The Scottish tradition in Western Canada originates
with the predominance of Scots in the enterprises which first penetrated
the area now comprising the Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta
and British Columbia, who exploited its fur resources, explored and
mapped its waterways, and established forts and trading posts, some of
which formed the nucleus of permanent settlements. The fur trade era, a
period of British sovereignty exercised through the Hudson's Bay Company
by virtue of its charter and trading licence, persisted for two
centuries, until the 1850s on the Pacific coast and until 1870 on the
prairies. During that period persons of mixed Scottish and Indian
parentage emerged as an important element among the indigenous peoples;
the first agricultural settlement had been undertaken by Scottish people
at Red River where the first local governing unit, dominated in its
administration by Scots, was established; and a number of church
missions and parishes were founded, achievements in which Scottish
clergymen also played a part.
The Scottish presence was still evident in the
colonial and provincial institutions which superseded the fur trade
hegemony, and Scotsmen were influential in public programmes for
settlement and development of the West, as well as in the direction and
financing of private enterprises related thereto. Scottish people from
the home land, Eastern Canada, and the United States contributed to the
tide of settlers which reached flood proportions by the end of the
nineteenth century, continued undiminished until World War I, and
thereafter more slowly advanced into the forest fringe north of the
prairies and into the interior of British Columbia. Few entirely
Scottish settlements were founded in Western Canada after 1870 but there
were both rural districts and urban centres in which Scots comprised a
substantial element. Statistics confirm the number of Scots who peopled
this new country and their augmentation over the years; their widespread
presence and contribution to its development are reflected in the
careers of numerous persons of regional or national stature. Peculiarly
Scottish traditions tended to fade in the process of acculturation but
some at least became widely dispersed among the population. In absolute
numbers, in individual achievements in many fields of endeavour, and
through significant involvement in public affairs, Scottish people had a
marked effect on the settlement and development of Western Canada.
Although the Scot and the fur trade is the subject of
a separate chapter in this book, it should be noted that this activity
accounted for the establishment of numerous trading posts, among them
Cumberland House, built by Orkneymen in 1774, the first inland post of
the Hudson's Bay Company and the oldest permanent settlement in
Saskatchewan. Scottish fur traders or their descendants were among the
first settlers about some of these posts, as far-flung, for example, as
Lower Fort Garry in Manitoba, Fort Pelly in Saskatchewan, Fort Edmonton
in Alberta, and Fort Victoria in British Columbia. Many retiring Company
servants and their families found a home in the Red River Settlement,
one of the objectives for the colony founded by Thomas Douglas, Fifth
Earl of Selkirk, in 1811.1
Lord Selkirk primarily intended that his colony
should provide a home for Scottish immigrants, along the lines of the
settlements he had previously sponsored in Prince Edward Island and
Upper Canada. He expected, too, that the colony would increase and
diversify provisions for the trading posts and brigades of the Hudson's
Bay Company, at the same time confirming the Company's title to the soil
in face of the challenge of the Montreal traders who also were
predominantly Scots. Assiniboia, the considerable inland district of
Manitoba granted in absolute proprietorship to Selkirk, received its
first colonists in 1812, a small party of Scots led over the arduous
route from Hudson's Bay by Governor Miles Mac-donell. Opposition to the
colony from the North West Company, whose trade route and operations
were threatened by it, reached a climax in the violence of 1816 during
which Cuthbert Grant, of mixed Scottish and Indian parentage and natural
leader of the plainsmen and Metis, led an attack on it and dispersed the
residents. In the aftermath Selkirk organized a force in Canada,
reoccupied the settlement, and restored it on a surer foundation. By the
end of 1817 the colony was relatively secure, but growth thereafter was
slow as frosts, floods and grasshopper infestations hampered progress.
