‘Why is Scotland not here?’, a friend in Vancouver asked me at the end of the first week of the Winter Olympics. Continue reading
Tag Archives: British Columbia
Finding David Douglas film premiere for Pitlochry
A Perthshire adventurer comes home to Pitlochry on celluloid Continue reading
Argyll and British Columbia – HMS Discovery, Archibald Menzies and the Stronardron Fir
Scotland’s Year of Homecoming has generated an extraordinary degree of interest in the idea of ‘journeying’. For instance, several new biographies of Robert Burns have been published recently which resurrect the old debate concerning what the consequences would have been if Burns had left for Jamaica in 1786. The successful publication of his Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Language, meant that the journey was never taken. Burns headed instead for Edinburgh; and Scottish culture and literature were the direct beneficiaries of his changed circumstances.
A lot of ink has been spilt, then, over a journey that never happened, but much less on a journey that did.
Concurrent with the Burns biographies, but with none of their fanfare, a book has been published that tells the story of a plant collector called Archibald Menzies. Monkey Puzzle Man is the first full biography of Menzies, who was born in the parish of Weem near Aberfeldy in Perthshire, Scotland.
The title is derived from the story of Menzies returning to Britain in 1795 from a banquet with the Irish Captain-General of Chile, who went by the remarkable appellation Don Ambrosio Bernardo O’Higgins de Vallenar. During the meal, Menzies is said to have pocketed some Araucaria nuts which were subsequently used to introduce the Monkey Puzzle tree to Britain. The authenticity of the story is matter of some debate though author James McCarthy supports it here.
What is certain is that the Chilean visit was an unanticipated stopover on the return trip to Britain from an area of the world where Menzies had collected many more plants and trees. He was surgeon and botanist on HMS Discovery with Captain Vancouver.
Until now, Menzies’s influence as a plant collector and a source of connection between Scotland and British Columbia has gone largely unrecognized except by specialists. Yet, his work in British Columbia still affects the landscape of contemporary Scotland. For instance, one of the 190 species he collected was the Sitka Spruce which flourished in Scotland just as it had in the similar climatic environment of British Columbia. Today Sitka is the subject of a lively debate on the issue of whether its ever-increasing presence is a benefit or a detriment to the Scottish countryside.
One of the most interesting elements in Monkey Puzzle Man is the author’s explication of the strained relationship between Menzies and George Vancouver. Though Vancouver captained the Discovery, Menzies reported directly to the redoubtable Sir Joseph Banks, Director of Kew Gardens in London and personal friend to George 111. It was Banks who issued Menzies with his instructions for the voyage and Banks who insisted, to Vancouver’s distress, that a plant hutch be constructed on the quarter-deck of the Discovery to nourish the plants and seeds that Menzies would bring on board.
The tension generated by the plant hutch issue boiled over on the return journey to Britain. Vancouver had Menzies confined to his cabin towards the end of the voyage. And there were other things that the two men saw differently. Vancouver appears to have taken little interest in native cultures and was slow to distinguish one from another. Menzies had a keen interest in native cultures, went out of his way to record them and had a facility for picking up different native languages.
The two men even disagreed about the landscape around them. Menzies found the coast of British Columbia awe-inspiring and reminiscent of his native Scotland; Vancouver was less impressed describing the land around the Inside Passage as ‘desolate inhospitable country as the most melancholy creature could be desirous of inhabiting’.
Though Menzies was careful not to undermine Vancouver, he did sometimes criticize him in letters to Banks. He wrote, for instance, that Vancouver Island should ‘with more propriety be named after his Majesty’ i.e. King George Island.
Menzies, however, does appear himself on maps of British Columbia as a result of his association with George Vancouver. Menzies Bay and Mount Menzies, north of Campbell River, commemorate the plant collector’s passage though that area.
He also has approximately 100 plants named after him though there are several others that should bear his name. One of the species Menzies recorded was the Douglas Fir, the most commercially in western North America. Menzies named the tree for his fellow Scottish botanist, David Douglas, but made sure that the correct attribution was hidden in the scientific name Pseudotsuga menziessii.
