This monograph* began as an address to the Celtic
Society of Wolfville, Nova Scotia. So many challenging questions were
raised that a systematic study was undertaken by its author, in order to
prepare a toponymical roster and to analyse its significance.
* From Watson Kirkconnell, "Scottish Place Names in
Canada," A Paper Delivered at the Third Annual Meeting of the Canadian
institute of Onomastica Sciences, York University, Toronto, June 13,
1969, in J.B. Rudnyckyj, ed., Onomastica, No. 39 (Winnipeg,
THE PEOPLES AND SURNAMES OF SCOTLAND
At the outset, one should remember that Scotland,
from which the Scottish Canadians have come, is not homogeneous in
either race or language. In other words, there is no "Scotch race" and
no "Scotch language." The ethnologist, whose definition of race is based
on physical characterisitcs and measurements, distinguishes carefully
between the flaxenhaired ex-Scandinavians in the extreme north, the
"Black Breed" in the Western Highlands, the red-heads in the Eastern
Highlands, the tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed Galwegian blend, the short,
dark Strathclyde type, and the Anglo-Danish mixture of the Lowlands
generally. So far as language is concerned, the English of the Lowlands
is still waxing and the Gaelic of the Highlands is waning. The Welsh
language of the Kingdom of Strathclyde, which persisted from the fifth
century until the eleventh, has disappeared, and the Norse that was
spoken in the Shetlands as late as the eighteenth century survives only
in a host of place-names and dialect terms. Still older linguistic
traces, found on Roman maps and no doubt borrowed by them from
primordial people, are the Clyde (Clota), the Nith (Novius),
the Hebrides (Hebudes) and the Orkneys (Orcades).
Clan-names, while not identical in pattern with the racial and
linguistic background, are nevertheless clear evidences
as to diversity of national origins. Gaelic in origin are the clan-names
Angus, Campbell and MacGregor. Norman-French are Bruce, Cummings,
Fraser, Grant and Sinclair. Ultimately Norse are Gunn, Lamont,
Macdonald, MacLeod, MacNeill (of Colonsay) and Sutherland. English are
Johnson, Leslie and Stewart (although this final family was originally
Breton and came over with the Normans).
Since the majority of Scottish place-names in Canada
are actually based on surnames, some analysis of the latter is in order.
The main types are occupational, descriptive, patronymic and
territorial. Examples hereunder will be limited to actual place-names in
Examples of occupational names are Avenir (OF.
avener, oat merchant), Faulkner (falconer), Gardiner (gardener),
Lymburner (lime-burner), Milner (miller), Pender (impounder of strayed
cattle), Sclater (slater), Sellars (M.E. seler, a saddler),
Shearer (cutter of cloth), Spence (dispenser of food from the larder)
and Stewart (originally the "steward" or chief manager of the royal
household). Patronymic derivatives of occupational names are Macoun or
Macgowan (son of the Gow or blacksmith) and MacIntyre (son of the
Descriptive names are Auld (old), Young or Yonge,
Baine (G. ban, white or flaxen-haired), Reid (red-headed), Duff
(F. dubh, dark), Campbell (G. Caimbeaul, crooked
mouth), Cameron (G. cam-shron, hooked nose), Strang, strong, or
else OF. estrange, a foreigner), and Tod (nickname, "the fox").
Patronymic names may be Scandinavian (with a
suffixed-son), Gaelic (with a prefixed Mac "son of"), and English
(with a suffixed genitival -s).
Formed on the Scandinavian model are Allison (son of
Ellis), Anderson (son of Andrew), Dawson (son of Dawe or David),
Ferguson (son of Olr. Fergus, the grandfather of Saint Columba),
Jameson (son of James), Matheson (son of Matthew), Paterson or Patterson
(son of Patrick), Ni-colson (son of Nicol), Robertson (son of Robert),
Robinson (son of Robin), Simpson (son of Sim or Simeon).
Gaelic patronymics have a wide range of application.
Based on straight personal names are MacAdam (son of Adam), MacAlister
(son of Alexander), MacAlpine (son of Ailpean), MacArthur (son of
Arthur), MacAulay (son of Amhalghaidh), MacCormack (son of Cormack),
MacCreary and Macrorie (son of Ruadhri), MacEwen (son of Ewen),
MacFarlane (son of Bartholomew), MacGregor (son of Gregory), MacKay or
MacKee (son of Aodh), MacKendrick (son of Henry), MacKenzie (son of
Coinneach), McKim (son of Simon), MacKinnon (son of Fhionnghain),
MacLaren (son of Laurence), MacLaughlin (son of Lachlann), MacMahon (son
of Matthew), MacMurdo (son of Murdoch), MacNaughton and Mac-Cracken (son
of Neachdain), MacNeill (son of Neill), MacTavish (son of Tammas, i.e.
