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For Irish Gaelic in Canada, see Newfoundland Irish

Canadian Gaelic (Gàidhlig Canadanach) is the dialect of Scots Gaelic spoken on Cape Breton Island, and in isolated enclaves on the Nova Scotia mainland, Prince Edward Island, and to a lesser degree by emigrant Gaels living in major cities like Toronto. Formerly spoken across much of Canada, Scots Gaelic was once the third most spoken language in the country after English and French.

History

When the Hudson's Bay Company first started trading in furs in 1670, it required strong, hardy workers who could work long seasons in the New world wilderness. Ships sailing from London, England would stop over in the Hebrides Islands and Highland Coastal Villages of Scotland to hire-on workers, and these men were the first to bring Gaelic to the Canadian interior. Those traders who found country wives among the native peoples often abandoned them once their trapping was finished. Sometimes children were left half-grown to adulthood, while in other instances traders abandoned their lives back in Scotland and "went native." In both eventualities it was possible for the half-Native children to have been exposed to the Gaelic.

With the Scottish Highland Clearances (c. 1762) many Gaelic-speaking Highlanders were forced from their homes by landlords eager to make way for livestock. In 1773 The Hector landed with 189 Gaelic-speaking settlers at Pictou, on the Nova Scotia mainland. In 1784 a law restricting land-ownership on Cape Breton Island was repealed, freeing up the vast territory the Scots would nickname Tir nan Craobh (Land of Trees). It is estimated more than 50,000 Gaelic settlers immigrated to Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island during this period, the last ship arriving in 1840.

Red River Colony
In 1812 Lord Selkirk of Scotland obtained 300,000 km² to build a colony at the fork of the Red River, in modern-day Manitoba. He brought 70 Scottish settlers, many of them monolingually Gaelic-speaking, and established a community together with French-speaking Métis traders. With subsequent immigration the colony grew within three years to more than 300 residents. By the 1860s however the Métis outnumbered the Scots, and tensions between the two groups were a contributing factor in the ensuing Red River Rebellion.

The continuing association between Scottish, Cree, Saulteaux, Ojibwe and English fur traders resulted in the Anglo- and Scots-Métis, traders themselves who were often conversant in three or four languages including Gaelic. The mixture of these languages produced the Red River Dialect, or "Bungee". Today the Scots- and French-Métis have amalgamated into the same Métis culture, and the Bungee dialect is believed to be extinct. The language is thought by some to have been a mixture of Cree and Scots Gaelic, much like the French-Métis language Michif. Other scholars believe Bungee to have been simply a dialect of English intermingled with Cree and Scots Gaelic colloquialisms.

The 19th Century
At the time of Confederation in 1867 the most common mother-tongue among Fathers of Confederation was the Gaelic. In 1890, Thomas Robert McInnes, an independent Senator from British Columbia (though he was Nova Scotian by birth) tabled a bill that would allow debates in the Parliament to occur in Scots Gaelic. The bill was dropped from the Orders of the Day however, when McInnes was absent from the Chamber and the issue was not raised again.

MacTalla (Echo), the world's longest running Scots Gaelic-language periodical, was printed for eleven years in Sydney, NS, from 1892 to 1904. The Saint Francis Xavier University is one of the few institutions of higher learning in North America to offer a degree in Celtic studies. The Scottish Gaelic office there is the only such office to conduct its day-to-day business in the language.

Linguistic features

The Gaelic language in Canada has developed a number of phonological features that distinguish it from the Old World version.

  • → very common, known in Scotland as the "gwug Eigeach" ("Eigg cluck").

  • → less common, restricted to occurrences following rounded vowels.

  • → much less common, often limited to plural allomorph -annan.

Canadian Gaelic Today

Today there is a resurging interest in the language, with limited school programmes available to children. The Gaelic College in St. Anne's, Cape Breton, offers full second-language programs, and Halifax held its first International Fèis, a weekend-long celebration of Gaelic music and culture, in June 2005.

Tourism and revenue in Nova Scotia are closely attached to the continuing success of the province's Gaelic heritage, and by extension the language. Recent initiatives have been proposed to sustain and strengthen the language's stronghold in the area, but despite this Canadian Gaelic is on the brink of disappearance.

There are no longer any entire communities in Nova Scotia that may accurately be called "Gaelic-speaking," as the population of Nova Scotians fluent in Scottish Gaelic is today so small. While Cape Breton music has enjoyed a phenomenal revival since the 1960s, particularly in terms of step dancing and fiddling, the language itself has been neglected.

Gaelic Placenames in Canada

See also

Notes and References

Notes

  1. Aliant.net Article on Thomas Robert MacInnes, MP 1840. URL accessed 26/04/2006.
  2. Ullapool & Loch Broom Article on The Hector. URL accessed 26/04/2006.
  3. Ministry of Canadian Heritage. Gaelic most common mother-tongue among Fathers of Confederation. URL accessed 26/04/2006.
  4. Gaelic used in Winnipeg, MB
  5. Electric Scotland. Tribute to the last Gaelic-speaker in Glengarry County, Ontario. URL accessed 26/04/2006.

References

Scottish Gaelic language | Languages of Canada | Island languages in diaspora

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Scottish Gaelic in Canada".

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