In 1821 the population is said to have reached 419, of whom 221 were
Scots.2
After the union of the fur trading companies in 1821
the Metis were no longer incited against the colony and came to see it
as a place of settlement for themselves. Cuthbert Grant3
himself became "Warden of the Plains" on behalf of the Hudson's Bay
Company and founded the settlement of Grantown at White Horse Plains,
west of Winnipeg. As the years passed many Scottish halfbreeds became
prominent in the life of the Red River Settlement - for example, Captain
William Kennedy, who commanded two of the expeditions which searched for
evidence of Sir John Franklin, and James McKay, trader, freighter,
legislator, and negotiator of Indian treaties.4
By 1870 "the farmsteads of the halfbreeds and the
Orkney and Kildo-nan Scottish settlers presented an almost unbroken line
along the west bank"5 of the Red River. Farther west, along the
Assiniboine, the emerging settlement of Portage la Prairie included many
Scots, among them John McLean, the first farmer, 1862,6 and
the colourful Thomas Spence who inaugurated and assumed the presidency
of the abortive "Republic of Portage la Prairie" in 1867.7
The District of Assiniboia, despite the growth of other ethnic groups,
reflected in its council the dominance of the Scots - the Macdonells,
Semples, Christies, Finlaysons and McTavishs occupied the position of
governor of Assiniboia for forty-two of the fifty-eight years from 1812
to 1870!8 Justice was administered, from 1839 to 1870, by the
Recorder of Rupert's Land. There were four recorders in this period;
Adam Thom and John Black served a total of nineteen years, and Dr. John
Bunn, who was Scottish on his maternal side, served four years.9
Actually the pure Scottish element at Red River could not have exceeded
700 people, of whom 240 were born in Scotland, in a population of 12,000
when Manitoba became a province in 1870, but many of the 4,083 "English
halfbreeds" enumerated at that time must in fact have been of Scottish
and Indian parentage.10
At first served by Anglican clergy, the Scottish
Presbyterians at Red River secured the services of a minister only in
1851 in the person of Rev. John Black who built the stone church at
Kildonan. Scottish names abound, however, among the pioneer clergy of
the West. The Reverend James Nisbet, who joined Black in 1862, travelled
overland in 1866 to found a mission on the Saskatchewan River some miles
below Fort Carlton. James Isbister, son of an Orkneyman, was already the
first settler there.11 Nisbet called his mission Prince
Albert, whence grew the modern city of that name. The McDougalls of the
Methodist Church founded Morleyville, now Morley, Alberta, within a few
years.
Aside from such missions, along with the few settlers
gathered about them and the fur trading posts, there were still only the
native peoples in the old North West Territories when that area was
acquired by Canada at the same time as the founding of Manitoba.
However, the way for settlement had been paved by a long line of
explorers and surveyors associated with the fur trade, including
Alexander Mackenzie and Simon Fraser. In 1841 and 1854 James Sinclair,
free-trader son of an Orkneyman, had pioneered overland routes from Red
River across the Rockies in conducting parties of settlers to the Oregon
country.12 Increasing interest in the
1850s in the possibilities of the West for settlement had also resulted
in the dispatch of exploring expeditions from Great Britain and the old
Province of Canada. The British (Palliser) expedition included Dr. James
Hector, Scottish geologist, who was responsible for much of its journal
and for its descriptions of the geological formations and mineral
potential from the Great Lakes to Vancouver Island.13 A
principal figure in the Canadian (Dawson-Hind) expeditions,14
which explored the eastern prairies, was Simon J. Dawson, Scottish-born
civil engineer, who subsequently, in
1868, opened communication between Canada and Red River by what became
known as the Dawson Route.
In British Columbia colonial government had replaced
Hudson's Bay Company rule for some twenty years before that province's
entry into Confederation. The Scottish presence, manifest in the several
trading posts almost without exception established by Scots, could be
discerned in the governing structure first of Vancouver Island and then
of the mainland in the commanding figure of Governor James Douglas. Of
eight men who served on the Legislative Council of Vancouver Island
between its inception in 1850 and 1859,15 probably no less than six were Scots, including
John Tod, the noted fur trader who after his retirement in 1852 became a
gentleman farmer at Victoria. David Cameron was appointed judge of the
new Supreme Court of Vancouver Island in 1853, and in 1858 Matthew
Baillie Begbie (later Chief Justice) became judge in the new Crown
Colony of British Columbia where he was renowned for maintaining law and
order during the gold rush. By 1853 the Puget Sound Agricultural
Company, a subsidiary of the Hudson's Bay Company, had been assigned
four large tracts of land at Victoria for farming purposes, and Kenneth
McKenzie, a native of Scotland, was appointed bailiff for the new
Company. Arriving in 1853, McKenzie vigorously promoted the development
of the farms, and established a saw mill, flour mill, bakery, kilns,
slaughter house, smithy and other facilities.16 In 1862 a
group of settlers was dispatched from Victoria to Cowichan Bay where
names such as Bell, Duncan, Flett, Kier, McKay, Montgomery and Morton
among the newcomers of the first two years signify the presence of a
considerable number of Scots.17 At that same time a numerous
party, known as the Overlanders or Argonauts of '62, journeyed from
Ontario and Quebec via Forts Garry and Edmonton to the Cariboo gold
fields of B.C. Many of them were Scottish and some of them were to
become permanent and substantial citizens of the province18 -
for example, Edinburgh-born Richard H. Alexander, businessman and civic
official of Vancouver; Robert Burns McMicking, who organized an electric
light plant and managed a telephone company at Victoria; Archibald
McNaughton, postmaster at Quesnel; George Baillie, rancher and hotel
owner at Lytton; John Andrew Mara, merchant and miller of Kamloops.
