How The Scots Created Canada
Book Details the Scottish Contribution to the History of Canada
Jul 19, 2007
As the author's blurb in the back of this book points out, Paul Cowan is a Scottish-born immigrant to Canada and an award-winning journalist who has written extensively on the history of the Scottish people in North America. In this, the first of Dragon Hill's 'How the (fill-in-the-blank) Created Canada', Cowan makes the case for his fellow countrymen - and women - as being the people most responsible for the evolution of what was long known as British North America into the Canada of today.
Overview of Canadian History
Although it is debatable that any one people should get the credit for "creating" a Canada built on the immigration of a multitude of different nationalities, Cowan's retelling of the Scottish experience in Canada does an excellent job of giving an overview of the complex and compelling history of the country. Anyone who still clings to the old notion that Canada's history is boring (particularly in comparison to the Revolutionary beginnings and Wild West mythology of our southern neighbour) would have their eyes opened by reading Cowan's book.
Using the experience of some of Canada's most famous Scots - including Canada's first prime minister, John A. MacDonald, explorers David Mackenzie and Simon Fraser, poet Robert Service, standard time inventor Sanford Fleming and Hudson Bay Company chief George Simpson (perhaps one of the most powerful men in North America in the mid-1800s) along with a host of other equal and lesser figures, Cowan provides a timeline of how millions of square miles of wilderness was transformed into one of the richest and most livable places on earth. With the unification of Scotland and England in the early 1700s, the outlawing of the clans and the take-over of their traditional homeland by primarily English land barons (who found it more economically lucrative to inhabit Scotland with sheep than people) many Scottish found themselves cast out of their ancestral home.
Scottish Roots in Canada
In Canada, they found the opportunity to create a new society in their own image. As Cowan writes, the Scots who came to Canada over the next 200-plus years drew on their education, business acumen, fighting spirit and sense of adventure - not to mention familial connections - to create a nation in many ways better than the one they had left behind. Along the way, they played a major role in twice staving off invasion by the Americans, founded the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, built a national railway system, started a banking industry, settled many of the country's most familiar cities and towns, invented the telephone and created industry from the abundant raw materials the country had to offer.
The Truth of Kilts and Haggis
Cowan gives a fair representation of the the figures of history in terms of both their triumphs and failures, and doesn't shy away from admitting there were almost as many scoundrels as heroes among the Scotsmen who shaped the country, and that, in fact, some of the most significant figures had both characteristics in equal measure. Along with the main text, Cowan adds to the educational aspect of the book by including short pieces such as 'The Truth About Kilts and Tartans'; a primer on how to make the much maligned traditional Scottish haggis; and a list of the Highland Regiments that have served the country in times of conflict.
For Canadians of Scottish descent, this book will provide an opportunity to puff up over the Scottish contribution to what the United Nations has often described as the best country in the world in which to live. For non-Scottish Canadians, it's a excellent source for learning the history of the country they may have never encountered in school.