Coincidentally, the book we’re talking about appeared at the same time as a project was undertaken to find the tallest Pseudotsuga menziessii in Scotland. It turned out to be the 63.79 metre high Stronardron Fir near Dunans Castle in Glendaruel, Argyll. The tallest in Canada is 94.3 metres and stands in the upper Coquitlam watershed. Behind the comparison lurks the humble figure of Archibald Menzies and his remarkable investigation of the plant life of the Pacific Northwest.
Harry McGrath
The author of this review, Harry McGrath is, with Graeme Murdoch, director of Cultural Connect Scotland and organiser of the Canada-Scotland cross cultural photographic exhibition, This Is Who We Are. The exhibition is currently on tour throughour Scotland as part of Homecoming Scotland 2009.
Monkey Puzzle Man: Archibald Menzies Plant Hunter is by James McCarthy and issued by Whittles Publishing, in association with the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.
The images above are out of copyright and in the public domain. They show, from the top:
- HMS Discovery
- Archibald Menzies
- Captain George Vancouver
Invitation to Argyll
For Argyll has just published a series of articles to do with the powerful This Is Who We Are photographic exhibition, exploring life in places in Canada and Scotland linked by similar names.
The creators of the exhibition, Graeme Murdoch and Harry McGrath have now issued an invitation to all Argyll communities whose names are echoed in places in Canada – we have already mentioned a Rothesay, a Campbelltown (yes, two ls), a Lismore,, an Iona, a Calgary … and there are many others.
The invitation is to take your own photographs in and of your place – photographs which tell abut the life you lead. What happens in your place? Where does its heart beat? What are its special places? What are its important occasions? Who’s around?
Graeme and Harry want your own individual views – literally – of where you live and what it’s like to be there.
This project has the capacity to build living and productive links between Argyll places and, initially, places in Canada with whom they share a name. The project is intended to move on to other parts of the world where there are Scottish connections of all kinds. These guys will literally trail the presence of Scotland across the globe. The mutual advantages in this are endless and as much profound as practical.
Practically, the project will provide names of people to talk to and places to go and see for people travelling in both directions. Above all things, this stops anyone feeling a stranger in the other’s place..
More profoundly, it will develop a modern belonging – in both directions. We tend to think of people elsewhere belonging here – but they inhabit another Scotland – many other Scotlands – we can discover and belong to.
All it takes is to open communications – share information and images. So get clicking now while the idea’s hot and email your photographs to Graeme at: graeme@culturalconnectscotland.com
The photograph above is of Grame (centre front, kilt) and Harry (dark sweatshirt, behind Graeme) at a Lil’wat First Nation powwow at Mount Currie on their recent travels on this project. Our feature article on This Is Who We Are looks at the curious fact that the surname Wallace is one of the major Lil’wat names.
This Is Who We Are – photographs from the journeys to find out
For Argyll has published a feature article – This Is Who We Are – on the exhibition of that name, the most inspirational of the main Homecoming Scotland 2009 commissions. Its creators are Graeme Murdoch, a photographer and former art director for a series of national newspapers and Harry McGrath, an academic and Coordinator of the Centre for Scottish Studies at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver (pictured left, with Harry on the left and Graeme on the right).
The exhibition brings together images from a selection of Scottish diaspora communities in Canada – in Nova Scotia, Alberta and British Columbia.
The journey described in the feature – from Vancouver to Calgary, Airdrie, Canmore, Banff, Craigellachie, Coldstream, Mont Currie and back to Vancouver – was one of several the two men made in putting this exhibition together.
What follows here is a series of photographs taken on these journeys by Graeme Murdoch and captioned by him. Together they catch something of the flavour of the rich variety of experiences the two men encountered as they tracked the seeds planted by the Scots in Canada.
