and had three sons, who were all Supreme Court Judges. One of these, Sir William J. Ritchie, was Chief Justice of Canada, and for fifty-five years was a member of St. Andrews Society. He died in 1892 at Ottawa. In 1828 Dr. John Boyd was Vice-President. Major-Gen. Sir Howard Douglas was then Governor of the province. In 1830 Dr. John Boyd was again President. His father was Dr. John Boyd, of the Royal Medical Staff. Dr. John, the younger, was the oldest practitioner in St. John and was surgeon to the Duke of Kent.

The Hon. John Robertson, President from 1837 to 1841, was born in Perthshire. He was a successful lumber merchant and a member of the Legislative Council. He removed to England, where he died in 1876.

The President in 1844 was John Wilmot, of Montrose, Scotland. He came to St. John in 1818 with a good character from his minister. Here he became a shipbuilder and an Elder of the St. Andrew’s Kirk. He was a member of the society for sixty years, 1821-81.

In 1847 the President was John Duncan, who hailed from Meldrum, Aberdeenshire, where he was born in 1797. He was a well-known shipbuilder and President of the Commercial Bank as well as of a lot of companies. Adam Jack was made President in 1848, 1849. He was a native of Inverkip, near Greenock, Scotland. He was a leading business man. One of his daughters was the wife of Mr. John McMillan, the St. John publisher. Robert Jardine, Esq., was President in 1850-51. He was born at Girvan, Ayrshire, Scotland, in 1812. He was a prominent grocer and a cattle farmer. In 1853 John M. Walker was President. He was a son of Dr. Thomas Walker, of Perth, Scotland, an Army surgeon. He was a prominent druggist.

In 1856 the President was Alexander Jardine. He was born at Girvan in Ayrshire, and was grandson of Sir Wm. Jardine, fifth Baronet of Applegirth. Mr. Jardine was a prominent merchant. In 1858 James McFarlane was President. They entertained that year Viscount Bury. In 1859 Vice-Admiral Sir Houston Stewart came to St. John, and the society presented him with an address. Mr. McFarlane also presided this year. He was a native of Kilmarnock. He also was President in 1860, when they received the Prince of Wales. Laughlan Donaldson was President in 1862. He claimed to be a grandson of one of the survivors of Glencoe, who changed his name to Donaldson and settled in Morayshire. He was a successful merchant. Robert Keltie, Esq., a wealthy retired merchant at Sussex, entertained the society and its friends that year at his place, “Hillside,” when about 2,500 persons went from St. John. Mr. Keltie was born in Scotland. In 1867 Henry Jack was President. His father, David W. Jack, came from Cupar in Fifeshire. This year the society entertained David Kennedy, the Scottish singer, and Sir William Fairfax was present. George Stewart was President in 1869. He was a native of Wick in Caithness-shire, and was father of Dr. George Stewart, F.R.S.C. The President for 1870-71-72 was William Thompson, a native of Dumfries. His father, John Thompson, was a shipowner in St. John. William was for several years Vice-Consul for Norway and Sweden. His place was Nithbank, out of the city. The chaplain during this period was the Rev. Dr. Neil Mackay. He was born at Earltown in Nova Scotia, and was educated at Pictou Academy. He was Moderator of the Maritime Province Synod in 1889. In 1871 the society celebrated the marriage of the Marquess of Lorne. Flags were flown in many parts of the city, and the society sent a wire to the Marquess wishing him and his bride happiness, and a ball was also held. This year Mr. Laughlan Donaldson bequeathed one-eighth of his estate, $5,032, to the society. The Vice-Presidents were Messrs. Stewart and Lindsay. In 1872 Luke Stewart was President, and the Rev. George J. Carr Chaplain. In 1873, on May 10th, the steamer Castalia, of the Anchor Line, arrived at St. John with 565 emigrants from the east of Scotland. They were to be settled on the upper waters of the river St. John, and were known as the Kincardineshire Colony. The society gave these immigrants a warm welcome and a good send-off up the river to Fredericton.

Luke Stewart was born in Rothsay, Isle of Bute, and was a leading West India merchant in St. John, where his elder brother, David Stewart, was also established. In 1875 the Hon. John Robertson was made an honorary member. James Milligan was President this year. He was born at Thornhill in Dumfriesshire and was the son of Robert Milligan. In 1877 occurred the terrible fire; and Hugh H. McLean, the Secretary, saved the minute-books of the society. The President was John White, a native of Largo in Fifeshire. In 1878 the Hon. Robert Marshall was presiding. He was born in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. His great-grandfather, Robert Marshall, came from Dumfries to Pictou in 1773. Dr. Patrick Robertson Tucker was President in 1880. His father was James Tucker, of Dunkeld, Scotland, who came to St. John in 1832. Alexander Campbell Jardine was President in 1881, and was the eldest son of Alexander Jardine, who was President in 1856.

In 1883 James Knox was President. He was a native of Rothsay, Isle of Bute. He was a ship chandler in St. John. James Stratton was presiding in 1885. He was born in Edinburgh. His father, Charles Stratton, was a solicitor in Glasgow. He is a barrister. In 1888 Alexander Rankine was presiding. He was son of Thomas Rankine, biscuit manufacturer, of St. John. In 1890 Robert Jardine, another of that family of Presidents, was presiding. He was succeeded by Robert Milligan, brother of James, who was President in 1875. In 1892 Dr. Murray McLaren was President, and was succeeded in 1894 by Dr. James Christie. The succeeding Presidents were: George Robertson, 1897, and the Hon. J. Gordon Forbes, 1898. In 1899 a committee was formed to preserve in a work the records of the association, which resulted in the admirable history by T. Allan Jack, K.C.