Undoubtedly there were Scots among the other thousands who rushed into
the interior during that decade but many of the gold seekers failed to
take up permanent residence. The total population of British Columbia
had declined by 1870 when an enumeration showed only 8,576 "whites," of
whom the number of Scots was not recorded.19
Upon the acquisition of Manitoba and the North West
Territories in 1870 the Canadian government retained their lands and
resources for the new Dominion and initiated within the decade policies
for their settlement and development, including the extinction of Indian
claims, maintenance of law and order, institution of a survey system,
provision of transportation and communication, and procedures for
disposition of lands. Scots played a part in the administration and
execution of these policies, instituted, it should be remembered, in the
first instance by federal governments headed by two Scottish-born prime
ministers, John A. Macdon-ald and Alexander Mackenzie.
Lieutenant-Governor Alexander Morris of Manitoba and the North West
Territories was the principal commissioner in negotiating five Indian
treaties in the West; and for the three treaties which covered virtually
all of what became the settled areas of Alberta and Saskatchewan, all of
the commissioners were Scots.20 Law and order was imposed on this frontier through
the North West Mounted Police, whose early officers included James F.
Macleod, appointed assistant commissioner, 1874, commissioner, 1876-80,
the founder of Forts Macleod and Calgary, and Lieutenant-Colonel A.G.
Irvine, appointed assistant commissioner, 1875, and commissioner,
1880-1886. Much of the administration of western affairs was assigned to
the Department of the Interior wherein another Scot, A.M. Burgess,
became deputy minister for a significant period, 1883-1897. This
department directed the topographical and other surveys which were basic
to the disposition and settlement of the western lands.
Scottish names abound among the surveyors21
who carried out arduous duties in remote areas
under often difficult circumstances. Surveys for the route of a Pacific
railway were conducted by Sandford Fleming, and the selection of the
eventual route for it across the southern plains was influenced by the
findings of the botanist-surveyor, John Macoun, who reported much more
favourably on their agricultural possibilities than had the Palliser and
Dawson-Hind expeditions. The federal government also sent geologists
into the West, none more distinguished than George M. Dawson, who was
responsible for numerous pioneer geological reports, including those on
the lignite tertiary formation of the Territories, and the first
geological survey of the Yukon, where Dawson City was named for him. He
became assistant director of the Geological Survey of Canada in 1883 and
director in 1895.
The federal government, in addition to initiating a
homestead policy to attract settlers, made grants of land to
colonization and railway companies, and also sold blocks of lands to
developers. Construction of the first transcontinental railway was
subsidized through land grants, such that the Canadian Pacific Railway
became a huge landowner and promoter of settlement. Most significant in
the founding and financing of this enterprise were two Scots, George
Stephen and his cousin, Donald A. Smith. The latter had become a
principal shareholder, and at length Governor of the Hudson's Bay
Company which through its agreement with the Dominion government
retained not only tracts of land about its posts but one-twentieth of
the lands in the fertile belt of Western Canada. The Company's ancient
fur trade was increasingly overshadowed by its land sales; its posts
became trading centres for new communities, leading eventually to its
modern department stores. Throughout its history the Company continued
to recruit Scots, and three hundred years after its inception in 1670
the Company, now headquartered in Canada, still has in its directorate a
number of men of Scottish ancestry.22 Other major land developers in the West included
the Gaits, Sir Alexander and his son Elliott, who acquired a large tract
for irrigation near Lethbridge, and the Saskatchewan Valley Land
Company, organized by D.H. McDonald of Fort Qu'Appelle, son of an HBC
factor, together with Colonel A.D. Davidson and Senator A.D. McRae. This
Company purchased and settled a large area of government and railway
lands between the Qu'Appelle Valley and Saskatoon in the early years of
the twentieth century.
