‘Why is Scotland not here?’, a friend in Vancouver asked me at the end of the first week of the Winter Olympics. I explained that we were there: that nineteen members of the fifty- two strong British team were Scots – the highest proportion ever – and both curling teams were from Scotland. Oh and there’s a Ghanaian downhill skier who goes by the moniker ‘The Snow Leopard’. His declared ambition is not to finish last. He was born in Glasgow.
As it turned out, my friend wasn’t just referring to the sporting side of the games but the whole shebang. Take the Irish (don’t we always). Their team had nine members, none of whom were expected to make the podium (unlike the Scots curlers) but somehow they managed to create the biggest party in the city. ‘The Irish House’ accommodated 750 people every night of the two week Olympiad and sent them reeling into the streets at 3am, guts awash with Guinness and ears ringing from traditional Irish music.
In Vancouver, Scotland was represented by Britain and that wasn’t a good thing. An impoverished British Olympic Association and bankrupt British Ski and Snowboarding Federation set the tone early. British sport had a minimal presence in the city and a medal tally (1) to match. The BBC was there en masse but seemed to be staffed primarily by hosts and commentators who knew little or nothing about the sports they were covering. And the malignant British press which declared these “the worst Olympics ever” (after three days) didn’t exactly enhance Britain’s and, by proxy, Scotland’s reputation.
In fact, being Scottish and British in Vancouver was sometimes detrimental in a very direct way. In curling, men’s skip David Murdoch and women’s skip Eve Muirhead were reigning senior and junior world champions respectively. In both cases they won their crowns while representing Scotland and curling in Canada. This time, however, neither made the play off round. They seemed discombobulated in their British uniforms and drew scant encouragement from the few union jacks that waved feebly in a sea of Canadian flags.
One key moment in the Olympic curling tournament symbolised the general malaise. During Britain’s match against Canada the crowd sang the Canadian anthem with gusto. Local newspapers described it as a spontaneous outburst of Canadian national pride. Some people in Vancouver, however, told a different story. They said that the singing was at least partly motivated by resentment at the negative British press coverage and a projected connection between that and the all-Scots curling team. This was a stark contrast to Murdoch’s world championship victory last year in New Brunswick and Muirhead’s in Vancouver when they both throve in an atmosphere of shared Scots-Canadian sporting heritage.
Sports and socializing are of course, only two aspects of the Olympic experience. Vancouver also hosted delegations from all over the world, making connections in politics, business, education, culture and tourism. Here too Scotland was unrepresented. This was especially unfortunate because Vancouver models success in at least two of the areas that Scotland is currently concerned about.
The first is education. Internationally Scotland is sitting in 26th place in a league table of child literacy rates. In 5th place is ‘Canada, British Columbia’. The biggest component in that education system is the Vancouver School Board which has an Associate Superintendent who emigrated from Glasgow. If Scottish education chiefs want to know how to improve their ranking they could do worse than go and ask him and his colleagues how they did it. He receives delegations from all over the world, but has yet to meet one from his homeland.
A second area where Vancouver could provide a model for Scotland is in building a multi-cultural society. There’s a lot of well-meaning rhetoric around this issue in Scotland without equivalent progress. Meanwhile, Vancouver has the highest rate of mixed-race couples of any major city in the world.
In order to achieve this, however, the first thing Vancouver (and Canada) had to do was shake off some of its British baggage. The Queens head is still on coins and banknotes and the Commonwealth connection remains, but immigration rules which gave Britons an unfair advantage over others had to go. And the head tax previously levied on Chinese immigrants, the cultural denigration of First Nation’s peoples and other manifestations of Empire needed to be lived down. Some would say that Britain has moved on too, but listening to the anti-immigration rhetoric rise on all sides as a general election approaches suggests that it hasn’t moved far enough. Scotland could and should do immigration differently.
Scotland, of course, has its own share of empire demons but has somehow survived them with its reputation intact, at least in Canada. Scottish culture (or, more accurately, Scots-Canadian culture) sits quite comfortably in the multi-cultural spectrum except when it is occluded by the British connection as it was at these Olympics.
The question of how Scotland gets out from under Britain’s shadow is hardly a new one. It got a comic airing at Salt Lake City in 2002 when the British Olympic Association instructed Scottish skier Alain Baxter to wash out the saltire that he had dyed into his hair. But this is now much wider than sport and has gone beyond tired arguments about whether or not Scotland should have its own Olympic team. Lack of presence is a serious issue for a small country that needs to compete internationally in any number of areas. A Scottish friend who has risen through the ranks in Brussels calls his homeland ‘the invisible country’ so seldom does he see its interests represented before him or any of his colleagues in the EEC.
