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Celtic Lightning
How the Scots and the Irish
Created a Canadian Nation
(Patrick Crean / HarperCollins Canada, 2015).
McGoogan writes that, to understand who we are and where we are going,
Canadians must look to cultural genealogy. He builds on the work of Richard
Dawkins, who contends that ideas and values (“memes”) can be transmitted from
one generation to another. Scottish and Irish immigrants arrived in Canada with
values they had learned from their forebears. And they did so early enough, and
in sufficient numbers, to shape an emerging Canadian nation.
McGoogan highlights five of the values they imported as foundational:
independence, democracy, pluralism, audacity, and perseverance. He shows that
these values are thriving in contemporary Canada, and traces their evolution
through the lives of thirty prominent individuals -- heroes, rebels, poets,
inventors, explorers, pirate queens -- who played formative roles in the histories of
Scotland and Ireland.
In the 19th century, two charged traditions came together in Canada.
That reconnection, Scottish with Irish, sparked Celtic lightning . . . and gave
rise to a Canadian nation.
[McGoogan] describes Celtic Lightning as “cultural genealogy,” an exploration of the values and ideas that Scottish and Irish emigrants took with them from their homelands. He zeroes in on five inherited “bedrock” values that he believes form the foundation of modern Canada – audacity, independence, perseverance, democracy and pluralism. The result is an engaging mixture of history, memoir and travelogue as McGoogan explores his own Scots-Irish roots and visits historic sites across Ireland and Scotland. -- DEAN JOBB, The Scotsman
From the reviews:
[McGoogan] describes Celtic Lightning as “cultural genealogy,” an exploration of the values and ideas that Scottish and Irish emigrants took with them from their homelands. He zeroes in on five inherited “bedrock” values that he believes form the foundation of modern Canada – audacity, independence, perseverance, democracy and pluralism. The result is an engaging mixture of history, memoir and travelogue as McGoogan explores his own Scots-Irish roots and visits historic sites across Ireland and Scotland. -- DEAN JOBB, The Scotsman
[The challenge] is to blend the
two strands of history, Irish and Scottish. This, he achieves brilliantly. . . . Celtic Lightning is engagingly
personal. . . . The book marks another step in McGoogan’s impressive career. -- DOUGLAS GIBSON, Globe and Mail