That period saw the building of another
transcontinental railway, the Canadian Northern, the enterprise of
William Mackenzie and Donald Mann, which opened up further areas to
settlement. Meanwhile capital from Scotland had also been directed into
prairie settlement, as illustrated in the huge Bell Farm at Indian Head
in the 1880s which was financed by Scottish loans,23 and in the Scottish Canadian Land and Settlement
Association which in 1884 secured 500,000 acres from the CPR in the
Turtle Mountain and Souris districts of Manitoba.24 Dundee
investors in American cattle enterprises had organized the Matador Land
and Cattle Company in 1882 which extended its operations into the
Saskatchewan Landing area north of Swift Current in 1904.25
All of these land and colonization companies, the railway companies, the
Hudson's Bay Company, together with the federal government, through
advertising, subsidization and direct sponsorship attracted the flow of
settlers among whom were many Scots.
The first satisfactory source of statistics relating
to the origins of the peoples of Western Canada after Confederation is
the census of Canada for 1881. In that year there were 3,892 Scots in
B.C., 16,506 in Manitoba and 1,217 in the North West Territories, a
total of 21,615 Scots in a population of 137,234 in the area now
comprising the four western provinces. The major increase in the decade
ending in 1881 had occurred in Manitoba, where the largest
concentrations of Scots were then in the Winnipeg (2,470), Springfield
(724), St. Andrew's (1,184), Mountain (713), and Portage (722) census
sub-districts. In the North West Territories only the Prince Albert
district in 1881 had a concentration of Scots (651) approaching those
centres, and in British Columbia 917 Scots were enumerated in Victoria
City, with the next largest group being 580 at Nanaimo. It is clear that
the increase in Manitoba had not come in any large measure from
Scotland. Canadian government immigration agents in Scotland during that
decade made such comments as "a great many people are looking towards
Manitoba" but recorded that only a few families had gone there each
year.26 In 1881 only 2,868 Manitobans had been born in
Scotland; hence some 14,000 Scots in that province had been born in
Canada, many of whom had recently migrated from Eastern Canada. The special census of the North West
Territories in 1884-85 showed 6,788 "Scotch" and 762 "Scotch halfbreeds,"
a remarkable influx in five years into the area which would become the
Provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, and where the total population
had reached 48,362, of whom 20,170 were Indians.27 The major concentrations of Scots were in the provisional
district of Assiniboia (4,762) and, within it, in the Broadview (2,123)
and Qu'Appelle-Regina (1,710) census sub-districts.
Regina, the territorial capital, then had a
population of perhaps five or six hundred but an analysis of the 195
male residents listed in the first Regina Director (1885)
suggests that at least forty of them, over 20%, were Scots.28 They represented a wide range of occupations, and
many were obviously of influence in the affairs of the town, since they
included several barristers, a banker, the postmaster, the school
teacher, the deputy sheriff, the clerk of the court, a druggist, a
brewer, an auctioneer, a surgeon, a clergyman, a surveyor, a Dominion
Lands agent, such tradesmen as a painter, a tinsmith, several
carpenters, a butcher, a printer, and the proprietors of five general
stores, a furniture store, a book store, a lumber yard, a livery stable,
and two boarding houses. They found themselves living in a town which in
its initial administration and street names had a markedly Scottish
flavor, the latter conferred for the most part in honour of the
principals of its joint developers, the Canadian Pacific Railway and the
Canada North West Land Company. The railway and the land company, with
their astute Scottish-Canadian directors and financial backing, were
responsible for the establishment and development of forty-seven
townsites between Brandon and the eastern boundary of British Columbia,
including Regina, Moose Jaw, Swift Current, Medicine Hat, and Calgary.29
These townsites were initially administered by a commission of four
trustees, comprised of R.B. Angus and Donald A. Smith for the CPR and
E.B. Osier and William B. Scarth for the land company. At Regina the
townsite trustees, except for their control of unsold lots, had given
way by 1884 to a municipal government, headed by barrister David L.
Scott, the first mayor, 1884-85, whose successor was Daniel Mowat,
1886-87.30
Already on the plains about Regina, stretching
northward to Lumsden in the Qu'Appelle Valley, Ontario-born Scottish,
such as the Balfour, Martin, Sheriffs and Mutch families, had
homesteaded.31 Farther east, as
previously noted, the essentially rural Broadview census sub-district
included many Scottish farmers. There Lady Cathcart's philanthropic
efforts had led to the settlement of nearly 300 Scottish crofters at St.