It doesn’t look as if Scotland is going to shed Britain any time soon, at least in the way Canada has. And anyway, any suggestion of outright separation attracts the easy ‘raving nationalist’ dismissal. Still, Scotland can’t remain invisible in the places it most needs to be seen and hope to prosper. But what is it to do?
An obvious thing Scotland could do under the current circumstances is mobilise its diaspora where they live. Vancouver would have been an especially fertile place for this kind of initiative. In the year following Homecoming and with all the Homecoming legacy talk that went on throughout 2009, it’s remarkable that nobody thought to use the Vancouver Winter Olympics as a way to encourage diaspora engagement.
Vancouver’s Scots and ‘affinity’ (remember that word?) Scots are seeded across the city, often in influential positions. They are in education, in culture, in business, and in politics. Simon Fraser University’s world champion pipe band lives there. The Premier of British Columbia is a Campbell, the Mayor of Vancouver a Robertson. Neither is averse to wearing a kilt. In addition to key individuals, the potential for mass engagement was enormous. According to the Canadian census, there are over 300,000 self identified Scots Canadians in Vancouver, over 700,000 in British Columbia and almost 5,000,000 in the whole of Canada.
Ireland, Germany, Russia, Italy, Korea, China, Croatia and any number of other countries deployed their diasporic communities in Vancouver to welcome their athletes, promote their cultures and make connections for their businesses. For Scotland, the Vancouver Olympiad was a Homecoming legacy open goal. Too bad we missed it.
Harry McGrath
Harry McGrath is a Director of Cultural Connect Scotland which is based in Edinburgh. He lived for twenty five years in Vancouver where he was a high school vice-principal and the Coordinator of the Centre for Scottish Studies at Simon Fraser University.
The photograph at the top of is the statue of Ilaanaq on Whistler Mountain by copyright holder Бормалагурски and reproduced here under the GNU Free Documentation licence.
It does not require a degree in anything to work out why our Irish cousins are able to make an impact anywhere while the Scots so often fail.
The Irish are in control of their own affairs and we are not. They set their own agenda while we do not. For that we have only ourselves to blame. There are many amongst us who have neither vision nor ambition and while improvements have certainly taken place in recent years we still have a long way to go.The idea that Scots would link up to the Scottish diaspora and their friends would seriously concern officialdom, particularly those who know how those people landed up in Canada in the first place. Were a Scottish Government initiative try to link to our Scottish athletes overseas there would be accusations of misuse of public funds ad nauseum.
The officials of the British Olympic Association and their Jingoistic attitude are all too typical of the blazeratti that feed like pirhanas on the ambitions of our athletes. I am willing to bet that officials outnumbered our athletes in Vancouver. Even the BBC outnumbered our athletes in Vancouver! You will be seeing an awful lot of them as the London Olympics approach.
I hope that you are right about the UK “moving on” but I suspect that you will hear a deal of unsavoury views expressed about UK immigration issues when the election debates get under way.
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Vancouver 2010 wasn’t the BBC’s best outing – although they sent a huge team there. Back in Beijing they had uninformed airheads commenting on the specialist canoe slalom event. In Vancouver, at what the host nation Canada would see as the Blue Riband event – the Canada-USA ice hockey final – the BBC studio analysis was by ex-runner Steve Cram and ex-rower Matthew Pinsent. Harry McGrath says that this was ‘like Canada sending over a hockey and a lacrosse player to analyse England’s performance in a football world cup’.
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Fabulous piece. Should be posted to everybody in Scotland.
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I must confess I did snigger a few times as Rhona Martin referred constantly to the “Scotland Team” as she commented on the Curling. (to which I became a little addicted) The star of the whole show was a Scot – Hazel Irvine – I thought her anchoring and knowledge was masterful and a pleasant change from the Motsonesque coverage we would normally expect.
Smashing and extremely pertinent article.
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Harry’s piece is good but if I were David McEwan Hill I’d be wary of posting it to everyone in Scotland. He might find that some of his friends in high positions in the Scottish government might not like it for they’re very well aware that Vancouver is ‘an especially fertile place’ for Scotland to ‘mobilise its diaspora’. The failure of Scotland to score in the open goal that was the Vancouver Olympiad lies at the door of the Scottish government and the executive management of its agencies VisitScotland and Scottish Enterprise.
