It’s time for Scotland to find a new home – in Canada
April 04, 2017
The initial blog post (April 1) ran 170 words. Your
enthusiastic response -- now more than 5,500 views and counting -- encouraged me to pitch the Globe and Mail, where I got the go-ahead for 600 words. This 610-word version will turn up tomorrow (April 5) in the Globe's print edition. Meanwhile, you can read it online, starting here.
KEN MCGOOGAN
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published
Let’s invite Scotland to join Canada. The Scots aren’t happy with the rest of Britain. They aren’t happy politically with Westminster’s shift to the right. They aren’t happy with Brexit, and with being frog-marched out of a multinational alliance they don’t wish to leave. The Scots, certainly as represented in Edinburgh, want to hold a second referendum on independence. But they’re hitting a brick wall.
Now is the time for the Canadian government to extend an invitation. Would the Scots consider becoming a province of Canada? I know, I know. Some Scottish nationalists will throw their hands in the air – as will some Canadians. Please, hear me out.
With a population of 5.3 million, Scotland would become Canada’s third largest province, after Ontario (13.9 million) and Quebec (8.3 million). Our country’s current population is 36.5 million. With Scotland, in a country of 41.8 million, the new province would represent 12.6 per cent of the population, as compared with 8 per cent of the 65 million people in the U.K. And it gets better. Add the 4.7 million Canadians who claim Scottish heritage and you’ve got a cornerstone population of 10 million – nearly 25 per cent of the country’s total. Isn’t that what they call a power block? Scotland is not contiguous with the rest of Canada. . . . To read the rest, go to the Globe by clicking here.
Before turning mainly to books about arctic exploration and Canadian history, Ken McGoogan worked for two decades as a journalist at major dailies in Toronto, Calgary, and Montreal. He teaches creative nonfiction writing through the University of Toronto and in the MFA program at King’s College in Halifax. Ken served as chair of the Public Lending Right Commission, has written recently for Canada’s History, Canadian Geographic, and Maclean’s, and sails with Adventure Canada as a resource historian. Based in Toronto, he has given talks and presentations across Canada, from Dawson City to Dartmouth, and in places as different as Edinburgh, Melbourne, and Hobart.
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