Andrew's and Benbecula, near Moosomin and Wapella, in 1883 and 1884.32
This was the forerunner of subsequent attempts, financed by the British
government, to send impoverished crofters and cottars from the Western
Isles to Manitoba and the North West Territories.33 In 1888
thirty families, 183 persons in all, were enabled by Her Majesty's Board
of Commissioners established for the purpose to settle at Killarney,
Manitoba. This work was then assigned to the Imperial Colonization Board
which, in 1889, assisted another
forty-nine families, a total of 252 persons, to take up homesteads near
Saltcoats, NWT (now Saskatchewan). The Killarney settlement was a
success whereas that at Saltcoats collapsed by 1900, largely due to
adverse climatic conditions. While this colony failed, the board's
objective of relieving the distress its settlers had suffered in
Scotland was attained as they found employment in neighbouring towns or
moved to then more prosperous farming districts.
Elsewhere groups of Scots settled independently on
the land. Family ties and favourable reports from friends who had
emigrated tended to lead Scots, like members of other ethnic groups, to
the same districts where they might sustain traditional folkways and
assist each other in the struggles of pioneering. One such district lay
south of Wolseley, Saskatchewan, where between 1885 and 1907 there was a
steady influx of Lowland settlers from Ayrshire, Perthshire,
Aberdeenshire, and the Lothians.34 They
spread over four townships, with the rural post office and Presbyterian
Kirk of Moffat the focal point of the community. Not all of these
settlers had previous experience in farming; they included carpenters,
harness-makers, blacksmiths, drapers, butchers, bricklayers, and
well-trained stonemasons. Using field stone, with locally fired
limestone and sand for mortar, the latter were responsible for building
the fine stone houses which still distinguish Moffat from most
settlements on the prairies, where frame structures usually replaced the
original sod houses and log cabins.
Although it is not apparent that there were many
Scottish group settlements, whether formally organized as at Killarney
and Saltcoats, or independent aggregations as at Moffat, there is no
question that Scots both from the homeland and Eastern Canada were well
represented in the great flood of immigration which developed at the
beginning of the twentieth century. Annual statistics confirm the number
of arrivals from Scotland. In the year ended June 30, 1904, for example,
the Canadian government agent at Glasgow reported that 12,627 persons of
Scottish nationality had left for Canada, of whom according to
destinations registered at the ports of entry in Eastern Canada, 3,391
intended to go to Manitoba, 1,005 to the North West Territories, and 445
to B.C.35 Included therein would be 911
Scots who filed entry for homesteads and 171 unmarried male labourers
recruited for farm employment. Their disposition throughout the West is
impossible to determine, although occasional references such as "135
Scotch" received at the immigration hall, Calgary, in that year
sometimes indicate the general localities in which they settled.
Comparative figures five years later, for the year ended March 31, 1909,
showed 11,810 arrivals from Scotland, of whom 1,886 were destined for
Manitoba, 1,776 for Saskatchewan and Alberta, and 1,495 for B.C.36
It is impossible to determine how many persons of Scottish ancestry may
have been among the thousands of settlers from Eastern Canada in this
period. By the time of the census of 1911 Scots numbered 282,991 of the
total population of 1,715,189 in the four western provinces. The passage
of another thirty years may be said
to have brought to a close the whole period of settlement. Certainly by
1941 the vast bulk of the agricultural lands had been occupied, the
forest and mining frontiers at least initially tapped, and virtually all
of the urban communities founded. Pioneer settlements had grown and
developed, and there had been a natural increase over one or two
generations in the population, as well as the immigration which resumed
after World War I. While a marked rural-urban shift in population was
still to come, the prolonged drought and depression of the 1930s had
prompted the internal migration of farmers from the southern prairies
and of some city dwellers as well. On their own or with inadequate
government assistance these people, Scots among them, trekked into the
northern parklands to take up the axe, grub-hoe, and breaking plough in
a second pioneering venture in one generation.37 Others left the prairies for British Columbia. While
recognizing that these developments must be taken into account, the
census figures of 1941 are instructive in confirming the steady growth
of population of Scottish origin (see Table 1) and in identifying
communities where Scots had settled in substantial numbers.
Nowhere do the Scots appear to have become a majority
of the population, but there were communities in which they represented
more than their average proportion of 14.9% for all of Western Canada in
1941. In Winnipeg, centre of the first Scottish colony, Scots were still
fully 18% of the population, and they represented over 22% in Calgary.
Examples of other places where Scots exceeded the average were
(approximate percentage in brackets): St. James, rural (23%), Minnedosa
(28%), and Russell (27%) in Manitoba; Avonlea (35%), Saltcoats (23%),
Wapella (29%), Lumsden (28%) and Lashburn (28%) in Saskatchewan; Banff
(23%) and Carstairs (27%) in Alberta; and New Westminster (21%) in
British Columbia.