Thomas), MacVeigh (son of Bheatha), MacWatters (son of Walter).
Of special note are Macdougall or Macdowall (son of Dougal, eldest son
of Somerled, Norse Lord of the Isles), Macdonald (son of Donald, eldest
son of Reginald, second son of Somerled), Maclver (son of Ivarr, a
famous Norse chief), and MacKellar (son of Hilarius, bishop of Poitiers).
A common ingredient in many old names was the Gaelic Gille,
"servant," applied especially to those who were consecrated to the
service of a saint or of the church in general. This was an element in
the older forms of the following surnames: MacBride (son of the servant
of Bride, the virgin abbess of Kildare, d. 525), MacCallum (son of the
servant of Calum), McClintock (son of the servant of St. Findan),
MacLean (son of the servant of St. John), MacLesse (son of the servant
of Jesus), MacLen-nan (son of the servant of St. Finnan), McLure (son of
the servant of Odhar), McMunn (son of the servant of St. Munn). Also
associated with the church are MacMillan (son of the tonsured man),
Macnab (son of the abbot), MacPherson (son of the parson), and
MacTaggart (son of the priest). More general are MacEachern (son of the
horse-lord), Macintosh (son of the chieftain), McKague (son of Olr.
Tadhg, or the poet), McNeily (son of the poet), MacGillivrary (son
of the servant of judgment), and MacLeod (probably, son of an old Norse
warrior, Ljot-ulf, "ugly wolf").
Many a Highland name can shift gears into a Lowland
equivalent, depending on the habitat of its owner, e.g. MacIan (MacKean)-Johnson,
Macdonald-Donaldson, MacAdam-Adamsonn, MacNeill-Neilson,
Mac-Nichol-Nicholson, MacTavish-Thomson, and MacMahon-Matheson.
Examples of the English genitival suffixes are
Sellars and Watts.
Hundreds of Scottish surnames are of territorial
origin, i.e. they represent the family's original estate or feudal
lands. Since these are also place-names, there is often a doubt as to
which came first in the Canadian toponymy, the hen or the egg. Wherever
the place-name has had wide currency in Scotland as a surname, it has
seemed reasonable to count it as a surname in Canada. Thus Gordon
is the name of a little place in Berwickshire with which some
genealogists first associate the family, but it is undoubtedly the
family and not the obscure village that is recorded on the Canadian map.
Similarly, although the name Douglas is derived from the "black
water" (G. dubh glas) of a stream in Douglasdale, it is the
family and not the river that is set down in Canadian gazetteers. In
like manner, Blair, Buchan, Caldwell (i.e. "cauld well"), Cochrane,
Dundas, Drummond, Glenelg, Harris, Kippen, Lewis, Lumsden, Ross, Selkirk
and Sutherland would all seem to have been chosen as Canadian
place-names on a surname basis.
SCOTLAND'S MAP AND THE MIGRATIONS
My preliminary survey of place-names by shires on
Scotland's map was undertaken hand in hand with the reading of J.M.
Gibbon's Scots in Canada (Toronto, 1911), Wilfred Campbell's
The Scotsman in Canada: Eastern Canada (Toronto and London, 1911),
George Bryce's The Scotsman in Canada: Western Canada (Toronto
and London, 1911), and Hazel C. Mathews's The Mark of Honour
(Toronto, 1965). It became evident that the bulk of Eastern Canada's
Scottish place-names were to be associated with mass migrations in
1770-1840 from Inverness, Argyle, Ross, Sutherland, Caithness,
Perthshire, Moray, Skye and the Hebrides. In this period, thousands of
crofters were being evicted from the glens, partly by their old
chieftain-landlords and partly through the destruction of cottage
weaving by the Industrial Revolution. A considerable element in the
settlement consisted of Highland regiments which, after Culloden and the
defeat of the Jacobite uprising of 1745, had been recruited into the
British army, especially after 1757. Marion Gilroy's record,
Loyalists and Land Settlement in Nova Scotia (Public Archives of
Nova Scotia, 1937), shows heavy land grants to Loyalist immigrants,
mostly Highland veterans, after 1783, in what are now the counties of
Shelburne, Digby, Annapolis, Antigonish and Guysborough. Not a single
Loyalist grant was made in Horton and Cornwallis townships, Kings County
which had been solidly settled by New England "Planters" in 1761, nor in
the Lunenburg South Shore area, settled in 1749-53 by Germans, Swiss and
French Huguenots. In Hants County, in a proposed township of "Douglass,"
a whole battalion of the 84th Highland Regiment simply evaporated,
leaving 115,000 acres to escheat to the crown. Most of those in
Shelburne left the country before 1800, but an island of Highland
population persists in the "Argyle" area, between the Acadians of
Pubnico and the Acadians of Clare. After the close of the Napoleonic
Wars, and especially after 1820, a severe economic depression swept the
industries of the Scottish Lowlands and these also poured their harassed
citizens into Canadian settlements.
