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Scotland’s Global Impact Conference: Speaker Articles

5th October 2009

By: Dr Marjory Harper, UHI

Title: An Enigmatic Emigration Agent

Father Andrew MacDonell OSB died in a Glasgow nursing home in 1958. Three years earlier – aged 85 - he had been awarded the MBE for a lifetime’s involvement in the recruitment of emigrants for Canada. But his appearance in the honours list was not greeted with universal acclaim, particularly in the southern Outer Hebrides, the islands which he had scoured for most of his recruits back in the 1920s.

In the contentious story of highland emigration, why does the figure of Andrew MacDonell remain particularly controversial and enigmatic? By orchestrating the relocation of Catholic crofters from Barra, South Uist and Benbecula to the prairies, he was stoking the fire of the vehemently anti-Catholic policy of Lady Emily Gordon Cathcart, who in 1878 had inherited those islands from her first husband, son of one of the most notorious evicting landlords of the nineteenth-century clearances, Colonel John Gordon of Cluny. Emigration had for long been the estate management’s favourite weapon against unwanted tenants, and Lady Cathcart’s enthusiasm for colonising western Canada was allegedly tinged more by her share-holding interests in the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Hudson’s Bay Company than by a concern for the well-being of the colonists.

The question on which the jury is still out is whether MacDonell fully understood what he was doing by aiding and abetting the modern clearance policies of a woman who back in the 1880s had been caricatured by one South Uist priest as ‘the Sultana’. Andrew MacDonell’s career as an emigration agent began in 1912. For eight years after his training and ordination at Fort Augustus Abbey he had been in charge of the Catholic mission to the surrounding districts of Glenmoriston and Glengarry, but in 1912 – at the request of a Canadian Archbishop – he began to organise the removal of orphan children to a training farm in Vancouver Island.

War service in France and the award of the Military Cross were followed by a return to Canada. MacDonell’s initial plan to confine his recruitment activity to the transfer of war orphans from the highlands was soon dropped in favour of a more ambitious programme to bring highland veterans and their families to Ontario under the British and Canadian governments’ collaborative soldier settlement scheme. In 1922 he extended his horizons even further when he was able to tap into a bigger government funding pot allocated to promote general land settlement and training schemes in the dominions.

On 15th April 1923 291 emigrants embarked at Lochboisdale on the Canadian Pacific liner, the Marloch, just six days before the departure of her more famous sister ship, the Metagama, from Stornoway. Recruited by the Castlebay priest, Donald MacIntyre, on the instruction of MacDonell, they were allegedly bound for farmsteads in northern Alberta. But the fanfare that accompanied their departure from the Hebrides and their arrival in Saint John, New Brunswick, was soon replaced by a torrent of criticism from the emigrants about poor planning, inadequate accommodation and jobs that did not materialise and from the Canadian authorities about the influx of ‘a clannish people of peculiar psychology’.

For more than a decade Andrew MacDonell pursued his dream of creating a Hebridean colony on the Canadian prairies. But although over 1,300 colonists (including many non-highlanders) crossed the Atlantic under his auspices, the enterprise fell victim to poor administration, economic depression and his own unrealistic expectations. In 1928 the Canadian government revoked his rights as an official agent and by 1939 his colonists were still in debt to the tune of over $50,000. Back home, his name was tarnished by his association with Lady Cathcart and, as public criticism grew, the Scottish Catholic hierarchy distanced itself completely from his ventures.

Dr Marjory Harper will present this study in her presentation at the Scotland’s Global Impact Conference, Eden Court Theatre, Inverness from 22 to 24 October. This Conference will reveal much about the people of Scotland, exploring why they left their country over many centuries and unravelling the huge impact this small nation has made on the rest of our planet. Opened by First Minister Alex Salmond and chaired by the BBC’s Lesley Riddoch, the Scotland’s Global Impact features a number of controversial speakers, including Eric Richards, author of Patrick Sellar and the Highland Clearances. For more information or tickets go to http://www.scotlandsglobalimpact.com

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