Building a Scottish home away from home

Published on Friday 28 July 2006 10:00

IF CRAIGFLOWER Manor could talk, the 150-year-old stately house would take visitors on a journey through time to when this area on Vancouver Island was farm land worked by settlers, Scotsmen in kilts, with not a traffic light or fast-food drive-up in sight. Not much has changed here from the days when Kenneth McKenzie, his wife and their nine children filled the rooms with chatter and song.

Craigflower was among four farmsteads on the island established in the 1850s by the Hudson's Bay Company, which was charged with helping to colonise the area.

The company, at the time specialists in fur trading, brought many workers to the area. McKenzie, the son of an Edinburgh doctor, was among them. He hailed from Haddington, East Lothian, at a time when a farmer had no prospect of owning any land but an indentured servant could do so on Vancouver Island.

McKenzie and his wife Agnes sailed from England aboard the Norman Morison. McKenzie applied to farm on Vancouver Island and he gathered East Lothian blacksmiths, carpenters and bakers to join the voyage.

The Craigflower settlement was granted to McKenzie, who was hired to oversee the land. In January 1853, after a six-month sail, the McKenzies arrived near Fort Victoria. The family brought with them some of their beloved belongings, some of which are on display at Craigflower Manor today.

They also brought along two female servants. Single women didn't last very long at Craigflower, as the hired help soon married and were replaced with First Nation women native to the area.

McKenzie and his workers began clearing the land to build places where they could live.

"The Scottish workers were mostly Lowlanders taking interest in the heritage of the Highlands," says William Adams, curator and site manager at Craigflower Manor and Craigflower Schoolhouse. "Even the Lowlanders wore kilts."

The McKenzies moved into Craigflower Manor in May 1856. The home was essentially a replica of Renton Hall in Haddington where they had lived.

Unlike the stone home in East Lothian, Craigflower Manor is wood on a concrete foundation. The seventh McKenzie child was born in workers quarters, while the eighth and ninth were born in the home, now the third-oldest house in the island town of Victoria.

Walking to the bottom of the staircase - behind the thick, heavy front door dotted with black nails and thistles, and taking in the spirit of the home - it's not difficult to imagine the young McKenzie children sliding down the banister laughing and shouting as they go.

In the mourning or music room perhaps wife Agnes sang songs of Auld Scotland as her husband got ready in another room, contemplating whether to wear his beaver felt top hat that is still on display.

In the cold kitchen pantry sits pieces of blue willow pattern china. Bits of it were found in the gorge where families used to put their household waste.

The doors within Craigflower are like many others built at that time - wide. This was to accommodate women with hoop skirts.

"There was nothing worse in the 19th century than seeing a woman stuck in a door frame," Adams says.

The 35 families set up workers cottages, a bakery and artisan shops. The land continued to be developed and a general store, a blacksmith's and a saw mill were put in place.

But it wasn't "all work and no play" at Craigflower. An ever-faithful scribe and poet James Deans wrote about many events including Mary Macauly's wedding:

"There was singing and dancing and hoockin and prancing, while some with guid whisky grew squally; There was Galic galore and of good things a store at the wedding of Mary Macauly."

Along with their hard work on the farmland the Scots who settled in the area brought with them something that was a first - free education for everyone.

Robert Melrose, who, along with his wife Ellen, was one of the original groups to come from Scotland, wrote in his diary on 23 September 1854: "Schoolhouse frame erected, whole company in general, notoriously drunk."

Across the bridge from the manor and over the road is Craigflower Schoolhouse, built in 1855 for the 26 children of the farm workers. A teacher sent from Scotland to Craigflower was quickly taken away to work for James Douglas, the future governor of Vancouver Island and British Columbia.

"I loved the fact that the school was finished before the laird's home," says Jennifer Iredale, Heritage Stewardship Officer for BC Heritage. "The McKenzie kids went to school with all the others."

Inside the schoolhouse remnants of a homeland far, far away can be found placed around the room - a piano with sheet music for Bonnie Dundee and Songs of Scotland, and stone hot water bottles.

McKenzie was generally described as a stubborn man. In 1866 he started a sheep farm and left Craigflower. He died in 1897.

"The farm was running at a loss when he left," notes curator Adams. "The soil was not good."

Some members of the McKenzie family stayed in the area, while others moved as far as California.

On the web

Craigflower Manor

The Land Conservancy of British Columbia

Craigflower Schoolhouse, the oldest in western Canada, closed in 1911 and opened as a museum 20 years later. The provincial government bought Craigflower in the 1960s. The manor and schoolhouse have been National Historic Sites since 1967 and are managed by the Land Conservancy, modeled after the National Trust charity programme in Britain.

For this its 150th year, Craigflower Manor and schoolhouse were treated to an event of which McKenzie and his folk would have been proud. Musical guests included local band Tiller's Folly whose blend of Celtic, folk, rock and pop, has a following in Scotland.

Perhaps the spirits of the McKenzie and others from Scotland helped the celebration along by clinking their ghostly glasses in Craigflower Manor's front room while looking out to the land they settled in Canada.

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