Mostly unrepresented in Nova Scotia are place-names
from the shires of Ayr, Banff, Berwick, Bute, Dunbarton, Kincardine, the
Lothians, Nairn, Peebles, Roxburgh, Selkirk, Wigtown and Kirkcudbright.
Immigrants from these areas either came too late to affect the naming of
communities or did not set up the block settlements that so often
perpetuate their own choice of names.
All parts of Scotland are represented in the
place-names of Prince Edward Island; their gross number would have been
much greater had it not been for a plague of absentee landlords and for
the ambitions of surveyors and political persons to have their
names perpetuated. Settlement goes back to the enterprises of Judge
Stewart, of Cantyre, Argyllshire, in 1771; of Captain John MacDonald, of
Glenaladale, in 1772; and of Wellwood Waugh, of Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire,
in 1774. In 1803, Lord Selkirk brought in a contingent of 800 from Ross,
Inverness, Argyle, and especially Skye.
The pattern of Scotch place-names in New Brunswick is
not unlike that in Nova Scotia, although there is nothing like the
continuing Highland concentration in Cape Breton and Antigonish. In the
1780s, the Loyalists established several regiments (largely Scotch) on
the St. Croix and St. John rivers; and there were settlements, direct
from Scotland, on the Lower Miramichi and in the county of Restigouche.
This latter plantation, largely of fisher-folk, on the Restigouche River
and its estuary, has been buried under a community of Acadian French who
swarmed in here from exile when the interdict on their presence was
removed in 1764.
In Lower Canada, the ultimate province of Quebec, the
most important Scottish settlements were those of the Fraser
Highlanders, whose mountaineer regiment had scaled the Heights in 1759
and won the battle of the Plains of Abraham.
In Ontario, where no fewer than eleven counties
(Bruce, Carleton, Cochrane, Dundas, Elgin, Glengarry, Lanark, Lennox,
Perth, Renfrew and Stormont) bear Scottish names, the roster of Scottish
place-names is by far the largest in all Canada, yet early mass
settlements left a special mark. Such were the Roman Catholic regiments
of Glengarry, the Talbot settlements of Argyle Highlanders in Elgin
county, the Sutherland crofters in Zorra, and the thousands from Lanark,
Renfrew and the west of Scotland who flocked to Lanark county in
1820-21. Veteran resettlement (as in the days of the Caesars) and
economic hardship in Scotland were major factors in the situation.
The opening up of the Western provinces came at least
two generations later. Not only did immigration agencies (including
those of railways and steamship lines) then recruit from all parts of
Scotland; but, thanks to the C.P.R., the younger sons of Scotch-Canadian
farmers in Ontario swarmed to the Prairies in their thousands. Still
earlier had been the striking participation of Scots in the fur trade
activities of the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company. They
also played the leading role in the drama of exploration that put the
names of Fraser, Simpson and Mackenzie on the maps of the Canadian West
It is sometimes interesting to look for traces of a
single known migration. Thus in 1774 a considerable settlement of
Lowlanders from Dumfriesshire came to Prince Edward Island. Three years
later some of the group, overwhelmed by a plague of grasshoppers, joined
the Protestant Highlanders at Pictou. Today, in Prince Edward Island,
there is still a "New Annan," and on the mainland, thirty miles
northwest of Pictou, there is another "New Annan." Other Dumfriesshire
place-names, ascribable to other, later migrations, are Annan, Kirkland
(Lake), Moffat and Thornhill in Ontario, Gretna and Thornhill in
Manitoba, Bankend in Saskatchewan, and Kirkpatrick in Alberta.
