Canada: NOVA SCOTIA: Highland Mod

To thousands of Scottish Highlanders who came out to Canada in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, the northern end of Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island looked like home. They searched no farther. To Cape Breton’s coves, its evergreen hills and misty glens, they transplanted names like Beinn Bhreagh. Lochaber, Tantallon and Skir Dhu. The Macdonalds, MacIntoshes, MacLeods, and members of many another Scottish clan settled down to raise sheep, fish for cod and till the soil.

Down through the years, they have kept the traditions of their ancestors. They still use oxen to work their farms. Nearly half of them still speak Gaelic. A sign proclaiming “Cead Mile Failte” (a hundred thousand welcomes) greets visitors at Keltic Lodge, famed tourist spot near the entrance to Cape Breton’s Highlands National Park.

Last week Cape Breton’s Scots gathered to celebrate their heritage. In a small clearing along the National Park’s Cabot Trail, a reproduction of a shieling—a rough stone, thatch-roofed shepherd’s cabin—was opened as a shelter for picnickers. And at Ste. Anns, Inverness County, 3,000 Scots from Nova Scotia’s clans swarmed onto a high bluff overlooking the Gulf of St. Lawrence for the ninth annual Gaelic Mod (rhymes with code)—a festival of Celtic folklore and culture.

Guest of honor was spry, 69-year-old, Mrs. Flora MacLeod, 28th chieftain of the MacLeod clan, who had come all the way from Scotland’s Isle of Skye for the doings. Dressed in tribal tartan, the MacLeod of MacLeods watched the clansmen in sword dances, Highland flings. With another kilted chieftain, Premier Angus L. Macdonald, she listened to speeches in Gaelic and stamped time to shrill renditions (including Mrs. MacLeod’s March, written especially for the occasion) by the Cape Breton Highlander’s Pipe Band. Said she: “It is wonderful to be in a place as Scottish as Cape Breton.”