THE ROAD EAST: after a long flight from Edinburgh we headed east from Vancouver. Now we are in Western Canada driving hundreds of miles on the Trans Canada Highway through rainforests, snow capped mountains, and arid plains to places where Scots have been before and left a trail of toponyms – Calgary, Banff, Airdrie, Coldstream, Craigallachie, Abbotsford – for us to follow. Ahead of us is Mount MacDonald, named after John MacDonald, Canada’s first premier. Beyond, the Rockies, and our destination, Calgary. (Photo: Graeme Murdoch)
CALGARY, ALBERTA: the petro-capital of western Canada. The original settlement became a post of the North-West Mounted Police (now the RCMP). Originally named Fort Brisebois, after NWMP officer Éphrem A Brisebois, it was renamed Fort Calgary in 1876 by Colonel James Macleod after his home on Mull. The day after we hit town we appeared on CTV live noon news. ‘I had no idea that Calgary was named after a place in Scotland’, said Ian White, CTV anchor man. Our story was launched. (Photo: Graeme Murdoch)
AIRDRIE: the open plains of Airdrie in Alberta. (Photo: Kori Sych)
BEAR CUB: we were eager to see bears, and did in British Columbia, but our friend Pam Doyle, the writer/photographer on the Canmore Leader sent us this picture of a bear cub making a dash for the woods. (Photo by Pam Doyle)
IONA: East Bay, near Iona. This was the first major Scottish Settlement on Cape Breton Island (Photo by Derek Campbell)
CAPE BRETON CHURCH: snowy kirkyard in Inverness County, Cape Breton. (Photo: Derek Campbell)
SIGNS: Scotland is everywhere in Canada. This is the north shore road in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. One name not on the sign is Knoydart which is a small hamlet near Lismore. (Photo: Graeme Murdoch)
LISMORE, NOVA SCOTIA: The sun lit church cemetery of ST Mary’s RC church. Two lines from a poem on a panel by the church state:
“A narrow creed drove Scotmen o’er the sea,
Their hearts were Mary’s and they would be free.”
by Rev. A. A. MacKinnon
Lismore was once called Bailey’s Brook after John Baillie, a disbanded soldier from the 82nd Regiment, who settled at the mouth of the brook. It is a settlement of Highland Catholics beginning in 1788. (Photo: Graeme Murdoch)
PICTOU: It is 5.30am and I wake to the first clear sky since we arrived in Nova Scotia. This is the graveyard on the point outside town where many of the descendants of the settlers who arrived on the Hector in 1773 are buried. The names on the headstones are testimony to Pictou’s motto: “The Birthplace of New Scotland”. There are Grants, Frasers, MacDonalds, Mackintoshes laid to rest here. (Photo: Graeme Murdoch)
Copy right on all the photographs above resides with the named photogrtaphers and are reproduced here with permission.
This Is Who We Are
We’re about to describe a journey so start seeing it in your head. The first step is a drive east to Calgary, then north to Airdrie, back south to Calgary, then north west to Banff and south west through Craigellachie to Coldstream.
Much of this is familiar but something’s not quite right. If you drove east to Calgary you’d be starting in the Atlantic. If you went north from Calgary looking for Airdrie you’d be hard put to find it – and if you struck north west from Calgary to Banff you’d land on Barra first.
We’re not in Scotland, of course. We’re in Canada, travelling with two inventive and creative Scots. One is photographer and former national newspaper art director, Graeme Murdoch, who has worked with some of the world’s leading photographers and ‘done time at The Scotsman and Scotland on Sunday’. His colleague is academic, Harry McGrath, who has lived in Canada for 25 years and has been Coordinator of the Centre for Scottish Studies at Simon Fraser University – a name known to every piper in the world and whose pipe band is the current Grade 1 World Champions.
Graeme and Harry are here in pursuit of the most exciting and productive of the inspirations to be stimulated by the Homecoming Scotland 2009 initiative. They’re exploring the other Scotland, out west – and finding out who we are, whichever of the Scotlands we live in just now.
The route travelled on the journey above, one of many on this odyssey, says everything about what the two men are doing. They are taking a set of what we receive as familiar places, then throwing them into an entirely different relationship to each other and to us – and the result is disturbing and oddly exciting. They then reveal ‘the other’, something we know and do not know at the same time.