On the other hand, a very considerable contingent of
Highlanders from Glenlyon, Perthshire, who settled on the north shore of
the Ottawa River near Lachute in 1819, have left no toponymic trace
except for Thurso (Caithness) and Lochaber Bay (Inverness), neither one
relevant to the area of their origin. After 150 years, a substantial
remnant of lineal descendants is still in the area of settlement.
THE SCOTS IN THE CENSUS
When in a search for the place of the Scots in
Canadian life one turns to the Federal Census of 1961, one arrives at
the following Scottish totals by provinces, as compared with Canadians
of English, Irish, French, German and Ukrainian origin. The provinces
are printed in the descending order of Scottish representation.
These statistics do not reveal their full
significance at a first glance. Thus the 835,590 Scots of Ontario, while
they are almost as numerous as all the other Scots in Canada put
together, are nevertheless inferior in Ontario to either the English or
the Irish and only 29 per cent more numerous than the French. The only
province where the Scots are clearly in first place is little Prince
Edward Island. The Scots are in second place, behind the English, in
Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Manitoba and British Columbia. Both the
English and the Irish outnumber them in Newfoundland; while in Alberta
and Saskatchewan they rank numerically behind the English and the
Germans. Even in the frontier areas of the Yukon and the Northwest
Territories, they run second to the English. Another sort of yardstick
is the survival of Gaelic in Nova Scotia, where 3,702 (mostly in Cape
Breton) in the 1961 Census still reported it as their mother tongue.
Although the English in Canada outnumber the Scots by slightly more than
two to one, their ratios to the present total populations of their
respective mother countries form a striking contrast; for while the
English-Canadians are equivalent to 9½
per cent of England's 1961 population, the Scotch-Canadians are
equivalent to 38 per cent of Scotland's population. The Canadian Irish
are similarly equivalent to 41 per cent of the total population of
Ireland (North plus South). At the time
of Confederation, in 1867, the Scots and the Irish together outnumbered
those of English extraction and played a very prominent role in the
politics of the new nation. Some 20 of the 34 "Fathers of Confederation"
were Scots. The ingredients of these three peoples (English, Irish,
Scotch) in Canada's national amalgam is thus very different from that in
the "British Isles." The presence of a French sub-nation is another very
difficult factor, and now we have nearly five million European-Canadians
who are neither British nor French. The Canadians are to be a national
blend sui generis.
UNFULFILLED BLUEPRINTS FOR "NOVA SCOTIA"
In 1613, (Sir) Samuel Argall, a Kentish-man in the
employ of the Virginia colony, led a naval expedition to the Bay of
Fundy and destroyed the Acadian settlements as an alleged infringement
of the Virginia charter. The region remained under British control until
1631, when Charles I, in order to persuade Louis XIII
to hand over the dowry long overdue on his Bourbon wife,
Henrietta-Maria, gave the Acadian lands (along with "Canada") back to
France. In the meantime, in 1621, Sir William Alexander, a Scottish
gentleman at the English court, had been given by James I a royal
warrant for the development of a great "New Scotland" here, by a company
of Scottish Adventurers. In the Latin text of the warrant, the
territory's name was rendered as "Nova Scotia," and this is about all of
the original enterprise that remains three and a half centuries later.
For a brief time, however, there was great promotional activity.
Alexander's notable book, Encouragement to Colonies, was
published in 1624; and in the same year an Order of Baronets of Nova
Scotia was instituted. Bands of colonists were sent out in 1628 and
In maps prepared by Sir William, many toponymical
details were worked out (on paper). "New Scotland" was subdivided into
two provinces: "New Caledonia" (the modern Nova Scotia, Prince Edward
Island and Southern Newfoundland) and "Alexandria" (after his own name),
consisting of our New Brunswick, Gaspésie and
Anticosti. Cape Breton Island became "New Galloway." Our modern St. John
River was named the "Clyde" and the St. Croix River the "Tweed."
appropriately separating "New Scotland" from "New England." Our Bay of
Fundy was named "Argall Bay." after the man who had destroyed the
Acadian Port Royal in 1613. The Bay of Chaleurs was to be the "Firth of
Forth." All this paper empire collapsed in 1631, when Charles I snatched
Sir William Alexander out of his new domain and handed it over to
France. It was reconquered in 1654 by a fleet from Cromwell's England
but was restored to France again in 1667 by an ever-obliging Charles
II: It came permanently to England in 1713 by
the Treaty of Utrecht. Sentimental modern Scots may day-dream over Sir
William's geographical terms that remained unimplemented by the course
TYPES OF SCOTTISH PLACE-NAMES IN CANADA
Scottish place-names in Canada are of five main
(a) Actual place-names from Scotland, such as
Aberdeen, Argyle, Perth, Melrose.
