Scots who left for Canada in Clearances to be honoured

Published on Saturday 2 June 2007 01:02

IN SCOTLAND they were emigrants, victims of the Highland Clearances who left to find a new life across the Atlantic. In Canada, they were settlers, early residents who established colonies that are part of the country's heritage.

The link between the two has been marked this week with the arrival in Winnipeg of a replica of a larger-than-life statue of a Clearance family.

The 10ft high sculpture of a man, a boy and a woman carrying a baby was commissioned by the St Andrew's Society in Winnipeg and is based on The Emigrants, a well-known work that is displayed in a park in Helmsdale, Sutherland.

The replica, called the Highland Settlers Monument, will be erected this summer on a prominent roundabout in cental Winnipeg, a few yards from the riverbank in the area where the Scots emigrants first arrived.

The St Andrew's Society in Winnipeg was founded in 1871 and now has about 400 members. Kamila Goudie, its spokeswoman, said:

"Since the monument will be located in the middle of a busy intersection, we estimate every year thousands of people will see and visit it.

"Its role is to commemorate the Clearances and the Winnipeg settlers, and to educate the public on how the terrible evictions in Scotland were the genesis of our city."

The three-tonne statue, which took about four months to complete, was created by Black Isle Bronze, which cast the Helmsdale sculpture in 2003.

Farquhar Laing, the foundry owner, described the project as "culturally very important".

The first settlers arrived in Canada in 1812 in areas at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in Winnipeg, many of them from Kildonan in Sutherland, one of the areas worst affected by the Clearances.

They were helped by Thomas Douglas, the fifth Earl of Selkirk, who received a large grant from the Hudson's Bay Company to recruit workers for the firm.

The original statue in Sutherland was at first to be 30ft high and form part of a 120ft high monument to be erected on a hill near Helmsdale and rival the statue of the Duke of Sutherland which overlooks Golspie.

However, the project was scaled down after it was discovered that original cost and time estimates would be significantly exceeded.

One of the backers of the original statue was Dennis MacLeod, a former gold mining tycoon whose family was evicted from Sutherland.

He has also supported the project in Canada, where he now lives.