All of this starts to put a picture together, to show us who we are. As Graeme says, you don’t have to be a native Scot to be of Scotland. An article in Hidden Europe said of Argyll, ‘Argyll is a state of mind’. This is as equally true of Scotland as it is of any place that matters to anyone.
The top photograph is of the Bay at the original Calgary in the north west of Argyll’s Isle of Mull. (Photo:Scottish Viewpoint) The lower photograph is of Calgary, Alberta - the petro-capital of western Canada. The original settlement became a post of the North-West Mounted Police (now the RCMP). Originally named Fort Brisebois, after NWMP officer Éphrem A Brisebois, it was renamed Fort Calgary in 1876 by Colonel James Macleod after his home on Mull. (Photo: Graeme Murdoch)
One place and another
Look at what happens if you superimpose the two maps.
Vancouver looks east to Canada’s Calgary and further east to the first Calgary on the north west of Argyll’s Isle of Mull – looking chronologically from the newer development to its source. It’s a reverse experience of standing at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, looking up the Champs Elysees through the Arc de Triomph and out to La Defense where the modern Grande Arche – the imperative of the future, dominates the horizon.
And talking of reversals, this is a world where Knoydart is a hamlet near Lismore.
Scotland’s first Airdrie can put itself in the position of its newer namesake (the photograph above shows the open plains of Airdrie in Alberta. Photo: Kori Sych ) and feel the pull of the mighty Calgary to its south.
All of this drives you to interrogate your orientation and to explore the impact of different relationships. There’s nothing so liberating as ‘What if…’.
Harry and Graeme put their journey plans together and then took off. Graeme describes them both as ‘media tarts’ so when they hit each place on their route, they make for the TV and radio stations and the local papers. It doesn’t take long for the old arterial connections they are after to start running free again.
On one occasion they were on CTV’s noon news bulletin in Calgary after what Graeme describes as: ‘… a 14 hour flight from Edinburgh via Amsterdam to Vancouver, then a 480 mile drive across the Rockies and looking like we’d been up all night, which was not far from the truth’. During the five minute interview, Ian White the anchorman, admitted he hadn’t known that Canada’s great oil and gas metropolis was named after a tiny settlement on the west coast of Mull. He does now – and so do his viewers.
This Is Who We Are
Graeme Murdoch says of the photo below: Now we are in Western Canada driving hundreds of miles on the Trans Canada Highway through rainforests, snow capped mountains, and arid plains to places where Scots have been before and left a trail of toponyms – Calgary, Banff, Airdrie, Coldstream, Craigallachie, Abbotsford – for us to follow. Ahead of us is Mount MacDonald, named after John MacDonald, Canada’s first premier. Beyond, the Rockies, and our destination, Calgary. (Photo: Graeme Murdoch)
In each community in their tours of Canada – in Nova Scotia, Alberta and British Columbia – the two initiate a photography project among the local people. What they produce will eventually link back to the places in Scotland with the same names and is gradually creating a digital archive of images of the Scottish diaspora.
Graeme and Harry are shaping an exhibition from all of this. It will never be finished because there are so many Scotlands across the world to be connected with each other. But it already has a strong identity. This Is Who We Are is the title of their initial exhibition. It was launched by then Environment now Culture Minister, Michael Russell, at Dumfries on Burns Night and will complete its current cycle in an exhibition at the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood on St Andrews Day.
There can be no stronger statement about the perceived value of this work than that it has opened and will close Homecoming Scotland 2009. It is and will be the gatekeeper, the junction, the exchange of experiences, the melting pot, the new Scottish alchemy. It makes it possible for Scots everywhere to see backwards and forwards in a single gaze.
What it has already done is extraordinary. These two men have flown, driven and walked the line between Scotlands. They have been a physical and present link between them. You could legitimately use the word ‘ambassadorial’ but that word summons something more self important than life enhancing. This work articulates the incoherent heart of Homecoming Scotland, giving it meaning, dignity – freeing it to soar.