The widespread dispersal of the Scots and their
contributions to western settlement and development can be seen in the
careers of many outstanding persons, only a few of whom can be
identified here. Although, as we have seen, some Scottish settlers had
never farmed, many of this "race of gardeners," as they have been
called, brought with them knowledge and experience which was of benefit
to prairie agriculture.38 A catalogue
of them would include Angus MacKay,39 who became first
superintendent of the Indian Head experimental farm and promoted tree
planting and the dry-farming technique of summerfallowing, and Frank L.
Skinner, who in his nursery at Dropmore developed many varieties of
fruits and flowers.40 It would also include pioneer importers
and breeders of livestock such as Archibald Wright of Winnipeg, 41 who imported the first Holstein cattle to Western
Canada and who grew the first sweet clover there, Glen Campbell, who
imported Highland cattle for his ranch at Riding Mountain, 42
James D. McGregor,43 who specialized in Aberdeen Angus cattle
at Brandon and also directed the irrigation projects of the Southern
Alberta Land Company near Medicine Hat, William Rutherford and John
Oman, who managed pioneer sheep ranches at Maple Creek and Swift
Current, respectively,44 Major James Walker, first manager of the Cochrane
ranch at Calgary,45 and the noted horseman, livestock judge
and educator, William John Rutherford,46 who was first Dean
of Agriculture at the University of Saskatchewan. Scots were also among
the early large scale "bonanza" farmers; for example, J.W. Sandison at
Brandon47 and William R. Bell at Indian Head,48
both of whom went bankrupt, while Adam MacKenzie of the Arden and
Carberry districts49 and James Bruce of Lashburn50
were successful, the latter aided by an inheritance which enabled him to
donate a hospital and a church to his community.
Scots were also active in the organization of
farmers' co-operatives, one of the most notable being A.J. McPhail,51
first President of the Saskatchewan
Co-operative Wheat Producers, Ltd., and of the central selling agency of
the three prairie wheat pools. Earlier, the pioneer Grain Growers' Grain
Company had been enabled to survive through sales to the Scottish
Co-operative Wholesale Society of Glasgow;52 prairie
co-operatives, especially Interprovincial Co-operatives Ltd., of which
another Scot, James McCaig, was first president, maintained an
association with that organization. 53 Scots were prominent,
too, among the private grain merchants, flour millers, and founders of
elevator companies. William and John Ogil-vie, of the Montreal firm,
were the pioneer wheat buyers in Manitoba, and with other grain
merchants such as D.H. McMillan, C.G. Galt, and K. MacKenzie formed the
Winnipeg Grain and Produce Exchange in 1887.54
Scots were of course pioneers in other lines of
business across the West. They were among the first merchants in many
towns, representative of them being John A. McDougall in Edmonton,55
James Clinkskill in both Battleford and
Saskatoon,56 R.D. McNaughton in Moosomin,57 Wm.
Douglas in Leduc,58 W.F. Cameron in Vernon,59
Tweed and Ewart, partners in the first store in Medicine Hat,60
and Robert Gerrie, who opened the first furniture store west of the
Great Lakes in Winnipeg in 1873.61 The variety of businesses
and industries founded by Scots is further illustrated in the careers of
Wm. C. Garson, who established the Garson Quarries at Tyndall,62
Duncan Macarthur, Winnipeg banker,63 John McKechnie, founder
of the Vulcan Iron Works, Winnipeg,64 and such lumber millers
and merchants as Douglas C. Cameron65 of Rat Portage (Kenora)
and Winnipeg and D.H. MacDowall66 of Prince Albert. Colonel
A.D. McRae, in association with Mackenzie and Mann, extended his
interests beyond prairie lands and an important saw mill at New
Westminster to found the Canadian Western Lumber Company, and entered
the salmon canning industry in 1911.67 H.R. MacMillan,
founder of an exporting company at Vancouver, developed one of the
largest lumber companies on the continent.68 The Gaits opened
the coal mines at Lethbridge; Robert Dunsmuir also went into coal mining
on Vancouver Island, becoming "the province's first capitalist," with
interests in iron works, railway and steamship lines as well.69
The Scottish enterprise in early transportation was duplicated in the
air age in the success of G.W.G. McConachie who began his career as a northern bush pilot
and founded an air transport firm, later absorbed by Canadian Pacific
Airlines in which he rose to be president.70
The influence of Scots, noted in the administration
of the old district of Assiniboia and in the colonial period of British
Columbia, is also evident in the politics and government of the western
provinces after Confederation. The first premiers of Alberta, Alex
Rutherford, 1905-1910, and Saskatchewan, Walter Scott, 1905-1916, were
Scottish. Both provinces have had ten premiers to 1975 since they were
founded 68 years ago in 1905 and in both provinces five premiers have
been Scots, occupying the position for a total of 21 years in Alberta
and 50 years in Saskatchewan, the latter accounted for in part by the
lengthy term of Thomas C. Douglas, 1944-1961. Manitoba since 1870 has
had sixteen ministries to 1975, four of which covering a total of
twenty-five years were headed by Scots, including John Norquay,
1878-1887, and to which could be added a fifth ministry, the nine-year
term, 1958-1967, of Duff Roblin (Scottish only on his maternal side). In
British Columbia at least eight Scots have served as premier, for a
total of 41 years since 1871, including the twenty-year term of W.A.C.