Harry’s reference to the several hundred thousand Scots diaspora in Vancouver and the several million in Canada are merely the tip of the iceberg. Several years ago I persuaded one of Scotland’s leading financial institutions, with impeccable Canadian connections, to fund reserach into the Scots Canadian population. I knew of Harry’s background and contracted him to carry out that exercise. The subsequent report ‘The Scots in Canada’ still stands as a unique piece of research. It uses the Canadian census data from 2001 to identify and locate, by population centre and census tract boundary, the 4.2 million Canadians of Scots descent. The document was launched at events I organised in Toronto and Vancouver in late 2006. The Scots Canadians we met were impressed by the work and excited by the possibilities it offerred. The reaction in Scotland, when presented to the new nationalist government and its agencies was somewhat different and is perhaps best described as ‘the not invented here syndrom’.
Clearly our Irish cousins made their usual, highly efficient, sales pitch for their country at the Vancouver Olympics. Irish music and Guinnness are a potent marketing tool. For many years leading Scottish nationlaists urged that Scotland emulate Ireland not only in seeking independence but promoting the attractions of our country overseas and especially among the diaspora. The failure of the first Scottish nationalist government to make any significant progress on this front is a damning indictment of a lack of vision at the very top of our government.
Harry’s lament on a Homecoming legacy in his closing words is very much to the point. It was a great opportunity wasted. Much more effort was put into displays of ‘cod nationalism’ in Scotland during Homecoming than any genuine attempt to engage with our diaspora in their homelands. The First Minister would rather take the salute as clan chiefs parade up the Royal Mile in Edinburgh while the rank and file wave their jimmy hats in the air.
Scotland and the diaspora deserve better.
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You appear to have ignored the fact that it was a “UK” team at the Winter Olympics sent by a UK body which had basically organisationally collapsed recently and the Scottish Government had no locus at the event at all. I really have no idea what the point of your piece above is other than to vividly underline how the present constitutional set up including the almost complete lack of fiscal powers makes it impossible for Scotland to compete with Ireland at any level at all.
Was that your main point?
Had Alex Salmond gone to Vancouver you would probaly be in the vanguard of those complaining about “junkets”
The Homecoming event put between £10million and £30million into the Scottish economy. No doubt Alex Salmond shoud have absented himself from that. He may have used a ministerial car to get to it. You never know.
Scotland and the diaspoa indeed deserve better. They need an independent Scotland with all the economic tools at its disposal to be able to serve both communities. Did you know tha the Irish government gives the Irish TourisT Board NINE times as much money as the Scottish Tourist board bumps along on?
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Shot between the eyes!
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David McEwan Hill takes the usual road of assuming that anyone critical of the nationalist government is a dastardly unionist. He also makes the assumption that I do not know that it was a UK team which was fielded and that Scotland had no locus in the event. I seem to recall that Alex Salmond is not averse to elbowing his way into events in which Scotland might have a doubtful locus. Had David taken time to reflect on what I wrote, and looked at the content in detail, he may have realised that the words were written by someone who was experienced in this field. My main point was to support the conclusions in Harry’s piece and add to the general sum of knowledge on the topic of diaspora engagement.
It does the SNP no good whatsoever when hysteria replaces rational thought. Not everyone who is critical is against you.
As for being ‘shot between the eyes’ as David’s namesake would have it….please try to grow up.
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what a contrast between the informed and measured content of dick mungin’s posts and the we can do no wrong rantings of argylls snp mouthpieces
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I make the point again. It was a UK team at the games, funded by the UK and any attempt to portray any failings of the fairly unimpressive aspects of this trip to the Scottish Government is deeply suspect.
I can just imagine the opprobium Alex Salmond would have attracted had he tried to “elbow” his way into it or had the Scottish Government or any of its agencies tried to raise a Scottish profile at this event.
It would have been accused of “undermining the union”, “trying to make political capital” etc etc etc ad nauseum.
I have no idea of any sensible point you are trying to make about the Homecoming or the Clan Gathering.You didn’t like it? Tough! Thousands from the world wide diaspora obviously did. Others may find Francie and Josie more to their taste, or Scottish Opera.
What makes you imagine that you can post stuff like that without equally robust rebuttal.
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I see you have the invaluable assistance of kintyre1. I”ll leave you to each other
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What a terribly depressing discussion string, I could hardly muster the energy to wade through the misery.
