Scotland the midwife at Canada's birth

This Saturday sees the 150th anniversary of the act of the British Parliament coming into force, which effectively founded the country.

The British North America Act of 1867 said the provinces of Upper and lower Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick “shall form and be One Dominion, under the name of Canada.”

Although many provinces and territories were still to be added, it is held as the birth of the Canadian nation.

To a large extent Scotland, particularly Gaelic Scotland, had acted as midwife.

The first Scots had arrived in Nova Scotia in the 1620s, but failed to flourish.

Men from Orkney arrived a century later, recruited by the fur traders from the Hudson’s Bay Company. However in the wake of the Jacobite defeat at Culloden more came.

Waves of emigration really accelerated as the Highland Clearances saw families forcibly evicted from their homes while other desperate Scots crossed the Atlantic Ocean to escape poverty and exploitation.

The first Prime Minister of the new country John A Macdonald was born in Glasgow, his father was cleared from Sutherland and his mother a Shaw from Badenoch.

The great-grandfather of a later Canadian premier, John Diefenbaker (who ran the country from 1957-1963), was among those who left their homeland in the Strath of Kildonan in 1813 to make way for the "improvements" ordered by the soon-to-be First Duke of Sutherland; displaced to make way for sheep.

The following year the party with Diefenbaker's ancestor undertook an epic 800-mile journey on foot through vast wilderness while carrying boats to use on rivers and lakes, from Hudson Bay to the Red River.

There they helped found the modern city of Winnipeg.

Twin statues now stand to their memory: one in Winnipeg – the capital of Manitoba Province – and one in the Sutherland village of Helmsdale. They are respectively entitled Exiles and Emigrants.

Of Canada’s 23 prime ministers since confederation, 14 have had Scottish roots including the current incumbent, Justin Trudeau, whose maternal grandfather hailed from Banffshire.

It was the first Macdonald, along with two other Scots, George Stephen and Donald Smith (later Lord Stathcona), who were largely responsible for the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway coast to coast, which more than anything else ensured the integrity of Canada.

In 1884 it looked as though that massive project might collapse because funding was running out. Stephen went to London to raise loans and telegrammed Smith to tell him the railway was safe, using two words: "Standfast Craigellachie".

It was the motto of the Clan Grant of Speyside, both of whom would claim as home.

Two explorers-cum-fur traders have been immortalised in two of Canada’s greatest rivers: Stornoway-born explorer (Sir) Alexander Mackenize (buried at Avoch on the Black Isle) who completed the first east to west crossing of North America (north of Mexico); and Simon Fraser from Strathglass who also has a university in Vancouver named after him.

Macdonald founded the North West Mounted Police, in part to keep the Americans out of what are now the Prairie Provinces. An early commissioner was a Macleod from Skye.

The early Scots’ footprints can be traced through so much of Canadian life from education to banking and commerce

According to the Janice Charette, the current Canadian High Commissioner (Commonwealth countries’ equivalent of an ambassador) in London, the ties are lasting and robust:

“The most recent census survey, there were almost as many Canadians who said they had Scottish heritage as there are people in Scotland today, some 4.7m.”

She does not have any Scottish forebears herself, but Ms Charette is married to a man whose grand-father was an Anderson.

"He came to Canada as an orphan from Scotland," she explained. "One of the projects we have here while I am High Commissioner is to track down his roots in Scotland.”

On the calendars across Canada there are Caledonian reminders, from Highland Games to Burns nights, some more exotic than others.

Mrs Charette said: “Canada prides itself on being a diverse, multi-cultural population.

"We see really that as one of strengths and in Vancouver they have combined Burns night and the Chinese New Year into a major event. It is called the Gung Haggis Fat Choy Festival so Scottish and Chinese Canadians and other Canadians of all origins come together for it.

"They eat haggis and dim sum, drink single malt whisky while watching a traditional Chinese dragon dance to the accompaniment of bagpipes.”

She said that today here would be a major celebration in Trafalgar Square, London and a Canada Day Ceilidh in Edinburgh Princes Street Gardens.. Around 150 ‘after parties’ will be also be held across Britain tonight with around 50 in Scotland.

She will be attending the Edinburgh Festival this year as part of the country's 150th celebrations.

“We have over 50 Canadian artists and acts and we are going to have a Canada Hub in the King’s Hall," said the High Commissioner.

There are estimates as many as 500,000 Canadian citizens now live in the UK, many with dual nationality.

Teacher Katie Van Exan from Ancaster near Hamilton, Ontario is one.

She married a Gaelic-speaking MacDonald from Skye and they live in Inverness with their two children who attend the Gaelic Primary.

She said: “It was only since I came to live in Scotland that I began to understand my own country’s story. We never really heard of emigration in Canada. Our society was built on immigration. But the heritage of the diaspora – the poetry, the songs, the literature - allows you to see through Scottish eyes and appreciate just how much this small country gave to Canada.”

One who will raising a glass to Canada Day is historian Professor Jim Hunter, many of whose books have told the story of those who had to leave Scotland for North America, and what awaited them there. He said: "Back in the 1950s, a Canadian novelist Hugh MacLennan, whose forebears came from Kintail, wrote that Canada, more than the Scotland from which so many Highlanders were evicted and expelled, was a place where Highland Scots could feel truly at home. I think there’s a great deal of truth in that – just as I think that present-day Britain could learn a thing or two from modern Canada about how to respond positively, rather than with our standard mix of fear and hostility, when refugees and migrants come knocking at a country’s door.

“I’ve been privileged to have had the chance to travel at different times back and forth across Canada from Cape Breton Island to Vancouver and from Montreal and Toronto to Churchill on Hudson Bay. It’s a great country, a wonderful country, and Scots are entitled to feel at least a little bit of pride in what our people did to make it so.”