Nova Scotia and Scotland

Old and New World Highland Bagpiping provides a comprehensive biographical and genealogical account of pipers and piping in highland Scotland and Gaelic Cape Breton. The work is the result of over thirty years of oral fieldwork among the last Gaels in Cape Breton, for whom piping fitted unself-consciously into community life, as well as an exhaustive synthesis of Scottish archival and secondary sources. Reflecting the invaluable memories of now-deceased new world Gaelic lore-bearers, John Gibson shows that traditional community piping in both the old and new world Gaihealtachlan was, and for a long time remained, the same, exposing the distortions introduced by the tendency to interpret the written record from the perspective of modern, post-eighteenth-century bagpiping. Following up the argument in his previous book, Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping, 1745-1945, Gibson traces the shift from tradition to modernism in the old world through detailed genealogies, focusing on how the social function of the Scottish piper changed and step-dance piping progressively disappeared. Old and New World Highland Bagpiping will stir controversy and debate in the piping world while providing reminders of the value of oral history and the importance of describing cultural phenomena with great care and detail. Old and New World Highland Bagpiping (McGill-Queen's Studies in Ethnic History).

The story of the Highland Scots who sailed to Pictou, Nova Scotia in 1773 aboard the brig "Hector". They voyaged to escape famine, intolerable treatment from their landlords and above all to search for a land of their own. They had been promised prime farming land but found only virgin forest. Somehow, with great courage and tenacity, and with the help of the native Indians they survived and their achievements encouraged further shiploads of emigrants to join them. This piece of Canadian history is also part of the history of Scotland and the Scottish people. Scotland Farewell: The People of the Hector.

This is the first fully documented and detailed account, produced in recent times, of one of the greatest early migrations of Scots to North America. The arrival of the Hector in 1773, with nearly 200 Scottish passengers, sparked a huge influx of Scots to Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. Thousands of Scots, mainly from the Highlands and Islands, streamed into the province during the late 1700s and the first half of the nineteenth century. The author traces the process of emigration and explains why Scots chose their different settlement locations in Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. Much detailed information has been distilled to provide new insights on how, why and when the province came to acquire its distinctive Scottish communities. Challenging the widely held assumption that this was primarily a flight from poverty, the book reveals how Scots were being influenced by positive factors, such as the opportunity for greater freedoms and better livelihoods. After the Hector: The Scottish Pioneers of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, 1773-1852.

In April 1932, John Lorne Campbell, while on a visit to the United States, took the chance of going to Cape Breton Island and Antigonish County in Eastern Nova Scotia, to find out how the descendants of emigrants from the Scottish Highlands and the Hebrides were faring in their new country, and to what extent the Gaelic language had been maintained among them. In September 1937, after four years on Barra, he returned with his wife, Margaret Fay Shaw, taking with them a recorder in order to collect Gaelic song and tradition and compare it with surviving tradition in the Western Isles. This book is the result of that expedition. As a preface the book includes an account of the collapse of the Hebridean kelp industry after 1820 which led to the bankruptcy of the last Chief of the MacNeils of Barra in the direct line, and which was a major contributory factor to the great flood of emigration from the Hebrides to Canada and America. The title refers to the traditional song and lore preserved by emigrants from Scotland in the new land to which they came. Songs Remembered in Exile: Traditional Gaelic Songs from Nova Scotia.