Bennett, 1952-1972. No attempt has been made to analyse the ethnicity of
the membership of the ministries or legislatures of the four provinces,
but it is of relevance that the first Saskatchewan ministry was
comprised of Walter Scott, James Calder, J.H. Lamont, and W.R.
Motherwell, certainly the first three of whom were Scottish, and
Motherwell, born in Ontario, was probably of Irish-Scottish ancestry. In
addition to the premiership, the Scots have been well-represented in the
western legislatures in view of their electoral success in the federal
arena.
Scottish representation in the House of Commons from
Western Canada far exceeded their numerical proportion of the
population. This is not to suggest that either federally or provincially
there was a Scottish position or cause; the evidence confirms that many
Scots took an active interest in public affairs and politics, the latter
by no means confined to any one party. In office and in opposition they
represented the traditional Liberal and Conservative parties as well as
being active in the later Social Credit and CCF-NDP parties, and in the
Progressive movement of the 1920s. No less than fourteen of thirty-nine
Progressives elected to the House of Commons from Western Canada in 1921
were Scots, including such leading figures as T.A. Crerar and Robert
Forke of Manitoba and Robert Gardiner of Alberta. Also elected, as a
Labour member, was William Irvine of Alberta. A recent analysis of
twenty-nine persons in the "middle leadership" of the Progressive Party
in Saskatchewan showed that twelve of them were either born in Scotland
or of Scottish descent.71 Scots had
earlier participated in nineteenth century farm protest movements,
including the Northwest Farmers' Union, organized at Brandon in 1883, of
which Dr. Alexander Fleming72 was president, and the Patrons
of Industry, of whom James M. Douglas of Tantallon was an exponent and
successful candidate for Parliament in 1896.73 They were
also leaders in the organization of
grain growers' associations after the turn of the century. In the
territorial association, founded 1902, W.R. Motherwell and John Millar
were first president and secretary respectively. The secretary of the
Manitoba Association, formed the following year, was Roderick McKenzie
of Brandon, and the first board of directors included at least three
more Scots.74
These illustrations of early concern about settlers'
problems and of active participation in the organized farm movement and
in politics generally demonstrate a strong public-spiritedness and
social conscience among the Scots who settled in Western Canada.
Combined with their business acumen and enterprise, and their
contributions in other fields noted herein or examined elsewhere in this
volume, it can be maintained that the Scots wielded an influence beyond
their numerical strength in the population. They were probably less
successful in preserving a Scottish way of life in the West. There were,
as we have seen, few strictly Scottish settlements, and Scottish
settlers, even where they comprised a sizable part of the community,
tended to merge culturally with their neighbours. It does not appear
that schools were taught in Gaelic or that the language persisted much
beyond the first generation. Although some journals were once published
in Winnipeg, no Scottish press flourished in Western Canada.75
To be sure there were any number of Scottish
editors of pioneer newspapers, such as P.G. Laurie of the Saskatchewan
Herald (Bat-tleford),76 John Robson of the New Westminster
British Columbian and Victoria Colonist,77 and Richard Waugh
of the Nor'West Farmer (Winnipeg).78 Various Scottish
societies were founded and, with annual observances of Robert Burns'
birthday, persisted. Pipe bands, traditional dancing, and to some extent
Highland games, also flourished in the West. The game of curling was
imported, and often played on the river ice or outdoor rinks, as it was
at Prince Albert and Battleford. Prior to 1890 four Scottish devotees
from near the former place loaded their "rocks on a toboggan, drawn by a
team of ponies, and walked alongside" all the way to Fort Qu'Appelle
where they took the train to curl in the Winnipeg bonspeil!79
It is noteworthy that curling and Scottish dancing and music were
adopted by the generality of the population, and, in a recent
manifestation of that trend, the Province of Saskatchewan adopted an
official tartan, duly registered with the Lyon King of Arms of Scotland,
in 1961. George Bryce concluded his 1911 volume on the Scotsman in
Western Canada with the assurance that here "the Scottish immigrant will
find a favourable, remunerative, and socially suitable sphere of action
for himself and his children."80 In retrospect, despite some
failures and periods of drought and depression, Scottish settlers found
that to be their experience; moreover, they had helped significantly to
make it true for themselves and for all newcomers.