Discoveries
The men have entered the maelstrom of the diaspora and emerged clutching treasures from the deep past.
One of these was the discovery that many of the Lil’wat First Nation community in Mount Currie, near Whistler – host to the 2010 Winter Olympics – carry the surname Wallace. One of the Lil’wat Wallaces, now a friend, Stan Wallace, told how he thought they had come to have the name.
He believes that Government Indian agents went through the valley to register native people and ‘either couldn’t spell our Indian names or didn’t want to and so assigned us random names’. It seems likely that one of these agents was a Scot who used the iconic Wallace name as one of the ‘random’ names to be chosen.
Harry points out: ‘Renaming First Nation people was common practice and part of a form of cultural denigration that included banning of cultural practices like potlach and longhouses and eventually the taking away of children and placing them in residential schools far from their community. The latter happened to Stan who was taken as a child by the Oblate Fathers and put in residential school three hundred miles away near Prince George’.
Stan’s wife, Shawn Wallace who is the main continuing contact for Harry and Graeme, has her own more direct Scottish connection. Her Great Great Grandfather came from Orkney and was called Bruce – so in her life she has been both Bruce and Wallace.
Harry also says that the youth soccer team from Mount Currie has been to Scotland to play, brought here by Jim Easton who was a professional with Hibs in the 1960s and now lives in Vancouver. The most recent connection with Mount Currie is the This Is Who We Are project.
The photograph above shows Frank Wallace, a Lil’wat traditional dancer (Photo by ShawnWallace, wife of Stan Wallce whose theory about the origins of the Wallace name in the Lil’wat First Nation is above.)
Art for life’s sake
This article reflects only a fragment of the interconnections Graeme (on the right in this photograph) and Harry (on the left) have unearthed and reinvigorated and it makes you impatient and hungry for more.
The exhibition in not the sort of art that any Duke of Sutherland will ever sell to the nation for £50million for passive viewing.
This is an art that we are a part of making, that encompasses us, that shows us to ourselves in new ways, that opens doors to possibilities of all kinds. It is a fluid and living art, responsive to its circumstances, never complete. It deals in the territory between the moment and the infinite. It is not a fixed and unchanging art that draws its audiences to its own certainties.
As he opened the exhibition at its launch, Culture Minister Michael Russell said: ‘This exhibition brings us closer to the real idea of homecoming: it presents the link that is made by people who are like us but who have faced different challenges. It is an exhibition that is not only visually exciting but also one that stirs emotions and thoughts’.
Jim Mather, Enterprise, Energy and Tourism Minister and Argyll’s MSP, said of the project: ‘This is a truly magical project that uses the power of photography to connect and lift the spirits of people in Scotland and Canada. For many of us on this side of the Atlantic we now have the evidence that not just hearts are Highland and Scottish but so too is the warmth of many modern photographed Canadians. Equally, these photographs confirm the great affinity between our peoples whether there are genetic links or not. The photos also show we share values and attitudes and my wish is that long may they continue to bind us together’.
It would be a privilege for Argyll to have the opportunity to be a part of this most galvanic of the Homecoming Scotland events and to engage in this conversation between Scotlands. It has to be possible and it has to be made possible.
The photograph above shows Harry McGrath on the left and Graeme Murdoch on the right.
Footnotes:
See and read the companion story to this feature under Homecoming Argyll in the top menu of this site – This Is Who We Are: photographs from the journeys to find out - a piece of photo-journalism by Graeme Murdoch on the his and Harry McGrath’s journeys and experiences across Canada, treading in the footsteps of those whose forefathers footsteps had once imprinted on the hills and glens of Scotland.
See and read too the articles below, from the media in the UK, Canada and Scotland, describing and reflecting on This Is Who We Are. There is little duplication. Each of these adds to what you see and discover about this adventure in Scottish conversations.