In the year 1842 the New Brunswick branch of the Highland Society was founded in St. John by Lieut.-Col. Roderick Charles Macdonald, of the Castle Tioram Regiment, and Paymaster of the 30th Regiment, then in garrison at St. John. The society was, however, short-lived.

The North British Society of Halifax was founded in 1768; and its annals contain the names of all the prominent Scotsmen identified with the old city since that period. James S. Macdonald, the careful historian, gives a long list of biographies of many Scottish worthies connected with this institution. Its first Moderator was John Gillespie; and other prominent founders were: John Taylor, John Geddes, Wm. Scott, Wm. McLellan, Robt. Killo, James Clark, John Fraser, Walter Harkness, Donald Morrison, James Thompson, John McCrea, Wm. Luke, and Thos. McLellan.

The articles of the association were very strict. The members were fined for using profane language, for absence from meetings, and for any other breach of the rules of the association, which was charitable as well as social and convivial.

The history of this society, published in 1903, contains 110 portraits and biographical notes of Scotsmen connected with it since its foundation. These included Lord Dalhousie, Sir Colin Campbell, Sir Brenton Haliburton, Gen. Sir Patrick McDougall, and many other noted North Britons.

A very numerous and strong organisation in Canada is the Sons of Scotland Society. Its ramifications extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The association is especially strong in Ontario, where there are many “Camps,” as the different lodges are called. Each Camp has a distinctive name. Those in Ottawa are Camps Argyll and Strathcona. The Sons of Scotland Society has three special purposes—those of race, patriotism, and fraternity. Like all the other national societies, it is a mutual benefit insurance company. The admission is limited to Scotsmen or descendants of Scotsmen who desire to become members. Such an association might be of great benefit in many ways were its original ideals never lost sight of; but the great danger is that generally these associations fail to do their duty in the inculcation of race-patriotism, and degenerate into ordinary, cheap insurance benefit associations. If such an organisation has any reason for existence at all, it is as a Scottish institution and a Scottish influence in the community. It should, first of all, educate its members never to forget their Scottish origin; and should make the greatness of Scottish ideals and Scottish history the continual object of its education in the Camps. It should never lose sight of religion, and should not fail to inculcate loyalty to, and reverence for, the form of Christianity developed in Scotland. It should go further. It should champion that religion, and not only in its public celebrations give that religion a prominent part, but it should stand as an association in the country for the maintenance of Scottish Protestantism in the same way that the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the Knights of Columbus stand for what is commonly called the national religion of Ireland. It should do more than this, and should make itself the champion of all Scottish ideals in the Old Country and the New, and should show a strong example of loyalty and patriotism for the Empire and the Motherland. It should interest itself in Scottish immigration to Canada, and should see that incomers have a welcome which would be worthy alike of the land they have left and the land they are coming to. The Sons of Scotland have made themselves, by the name and character of their organisation, trustees as regards all these objects; and it is to be hoped that they will awake, ere it be too late, to a proper sense of their duty and the high destiny that awaits the organisation if this duty be carried out. Many have thought that there should be a federation of some sort of all Scottish societies in the interests of Scottish matters in Canada. If this were feasible, the Sons of Scotland would furnish the framework of an organisation to cement the whole.

An attempt was made a few years ago to form a central committee to organise the Scottish bodies, and bring them into closer touch with the Old Land, and also to endeavour to preserve in some form the history of the Scottish immigration into Canada. Among the ideas then mooted, the thought of producing such a book as this became a fixed idea in the mind of the author, and, sad to say, it is the only idea then suggested that has been in any manner carried into effect.

In connection with the institution of a central committee it was also suggested that a great central building, devoted to Scottish ideals, should be erected at Ottawa, to be a sort of headquarters for Scotsmen in Canada and those hailing from the Old Land. There was also a scheme to collect a library and found a museum of relics connected with Scotland and the early history of Scotsmen in this country. It is a pity that this scheme was not carried out, as it would have been a valuable influence in preserving the finest ideals of a large and important portion of the Canadian community. The scheme failed for the time being, as such attempts often do, for several reasons; perchance, among them, that the time was not altogether ripe for such a movement. Many prominent Scotch Canadians, among them Lord Strathcona and Sir Sandford Fleming, were interested in the idea; and Lord Dundonald had it deeply at heart, while his Excellency Lord Minto gave it his approval. Among others who favoured the movement was Alexander Fraser, the founder, and for many years the leading spirit, of the Sons of Scotland in Canada, who is now Archivist for the Province of Ontario.

Lord Dundonald, one of the Empire’s greatest soldiers and an earnest patriot, did much for the reawakening of the Scottish spirit in Canada. His receptions at Alexandria and Renfrew, where the whole Scottish population turned out to do him honour, are red-letter days in the history of Scotland in those parts of Canada. It is to be hoped that the schemes of Confederation and of a central building devoted to the Scottish-Canadian interests may yet be accomplished.

With all of their active life, for the greater part of a century, the Scottish societies in Canada have not realised the possibilities of the Scottish community as the other national associations have.

Even St. George’s Society and the Sons of England have become a stronger influence as a great unit than have the Scottish societies, notwithstanding all their philanthropic efforts. The great weakness of the Scottish people in Canada, and the world over, has been in this direction. They seem ever afraid to act as a community, and as a community uphold their most sacred ideals, for fear of offending some other national influence; a lamentable weakness in an otherwise great people.

Let us never forget the old heredity, the old traditions, and the beautiful old land of our forefathers:—

End of Vol. I.

INDEX

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

[The end of The Scotsman in Canada, Vol. I by William Wilfred Campbell]