It was only 28 years after the infamous Battle of Culloden, in 1773, when the Hector was moored within Loch Broom taking onboard a group of people from the Highlands. 189 passengers joined the Hector that day, 25 single men, 33 families, a piper and their agent, all of which had one thing in common. They […]
A few weeks ago, we took a peek into the late nineteenth-century world of frontier Colorado with a most remarkable little Victorian era explorer named Lady Isabella Bird. On one of her many adventurous journeys around the globe, Englishwoman Lady Isabella introduced us to the Chalmers family in the foothills of the front range in […]
Any cattleman worth his salt will tell you that he’s in the grass business. He either grows it himself or takes his cows where it grows up naturally. That means that it is not so much the cow that deserves attention. The important thing is the land and the water – when water is available, […]
Some of the advantages that accompany engagement with one’s Gaelic heritage are the wonderful and useful bits of relevance that a Gaelic past brings to modern life. That’s right. Lessons learned from a Gaelic perspective can be productively relevant to difficult problems we face today. Consider the following: Gaelic tradition introduces community oriented and inclusive perspective in an increasingly exclusive and inward looking […]
Yesterday was the birthday of a great Gael. One of the greatest in fact. Poet, story teller and Gaelic cultural warrior Somhairle MacGill-Eain (Sorely MacLean) was born on Raasay on October 26th in 1911. Somhairle died in 1996. Had the Gaelic people, culture and kingdom not been overtaken and marginalized (i.e. stolen) by Anglo aggression, ethnic cleansing and forced […]
A young Dundee actress is to take on the lead role of a Highland heroine for a new short film about the Highland Clearances. The Last Footsteps from Home is a haunting story inspired by the real life story of Kate McPherson, a courageous young Scots woman who was forced to leave her family home during the […]
Compiling 500 years of Scottish history is by no means an easy feat. Countless pages of history books burst at the seams with tales of battles, inventions, kings and queens, acts of law, migration, song – it’s hard enough to even pick where to begin. However, Scottish artist Martin Fowler has done just that, compiling […]
A new soundtrack by a Scottish composer has been influenced by the infamous Highland Clearances of the 18th and 19th Centuries. Kildonan, the latest work by Sutherland based composer Robert Aitken, draws on traditional, contemporary and classical styles to create an album that evokes the forced eviction of people from their lands. During the industrial […]
On the Caithness east coast, five miles north of the town of Helmsdale, you will see the ruinous remains of the once inhabited village of Badbea which saw its last resident leave at the start of the 20th century. The Highland Clearances affected thousands of Highland families who were made to move from their homes. […]
A statue has been unveiled in Winnipeg Canada marking the achievements of those who left Scotland for Canada during the Highland Clearances. It is the fist statue of its kind to be erected outside Scotland and is a twin of a sculpture called The Exiles, sited in Helmsdale in Sutherland. That memorial was unveiled by […]