- Scots Canadians tell mither country who they are (Times Online)
- Photo project unites Scotland with Canada (Canmore Leader)
- The Scots in Canada (Video news onThis Is Who We Are: The Herald on Sunday)
- Scots connect the dots via Photos (Canada.com)
- Photo project connects with Scotland (The Advocate – Nova Scotia)
Copyright on all photographs above resides with the named photographer and are reprodced here with permission.
So why did Argyll refuse the This Is Who We Are exhibition?
There is another side to ‘who we are’: unmotivated, uninventive, unenthused, unambitious, perhaps demoralised. This negative tendency just booted into touch a proposal that the This Is Who We Are exhibition might come here. (Sorry for the metaphor but it has been a big rugby weekend.)
Argyll was offered this exhibition and the brief reply received from Argyll and Bute Council’s arts department at Eaglesham House in Rothesay was simply that there are no exhibition spaces in Argyll and Bute.
When this was brought to For Argyll’s attention yesterday (28th February and not, we would want to make clear, by the curators themselves whom we had not known before) we were infuriated, despairing and challenged in equal part.
It is infuriating to have evidence that indicates a lack of imagination, red corpuscles and simple get-up-and-go in the only formal point of access to the arts in Argyll. Who could not be enlivened by the generative excitement of this work? Who would not bend walls to make it happen here?
It is despairing to wonder how many other exciting experiences have been offered to Argyll over God knows how many years and have been similarly stifled at birth. This is unlikely to have been the only such incident.
Argyll cannot afford to be seen by the creative industries as an inactive sump. Along with renewable energy, outdoor activity resources and wildlife access, cultural energy will breed a major part of the social and economic development Argyll badly needs.
Yes, it may be that good people are in the wrong jobs. It may be that the appointing criteria are wrong – that the added value that specific ‘charged’ individuals can bring to a job is not prioritised. It may also be that the jobs are wrong, that they don’t offer room for creative and policy input. It may be all of these things. Neither Argyll nor Scotland will grow if we do not engage with these issues and take responsibility for change.
And we can do this
Calgary is a major link between Canada and Argyll. So is Campbeltown. So is Rothesay. So is Lismore . So is Iona. And there are others. This work speaks to and for Argyll. It has to be seen here.
For Argyll was immediately challenged by the immediate nonsense of the alleged lack of any suitable spaces for this exhibition in Argyll. You have only to read the links to media responses to the exhibition in the UK, Canada and Scotland – given here below and supplied to Argyll and Bute Council arts department – to understand the flexible and informal nature of the work. Its heart is conversational and interactive. It does not need Tate Modern to materialise in Mid Argyll.
The exhibition, as it is formed – and it can be reformed – consists of 4 wall-hung panels measuring 1.6 metres wide and two free-standing displays which are 2.6 metres wide by 2 metres high. These use both sides. There is also an iMovie video. Graeme and Harry have made it clear that they will also do a talk and slideshow in venues too small even for such a physically undemanding show.
So the Corran Halls in Oban could not host such an exhibition? And An Tobar on Tobermory, next door to Calgary, is incapable of this as well, even though exhibitions are part of its normal programme? Aqualibrium in Campeltown has no exhibition space and would have no interest in this opportunity? We’ve phoned Aqualibrium and the answer is a positive yes on both counts. What about the magnificent Craignish Hall or the almost mystical Crear? What about Islay’s Ionad Chaluim Chille Ile – and the new Port Mor Centre? And what about the Here We Are centre at Cairndow – a perfect foil to ‘This is who we are’?
What’s not possible?
- Scots Canadians tell mither country who they are (Times Online)
- Photo project unites Scotland with Canada (Canmore Leader)
- The Scots in Canada (Video news onThis Is Who We Are: The Herald on Sunday)
The photographs above are, top, of the This Is Who We Are exhibition at Mid Steeple, Dumfries; and of a road sign in Nova Scotia. Graeme says of this one: ‘Scotland is everywhere in Canada. This is the north shore road in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. One name not on the sign is Knoydart which is a small hamlet near Lismore. (Both photos: Graeme Murdoch)