Scotland emigration: From the machair to the Patagonian pampas

But as the rainbow appeared over the patch of Hebridean land overlooking machair and the wild Atlantic coast where he now knew his great grandfather’s family once lived, he had never felt so Scottish.

“It was a very strange kind of coincidence. It was directly over where the family home would have been,” he says. “I definitely took it as a sign that I was meant to be there.”

Rodrigo Rubilar and his sister Tamara had made the pilgrimage from their Quebec homes in search of untangling their family story.

Having grown up aware that their lighter skin colouring was at odds with their mother’s Chilean heritage, the realisation that they had Scottish and Hebridean blood had taken them by surprise - and to opposite ends of the Earth.

While their family story has also shone a light on a particular episode of Scottish emigration; that saw hundreds swap their Hebridean island homes for southern tip of South America and the vast, unforgiving pampas .

Their story is told in an episode of new BBC Alba series Immigration Tracks which explores the impact of Gaelic migration to Canada and how it has influenced elements of the culture there.

Presented by Anne McAlpine, the programme shows her meeting the brother and sister in Montreal where they live, and sharing historic documents tracing their father’s family back six generations.

In a Who Do You Think You Are moment, it emerges that presenter McAlpine's own family lived in a neighbouring croft to siblings’ ancestors – meaning their families would have been well known each other.

The discovery of their Isle of Lewis connection later inspired the siblings to make the trip to see where and how their ancestors lived, igniting new understanding of their own place in the world.

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Such was the instant connection with Lewis, Rodrigo says he now plans to spend more time there, potentially living and working for part of the year in the area where, in the late 1800s, his father’s great-grandfather was among many who left in search of a better life.

Their story of migration is far from unique: poverty, desperation and the hope of new opportunities tempted countless Scots to settle in Quebec and the Eastern Townships of Canada as early as 1760. The biggest push came with the mass migration from Scotland in the early 20th century and in the aftermath of two world wars.    

However, their case shines a light on the exodus of Scots much further south, to Patagonia, Chile and Argentina, to meet soaring demand for experienced shepherds.

Their great-grandfather, Donald Morrison, was among hundreds of young men who left in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, enduring a month at sea and then travelling across the unforgiving Patagonian pampas in search of work.

The governments of Argentina and Chile had offered huge tracts of farmland to European farmers who had spotted the potential in raising sheep – a skill the Western Isles men had plenty of experience in.

Newspaper adverts called for shepherds and promised security and income while skimming over the harshness of the weather and lonely life. 

While clerics across the islands often encouraged young men to make the journey;  one of them, Reverend Donald MacCallum, was so enthusiastic that he encouraged 34 young men from the village of Keose to head to South America, even though it had only 15 homes.

Although many made the journey, for some the endless expanse of bleak pampas landscape, bitter winters and sweltering summers were too much and they soon made the journey home.

One left his own horrific mark: in Tierra del Fuego, Alexander MacLennan became known as the "red pig" for his enthusiastic approach to clearing native Indians from their land.

Countless others, however, opted to settle down, marry and raise families, often speaking Spanish with a Hebridean accent. Eventually Scots names such as Macleod, MacKinnon, MacIver, Macdonald, Maclean, Mackay and Morrison would turn up on dozens of tombstones in Punta Arenas cemeteries.

As generations passed, many moved from the extremes of the pampas to cities, while their Scottish links faded and were then forgotten.

Neither Rodrigo nor sister Tamara knew the strength of their Scottish link until they were contacted out of the blue by a distant relative, who had traced the family tree.

Tamara Rubilar visited the Isle of Lewis to unravel her Patagonian roots (Image: Contributed)

It unleashed questions about their identities, what prompted their ancestors to leave Scotland, and their own parents’ journey from their home in Chile to new lives in Canada.

“My father’s grandfather, Donald, lived in a small village in Chile but we didn’t have much information about him,” Tamara tells the programme. “This was a mystery. My father didn’t talk about his grandfather, and I didn’t know that we had this Scottish ancestor.”

The discovery inspired the siblings to make the pilgrimage to the Outer Hebrides.

Rodrigo says the trip has helped fill gaps in the family story and explain personal questions about their own lives.

“Our host lived just a few metres from the croft and house where my ancestors had lived,” says Rodrigo. “It felt like we were in the right place and helped me understand more about myself.

“Knowing and learning more about where I come from, what the motivation was for my ancestors to leave the Isle of Lewis to go to Patagonia has helped me make sense of a lot.

“I’m this absurd Chilean guy with a Chilean name, white skin who speaks French, English and Spanish, has a French Canadian accent and Scottish ancestors. It is weird.”

During the series, BBC news and weather presenter McAlpine travels 2,000km from Nova Scotia to Toronto, uncovering Canada’s Gaelic roots.

She says: “The six degrees of separation theory states that each person in the world is connected to every other person by a chain of acquaintances – and that comes into play with Rodrigo and Tamara – six generations to be precise.

“It's amazing once you do a bit of digging the links that develop.

 “It sounds like such a cliché, but it really is a small world and I love the idea of our families being neighbours in a crofting community where life would have undoubtedly been hard – working the land and at a time when people would have relied heavily on their neighbours much more than perhaps now.”

Immigration Tracks – Canada, is on BBC Alba and iPlayer on Tuesdays at 8.30pm.