The ties that bond a language, culture and neighbours

The team from Mantra TV, led by the Lewis-based director Calum Angus MacKay, took a three-week road trip from Nova Scotia to Toronto to find Canada’s Gaelic roots for their seven-part series.

But Calum Angus never expected that the journey he and his crew would make would involve meeting one his closest crofting neighbours from his home village of Achmore.

In the city of Montreal, where the lilt of Gaelic songs comes with a Canadian twang, the crew met up with Neil MacKay, arguably the oldest Gael in Canada at the time.

Neil left Lewis in 1952 but kept the home fire burning still. Neil was brought up on the croft at 6 Achmore in Lochs.

A generation later, Calum Angus, was born and brought up at No 5, so it was quite a reunion in Neil’s living room in the affluent West Mount district of the city, thousands of miles away from Achmore.

Then aged 96, Neil was full of stories about growing up in Lewis. His memories, still sharp despite his advancing years, were of fishing and shooting and scything grass in the long summers.

In common with many young islanders, Neil headed to the ocean and as an adult in the Royal Navy he sailed the world, visiting the Far East.

He recalled for the programme: “I was two years in the Navy, across Sri Lanka, China and Japan. I was in Hiroshima just a year after the atom bomb was dropped on the city.”

Afterwards Neil returned to the Highlands but kept on travelling, cutting a dashing figure as he rode around Skye and South Uist for the Prudential Insurance company on a 350cc BSA motorcycle.

But the desire to go further had taken a hold.

He told Anne: “One day in Stornoway I noticed an advert in the Glasgow Herald, a prestigious firm of insurance brokers in Montreal were looking for a young Scot to join them. I put my name in and they took me to Glasgow for an interview and then to Dundee to see a psychiatrist.”

Before long Neil was on a passage to New York, on a journey taken by countless emigrants before him. “I could only take £10 with me. Three days out of Southampton I had spent all my money. I reached New York with one case and no money.

“Luckily I had an uncle who put me on the train to Montreal and he gave me an envelope with 60 dollars in it to set me up. My pay when I arrived was a fortune, $3,000 dollars.”

The Scots started settling in Quebec and the the Eastern Townships of Canada as early as 1760 but the biggest push came with the mass migration from Scotland in early 20th century and in the aftermath of two world wars

Neil had a very successful career in Canada, working his own insurance business with his wife and family.

His daughter, also called Anne, took the Mantra presenter on a tour around Montreal to show her the Royal Bank of Canada head office where her father first worked when he came to Canada.

From the golden mailbox to the inlaid floor and corniced ceiling the building is a staggering symbol of the wealth of the country and the British commonwealth in the early 20th century.

However, business in the predominantly French-speaking city was dominated by English.

Neil explained: “ In these big companies mostly the employees were Scots, or Irish or English and the French people couldn’t get any higher than a clerk. Now in Montreal you must speak French to get on in work.”

Neil said he regretted not picking up French after all these years in the city but had an even bigger regret. “Now there is no one I can speak to in Gaelic,” he said.

Despite that his fluency and memory was incredible and he recited in full a beautiful Gaelic poem he wrote on his last visit to Achmore, his home village on Lewis.

Calum Angus said he made an immediate connection with Neil: “It was as if you’d known him all your life. He was very familiar and he had lots of memories of the village, of meeting up with my father in Singapore when they were both sailing. It was wonderful.

“Back in the ‘50s my father had even been to visit Neil in Montreal and given he had lived in the same house for over 70 years I really was following tracks to his door that my own family had made many years before.”

Sad to say, Neil passed away a few weeks after the filming trip, taking the title of the oldest Gaelic speaker in Canada with him.

But his poetry remains and the pride Scots Canadians have in keeping the Gaelic language and culture alive on the other side of the Atlantic show that home really is never that far away.

​

Emigration Tracks – Canada le Anne MacAlpine” is on BBC Alba on Tuesday evenings at 8.30pm and available on BBC i-player.

Here’s one of Neil MacKay’s poems after a visit home to Lewis…

To the land of my forebears;

I have now come for a visit;

To see one more time;

The heather isle;

of the northern sea.

​

Until I reach the village;

That is peaceful and calm;

In the shelter of Ben Eidseal;

At the edge of the plain.

​

The years went by;

And time didn't stand still;

Many hands have touched the ground;

Since I first went overseas.

​

And I won't see the old men;

I liked as a child;

From the lip of the corrie;

I can't find laughter or joy.

​

But my mind will be joyful;

When I look across;

To the hills of Harris;

And the Clisham above.

​

The beautiful hills of Uig;

Unaffected by age;

The lochs and the moor;

Just as I remember them.

​

And while now my home is;

In the land of giant trees;

And my roots are ploughed;

Into the fertile soil;

It's a pleasure to visit;

This place just now;

Greeting my kin;

In my beloved isle.