(b) Such place-names with an added element, such as New Aberdeen,
Argyle Head, Perth Road, Melrose Hill.
(c) Scottish surnames, such as MacDonald, Currie, Duncan, Ferguson.
(d) Scottish surnames with an added element, such as MacDonald's
Corners, Currie Road, Duncan Cove, Ferguson's
(e) New coinages, such as Skir Dhu ("Black Rock"), Loch Ban ("White
Lake"), and Beinn Breagh ("Beautiful Mountain").
FACTORS INFLUENCING CANADIAN TOPONYMY
For an immigrant toponymically this land, the size of
Europe, was not a a tabula rasa, ready for the imprint of new
names. For upwards of 30,000 years it had been occupied by a vast
network of aboriginal tribes, so diverse that 176 different Amerindian
languages are still recognized in Canada today. Every stream, lake, bay
headland and village already had its native name, and thousands of these
still survive, from Merigomish, Antigonish and Tatamagouche in the east,
through Quebec, Ottawa and Toronto, to Okanagan, Chilliwack, and Nanaimo
in the far west. While some of the largest lakes (such as Ontario, Erie,
Huron, Nipigon, Winnipeg, Manitoba and Winnipegosis) retain native
names, thousands of other lakes and rivers had their Indian names
calqued into English in the pioneer days. Virtually all of the famous
explorations of the land by the white man were actually guided by
Indians who already knew the terrain intimately and had access to its
Earlier than the Scots in much of Canada were the
French, and these as they settled staked out their own claims to the
naming of places and natural features. They total over six millions
today, and their towns provide a striking pageant of municipalized
saints - Sainte Anne de Beaupre, Sainte Anne de la Pocatiere, Sainte
Anne des Chenes, Sainte Anne des Monts, Sainte Anne des Plaines, Sainte
Anne du Lac, and all their sisters and brothers. Also competing with the
Scots in toponymic aggressiveness were the English and the Irish. In
Ontario, for example, the English-Canadians have their London (on the
Thames), Stratford (on the Avon), Bath, Brighton, Durham, Portsmouth,
Southampton, York and hundreds of others. In the same province, the
Irish-Canadians have townships named Cavan, Galway and Monaghan and
villages named Dublin, Enniskillen and Killarney. Nova Scotia has its
Londonderry and Alberta its Cork.
Also competing during recent decades for a place in
the toponymic sun are five million Canadians of European nationalities
other than British and French. Thus the Icelanders have given us Arnes,
Gimli and Hecla; the Hungarians Esterhazy and Bekevar; and the
Ukrainians (among scores of other place-names) Halicz, Sich, Julish and
Yasna Olana. The Scottish place-names in Canada have had to run the
gauntlet of a host of competitors.
In that struggle for survival, some of the more
rugged Scottish names have failed to acclimate themselves for Canadian
usage. We look in vain for Ecclefechan, Ardnamurchan, Sligachan and
Ballachulish. John Milton, in his Sonnet XI,
derided cacophonous Scottish surnames - "Gordon, Colkitto [i.e., G.
Coll ciotach, "Coll the left-handed or crafty"], or Mac-donnel, or
Galasp [i.e. Gillespie]. . . that would have made Quintilian stare and
gasp" - but three of the four have "grown sleek" to our mouths.
Pronounceability, however, has no doubt a bearing on viability.
Still another difficulty has sometimes lain in the
opposition of officialdom and its friends. The assigning of names to
territorial areas and post offices has been commonly in the hands of the
Establishment, which has been prompt to donate toponymic immortality to
politicians and their cronies. Scots from Prince Edward Island are ready
to tell of this sort of chicanery, especially along the east coast. Back
in the 1830s, in opening up what became Victoria County, Ontario, a
block settlement of Highlanders from Argyllshire and Islay wanted its
wholly Scotch township called "Caledonia," but the Family Compact
government in Toronto insisted on calling it "Eldon," after the lord
chancellor. One cannot get too indignant at this today, however, when
one discovers that the name "Caledonia" occurs six times in Canada,
three times in Nova Scotia, twice in Ontario, and once in Prince Edward
Island, all to the great confusion of postal clerks.