The Irish make an impact because they are a happy nation, and people like being around on them for that reason. It strikes me that, for the most part, Scotts are only happy when they have something to moan at, or someone else to blame (usually the English or being part of Britain) for their failures.
I cannot imagine Scotts being happy as an independent nation…. who would they have to moan at then?
I love living in Scotland and being Scottish – but really, CHEER UP MAN!!
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(Posted on behalf of David Miller from British Columbia who emailed this in.)
‘This message is for David McEwan Hill. On behalf of all Canadians,thank you!’
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that thank you for David McEwan is for the article that appeared in today’s newspaper in Vancouver.I need to add though,that I feel that you should not be apologizing for the Britsh Press,as your Nationality is Clearly Scottish:).I however appeciated the effort you took for apologizing for some other country’s press. thank you again from Beutiful British Columbia!
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previous post accidentally omitted your surname…Hill. A very Canadian law requires that I apologize for that unintentional slight. I am sorry!
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I’ve never heard of Kintyre1 but I must say he/she displays more restraint than David McEwan Hill. He uses the tactic common to ‘cybernats’ of attributing to others statements they did not make and then attacking them for it. I did not attempt to blame the Scottish government for the failings of the UK presence at the Vancouver Olympiad. David is being disingenuous but I suppose it’s in his favour that he does not seek the cloak of anonymity common to most of his blogging colleagues.
Let me repeat my advice to David of my last post in relation to the SNP – “not everyone who is critical is against you”. He should take another piece of advice. Tone down the agression in your writing. My comments on the diaspora, in Canada and elsewhere, and the opportunity lost for Scotland in not ensuring a tourism, trade and cultural presence at the Vancouver shindig are based on years of work and experience in this field. David should also remember that all three of these areas – tourism, trade, culture – are devolved. They lie within the briefs of Scottish Ministers. If we cannot make a good fist of them under the present constitutional arrangements will things be any better when the Great Helmsman leads us to the sunlit uplands of the New Scotland.
Regarding The Gathering debacle, the financial story of which still has months to run, David should take some care. Lesley Riddoch, no enemy of Scottish independence, wrote a piece on The Gathering for the Scotsman just a day or two after the event. She quoted a senior(un-named) nationalist figure saying of the evening event “too Nurembergy for my liking”. The majority of leading cultural commentators in Scotland, many friendly to the nationalist cause, panned the event. Take note!
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Indeed , Argyll and Bute’s MSP is the minister responsible for tourism !
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and minister for enterprise
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Having just read your first piece again I cannot see in it anywhere in which is does not seek to attack or imply failings of the Scottish Governement on a whole range of issues on an event which had nothing to do with it. Perhaps I can’t read.
I require no advice whatsoever and am very aware that not all who criticise us are against us. Similarly not all who on occasion praise us are with us and there are not a few over the years who have been welcomed amongst us despite having no intent other than to damage us.
The Gathering was hardly my cup of tea, nor was it the child of the SNP Government. It was hugely important to many others who relate to Scotland in that way, however, and I would like to think that I do not suffer from the sort of cultural snobbery so evident in many of our so sophisticated cultural commentators.
There is no single vision of Scotland and across the world it means many different things to many different people who all consider themselves nonetheless part of our large family.
There is very often aggression in my writing but none that I can see in the piece above.
Let me get this straight. Are you suggesting that if Alex Salmond and the SNP Government had tried to piggy back on the British effort at the Winter Olympics it would not have created a huge incident?
Of course it would have.
The article by Harry McGrath, brought to us by For Argyll, was excellent.
Your comments on a ONE LINE COMMENT of mine praising it were entirely inappropriate and disproportionate.
And indeed aggressive, smacking of some other personal agenda.
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This will be my last post on this issue as I suspect that David and I are talking to a very small audience i.e. ourselves and Kintyre 1.
Harry McGrath was right in his estimation that Scotland’s zero profile in Vancouver was an opportunity lost. Unfortunately David’s response to my remarks, supporting and extending Harry’s piece, moved the issue from the practicalities of what could have been achieved to a semi paranoid defence of the nationalist government. It seems that any criticism of our government is not to be tolerated and those who raise it are implied to be agents “having no other intent than to damage us”. How very sad for Scotland.
I’ve written extensively since last year on the Homecoming/Gathering matter in the excellent online current affairs magazine Scottish Review. Subsciption is free…I’d recommend David reads what I’ve had to say.
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