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Flight of the Highlanders: The Making of Canada
HarperCollins Canada / Patrick Crean Editions, 2019
Bestselling
author Ken McGoogan tells the story of those courageous Scots who, ruthlessly
evicted from their ancestral homelands, sailed in “coffin ships” to Canada,
where they battled hardship, hunger and even murderous persecution.
After
the Scottish Highlanders were decimated at the 1746 Battle of Culloden, the
British government banned kilts and bagpipes and set out to destroy a clan
system that for centuries had sustained a culture, a language, and a unique way
of life. The Clearances, or forcible evictions, began when landlords—among them
traitorous clan chieftains—realized they could increase their incomes
dramatically by driving out tenant farmers and dedicating their estates to
sheep.
McGoogan's 15th published book, Flight of the Highlanders intertwines two main narratives. The first is that
of the Clearances themselves, during which roughly 200,000 Highlanders were
driven from lands occupied by their forefathers for hundreds of years. Some
were burned out of their homes and others were beaten unconscious. The
second narrative focuses on those who escaped as refugees to Canada. Frequently misled by false promises, they
battled impossible conditions wherever they arrived, from the forests of Nova
Scotia to the winter barrens of northern Manitoba.
Between
the 1770s and the 1880s, tens of thousands of dispossessed and destitute
Highlanders crossed the Atlantic —prototypes for the refugees we see arriving
today from around the world. If contemporary Canada is more welcoming to newcomers than most
countries, it is at least partly because of the lingering influence of those earliest
Scottish refugees. Together with their better-off brethren—the lawyers,
educators, politicians and businessmen—those unbreakable Highlanders were the
making of Canada.
WHAT DID THE REVIEWERS SAY?
Celtic
Life International:
Best-selling author Ken McGoogan "deep dives into the
historical horror of Scottish Highlanders in this terrific and timely tome.
Spanning over a century, the scribe chornicles the terrible injustices brought
on to families and communities by the British following the 1746 Battle of
Culloden. While the cultural genocide of the Clearances showed the Brits at
their worst, it brought out the best in the Scots, with tens of thousands of
them setting sail for the New World and settling into new lives. More than a
mere lesson in history, Flight of the Highlanders showcases
the spirit of a people who sacrificed everything to preserve their culture and
who were at the very core of constructing a new national identity. -- Stephen
Patrick Clare
The Scotsman:
In Flight of the Highlanders, the
bestselling Canadian author argues that the Highland Scots – victims of the
Clearances and the oppression that followed the Battle of Culloden – were
“Canada’s first refugees.” And that makes their story a timely reminder of the
contribution refugees and other newcomers have made, and continue to make, to
their new homelands.. . . But in a time of rising intolerance toward
minorities and immigrants, Flight of the Highlanders is a
much-needed reality check. McGoogan’s chronicle of how impoverished but
tenacious Scots built new lives in Canada – and transformed their new country –
is a reminder that all of us, regardless of origin or race, want the same
things: a better life and a brighter future. -- Dean Jobb
Winnipeg Free Press:
Flight of the Highlanders is
a tragic and pathetic tale, well-told by the sympathetic McGoogan, of a people
who came from afar to spearhead with others the settlement of Canada before it
became a nation. They were thrown out of the Scottish Highlands in a cold-hearted
annihilation of their ancient way of life. It was called the Clearances.. . .
. The erasure of an independent culture feared and reviled by the English
began in 1746, with the Battle of Culloden. McGoogan recounts how a
professional English military destroyed a vastly outnumbered ragtag army of the
farming Highlanders raised by and under the command of a wishful-thinking and
militarily dumb Bonnie Prince Charlie. . . . In the Clearances following
the Scots’ defeat, McGoogan explains, about 200,000 Highlanders were evicted
from their ancestral lands between 1760 and 1860. They were offered passage to
Canada in what became known as "coffin ships" because a number always
died in the miserable and diseased conditions below decks. Today, more than five
million Canadians claim Scottish ancestry and are proud of it, and the old
Scots (among others) are revered as nation-builders -- Barry Craig
Globe and Mail:
[McGoogan] writes that the Highland Scots who
were driven off their traditional lands should be looked at through the lens of
history as refugees, and he goes a long way toward supporting this thesis by
his demonstration of what they suffered. He starts with the misbegotten
Battle of Culloden in 1746, when the British army beat Charles Edward Stuart,
“Bonnie Prince Charlie,” in his challenge to the throne. The army then went on
to savage the highlands . . . Over the next century in various waves,
landlords brutally drove off tens of thousands of cottars in order to clear the
land for sheep, which returned higher profit. McGoogan illuminates this general
history with many individual stories. . . [This] is a volume that
rewards dipping into, preferably before a fire with a glass in hand. Ken
McGoogan is an amiable companion to have with you there. -- Antanas
Sileika
Goodreads:
I had heard of the Highland clearances, but never appreciated
their brutality -- the process in which people were stripped of everything they
owned and banished from their ancestral homelands. It truly was a form of
ethnic cleansing. As a proud Canadian descendant of three separate Highlander
families, I found myself personally outraged on behalf of my
long-ago antecedents. I can now claim that my own family members were among
Canada's first refugees. Ken McGoogan's journalistic background shines in this
account, not only because of his research but also his colourful and
entertaining writing style. He has written more than a dozen books. This latest
constitutes yet another important contribution to our understanding of Canadian
history. – Elinor Florence
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