Since 1897, attempts have been made by the Federal
Government to achieve a tactful avoidance of so much duplication. A
"Canadian Permanent Committee on Geographical Names," with headquarters
in Ottawa, has been able, by discretionary consultation with the
provinces, to spread hundreds of totally new names across the Canadian
West in areas that were being opened up for the first time. There is no
"Caledonia" west of Ontario.
Notice may be taken of the wartime drive of public
emotion to change place-names. Thus, in 1824, "Berlin" was the
cheerfully accepted name for a city in Waterloo County, Ontario, an area
first settled in the early 1800's by Swiss-German immigrants from
Pennsylvania, later reinforced by settlers direct from Germany. In 1916,
however, under excited mass pressure from Ontario Anglo-Canadians, the
name was changed to "Kitchener", after Field Marshall Lord Kitchener,
who was drowned at sea in that year. Similar ultra-patriotic clamour
during World War II, demanding the suppression
of "Swastika" as the name of a community in the Timiskaming district of
Northern Ontario, was successfully blocked by the town's citizens, who
insisted that they had chosen the old folk-symbol as their municipal
name long before Hitler and his Nazis had adopted it as a political
TOPONYMY AND DEMOGRAPHIC CHANGE
Even where a place-name may once have been happily
appropriate for a community, population changes may come to render it
meaningless. The tides of immigration ebb and flow, bringing totally new
racial stocks to the surface. A differential birth rate may serve to
replace one nationality by another. Canadians are a nomadic people,
streaming from the Prairies and the Maritimes to the affluent employment
centres of Ontario and Quebec, as well as from rural parts to the cities
in every province. We have suffered a hemorrhage of population to the
U.S.A. that runs to many millions. The total population of Canada is
almost equalled by the number of present-day Americans whose ancestors
(or themselves) once lived in Canada.
A number of instances will illustrate the story:
(a) "New Edinburgh,'' in Digby County, Nova Scotia,
was founded and its streets were carefully laid out in 1783 by a
Scottish U.E. Loyalist, Anthony Stewart, but demographic changes in the
area have made it an Acadian French fishing-village. Of its 40
telephones in 1968, some 39 were French (15 Doucets, 13 Amiraults, etc.)
and only one Scottish (a MacCormack).
(b) Shelburne, Nova Scotia, was founded in 1783 by
U.E. Loyalists, and by 1786, with a population of over 10,000, it was
the largest town in British North America. But the site was ill chosen,
storms swept away wharves and warehouses, free rations were cut off at
the end of 1786, the settlers fled to England, to Upper Canada, or even
back to the U.S.A., and by 1816, according to the Surveyor-General of
the province, only 374 persons were left in the town.
(c) In 1784, Preston, Nova Scotia, named by its
Scottish Loyalist founders after towns in the Lothians and Berwickshire
(unlike Preston, Ontario, which was named after Preston in Lancashire),
began its career as a toponymic transplantation from Scotland. In 1814,
however, it was used as a depot for Negroes rescued from slavery after
the burning of Washington, D.C.; and today the community is solidly
(d) About 1773, a contingent of Scottish fisher-folk
settled along the south shore of the Restigouche River and its estuary,
and established such centres as Campbellton and Dawnsonville. Still
earlier, however, a flood of Acadians, returning in 1764 from the
deportations of 1755, settled on both shores of the Bay of Chaleurs. The
Acadians' greater numbers and greater prolificity have submerged the
Scottish communities and made them a small minority in a largely French
(e) The same process of French replacement is well
advanced in the Eastern Townships of Quebec and in the famous old
Highland Scottish county of Glengarry.
(f) Colonsay and Saltcoats, shown as apparently
Scottish in my place-name list for Saskatchewan, have actually, since
1900-13, become Hungarian communities.
(g) In like manner, the seemingly Scottish towns of
Gretna (Manitoba) and Balgonie (Saskatchewan) are now almost completely
Expansion rather than shrinkage of the Scots may be
noted in the case of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Founded by the English in
1749, and given a famous old Yorkshire name, it has so attracted
enterprising Scots from all parts of the Maritimes that its 1968
telephone directory listed 2400 "Macs," some 475 of whom were "Macdonalds."
Monuments to Burns and Scott dominate its public gardens and its "North
British Society" is perhaps the most powerful organization in the town.