From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Scots/J.m. Bumsted
A general overview of the history of Scotland is Rosalind Mitchison, A History of Scotland (London, 1970), and a good study of modern Scotland is R.H. Campbell, Scotland since 1707: The Rise of an Industrial Society (Oxford, England, 1965). The best summaries of Scottish social history are T.C. Smout’s A History of the Scottish People 1560–1830 (London, 1969) and A Century of the Scottish People (London, 1969).
For information on conditions in the Highlands, consult A.J. Youngson, After the Fort-Five: The Economic Impact on the Scottish Highlands (Edinburgh, 1973) and James Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community (Edinburgh, 1976). On Gaelic and Gaelic culture, see Charles W.J. Withers, Gaelic in Scotland 1698–1981: The Geographical History of a Language (Edinburgh, 1984). Much Highland history is inseparable from the clearances and emigration. See, for example, Donald Mackay, Scotland Farewell: The People of the Hector (Toronto, 1980); J.M. Bumsted, The People’s Clearance: Highland Emigration to British North America 1770–1815 (Edinburgh, 1982); Marianne McLean, The People of Glengarry: Highlanders in Transition, 1745–1820 (Montreal, 1991); and Wayne Norton, Help Us to a Better Land: Crofter Colonies of the Canadian West (Regina, 1993).
On the question of Scottish as distinct from Highland emigration, the best work is Marjory Harper, Emigration from North-East Scotland, vol.1: Willing Exiles, and vol.2: Beyond the Broad Atlantic (Aberdeen, Scotland, 1988). For background on Lowland emigration, see Malcolm Gray, “Scottish Emigration: The Social Impact of Agrarian Change in the Rural Lowlands, 1775–1875,” in Donald Fleming and Bernard Bailyn, eds., Perspectives in American History, vol. 7 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969– ); and T.M. Devine, ed., Scottish Emigration and Scottish Society (Edinburgh, 1992).
In the extensive literature on the Scots in Canada, the themes of migration and early settlement are by far the most commonly treated while more recent events of the twentieth century have been neglected. On immigration to Canada, see Stephen J. Hornsby, “Patterns of Scottish Emigration to Canada, 1750–1870,” Journal of Historical Geography, vol.18 (1992), 397–416, and idem., Nineteenth Century Cape Breton: A Historical Geography (Montreal, 1992). Also valuable is Kenneth Coates and William Morrison, eds., My Dear Maggie ... Letters from a Western Manitoba Pioneer William Wallace (Regina, 1991).
A brief introduction to the Scots in Canada is J.M. Bumsted, The Scots in Canada, Canada’s Ethnic Group Series, booklet no.1 (Ottawa, 1982). W. Stanford Reid, ed., The Scottish Tradition in Canada (Toronto, 1976), is a useful collection of essays. Ged Martin and Jeffrey Simpson, Canada’s Heritage in Scotland (Toronto, 1989), connects Canadian events and places to their Scottish origins. On the Scots and economic life see, David S. Macmillan, “Scottish Enterprise and Influences in Canada, 1620–1900,” in R.A. Cage, ed., The Scots Abroad: Labour, Capital, Enterprise, 1750–1914 (London, 1985) and T.W. Acheson, “Changing Social Origins of the Canadian Industrial Elite, 1880–1910,” in Glenn Porter and Robert Cuff, eds., Enterprise and National Development: Essays in Canadian Business and Economic History (Toronto, 1973), 51–79.
The best study of a Scottish community in a Canadian province is D. Campbell and R.A. Maclean, Beyond the Atlantic Roar: A Study of the Nova Scotia Scots (Toronto, 1974). On Scottish culture in Ontario, see John Kenneth Galbraith, The Scotch (Toronto, 1984). Gaelic-Canadian culture at the regional level is covered in Charles W. Dunn, Highland Settler: A Portrait of the Scottish Gael in Nova Scotia (Toronto, 1953) and Gilbert Foster, Language and Poverty: The Persistence of Scottish Gaelic in Eastern Canada (St John’s, Nlfd., 1988). For Scots and sports, see Gerald Redmond, The Sporting Scots of Nineteenth-Century Canada (Rutherford, N.J., 1982).
The travails of Scottish moral philosophy in Canada are discussed in A.B. McKillop, A Disciplined Intelligence: Critical Inquiry and Canadian Thought in the Victorian Era (Montreal, 1979). On Canadian Presbyterianism, see John Moir, Enduring Witness: A History of the Presbyterian Church in Canada (Toronto, 1975). Scottish Roman Catholicism is discussed in J.M. Bumsted, “Scottish Catholicism in Canada,” in Terrence Murphy and Gerald Stortz, eds., Creed and Culture: The Place of English-Speaking Catholics in Canadian Society, 1750–1930 (Montreal, 1993), 79–99.
Primary sources for Scottish-Canadian history have not survived in any great quantity. Vital-statistics records can be accessed at the West Register House of the Scottish Record Office (Edinburgh). Other material of Canadian interest, both printed and manuscript, may be consulted at the National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh) or at the Mitchell Library at the University of Glasgow. In Canada, one of the few extensive collections of specifically Scottish material is held at the University of Guelph, which has an active Scottish studies program. For the Nova Scotia Gael, the library at St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., is extremely useful.