NOTES
1. The literature on the Red River settlement is
extensive; this summary is based on the relevant chapters in W.L.
Morton, Manitoba. A History, rev. ed. (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1967).
2. G.Donaldson, The Scots Overseas (London:
Robert Hale, 1966), p. 138.
3. M.A. McLeod, Cuthbert Grant of Grantown
(Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1963).
4. A.R. Turner, "James McKay," Dictionary of
Canadian Biography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970), pp.
473-474.
5. Morton, p. 151.
6. G. McEwan, Fifty Mighty Men (Saskatoon:
Modern Press, 1958), Ch. XLVIII.
7. Ibid., Ch. xliv.
8. G Bryce, The Scotsman in Canada (Toronto:
Musson Book Co., n.d.), II 200-201.
9. R. Stubbs, Four Recorders of Rupert's Land
(Winnipeg: Peguis Publishers, 1967).
10. Canada, Sessional Papers, 1871, No. 20, p.
92.
11. Sask. Archives, SHS File no. 29, "James Isbister."
12. D. Geneva Lent, West of the Mountains
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963), Chapters 6, 11-14.
13. A.R. Turner, "Palliser of the Triangle," The
Beaver, Autumn, 1957.
14. L.H. Thomas, "The Hind and Dawson Expeditions,"
The Beaver, Winter, 1958.
15. Margaret Ormsby, British Columbia: A History
(Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1958), pp. 122-123.
16. Craigflower Manor. A National and
Provincial Historic Site (Victoria, B.C., n.d.).
17. E. Blanche Norcross, The Warm Land
(Nanaimo: Evergreen Press, 1959).
18. M.S. Wade, The Overlanders of '62
(Victoria: King's Printer, 1931), pp. 158-174.
19. Canada, Sessional Papers, 1872, No. 10,
Appendix Z, p. 152.
20. For text of negotiations, signatories, etc., see
A. Morris, Treaties of Canada with the Indians of Manitoba and the
North-West Territories (Toronto, 1880).
21. Canada, Sessional Papers, 1892, No. 13,
Pt. vi, List of Dominion Land Surveyors, 1872-1891.
22. E.g., G.T. Richardson, governor; A.J. Macintosh,
deputy governor; J.R. Murray, managing director, D.S. McGivern, managing
director, retail stores (Source: Financial Post Directory of
Directors, 1971).
23. E.C. Morgan, "The Bell Farm," Saskatchewan
History, XIX, 57.
24. Norman Macdonald, Canada. Immigration and
Colonization, 1841-1903 (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1966), p.
247.
25. W. Turrentine Jackson, The Enterprising Scot
(Edinburgh: University Press, 1968), p. 299. For operations in
Saskatchewan see Sask. Archives, Matador Land and Cattle Company
records, 1905-1924.
26. Canada, Sessional Papers, 1875, No. 40,
Appendix 40, p. 129.
27. Canada, Census of the Three Provisional
Districts of the North-West Territories, 1884-5 (Ottawa, 1886).
28. Regina Directory for 1885 (Regina: Leader
Steam Print, n.d.).
29. J.B. Hedges, Building the Canadian West
(New York: Macmillan Company, 1939), pp. 85-87.
30. Earl G. Drake, Regina. The Queen City
(Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1955), p. 239.
31. Sask. Archives, S.H.S. files no. 2,
42, 44, 58.
32. James N. MacKinnon, A Short History of the
Pioneer Scotch Settlers of St. Andrew's, Sask. (n.d., n.p.).
33. Kent Stuart, "Scottish Crofter Colony, Saltcoats,
1889-1904," Saskatchewan History, XXIV, 40-50.
34. Kay Parley, "Moffat, Assiniboia, North-West
Territories," Saskatchewan History xx, 32-36.
35. Canada, Sessional Papers, 1905, No. 25,
Pt. II.