Clandonald Alberta: Stavelocks and Spirits

Iain Scott Mac a'Phearsain and Paul Andrew Dunn © 1994

The Clansman , June/July 1994

When the Gaels who were settled in the Clandonald area of north central Alberta - roughly 160 miles east of Edmonton - were told, in the old country, about the land they would get in Canada, it was told that they would be able to see the mountains. Uill, chan eil beantann ann idir! (There are no mountains at all) as one of the settlers, now living in Vermilion, said.

In fact, nothing in Alberta is further removed from the Rocky Mountains than Clandonald - except perhaps Saskatchewan! The town lies to the north and east of Vermilion, a major farming centre in that part of the province, and you get to it by driving over rolling and slowly rising roads, until you turn to the right on to a recently paved road that takes you in to downtown Clandonald. The land around the town is high, dry, hilly and known to be fit only really for grazing; it never has been great for farming. On that rough road in to town lies a small country graveyard, final resting ground for the colony's people, mostly Gaelic-speaking pioneers from the Outer Hebrides. An inscription on the wrought-iron gate of the cemetery implores the silent stranger to Remember Us .

It is this then that I will attempt to do, here and in the following articles. It is not an easy task. Unlike other Gaelic settlements in Alberta, Clandonald always was the most contentious one. In fact, in the mouth of many older Gaels the place is synonymous with broken promises and bad feelings, and as such, the remembering is often impeded by silence and suspicion. As well, logistics add to the difficulty as very few of the original Gaelic settlers, or their descendants, have remained in the area. At best, they are to be found in Vermilion or Edmonton; at worst in Vancouver or Tir nan Og.

The reason for the unhappy memories of Clandonald are many. Friar Andrew MacDonell, a Gaelic-speaking priest from Inverary (who had been in a parish in the British Columbia interior prior to the Great War) was the driving force behind the establishment of the colony in the 1920s. Unlike Friar John MacMillan's settlers (the poet/priest Maighstir Iain of Barra) who bought their land in the region west of Red Deer, the Clandonald people never owned the land. Instead, they rented it from the Canadian Pacific Railways (CPR), which had purchased the tens of thousand of acres from a Belgium consortium. Added to this mix is the often mentioned Scottish Immigration Aid Society (SIAS), a resettlement agency that paid for the settlers' housing, wells, livestock, etc; so the memories go. This Society had as its Board of Directors three men__ Friar MacDonell, a CPR executive, and a retired General from Vancouver with Gaelic roots. The relationships between the CPR, the SIAS, Friar MacDonell and the settlers are byzantine to say the least. In the end what emerges is resentment for the fact that the land, poor in the first place, had to be rented for a percentage of the annual yield__ one third, according to most accounts. As well, there was great confusion when the settlers arrived at their supposedly cleared quarter sections, only to find very few acres cleared. The livestock was not what was promised, some wells ran dry in short order, and following all this was the drought and economic depression of the 1930s, throughout which the CPR continued to claim its one-third rent.

The majority of the Gaelic-speaking settlers were Eileannaich, from Barra, South Uist, and Benbecula, with little or no experience in clearing land and operating sizeable prairie homesteads.

So the Remember Us calls us to recount not a glorious episode of history but, as is often the case with our Gaelic past, one of broken promises, perceived and real, disappointment, and a meagre material existence. The memories continue to be heard, thanks to three people in particular: Alex MacPhee (Ailig Tormod Uisdean mac Ruaraidh Uisdean) of Vermilion; John MacGillivray (Seonaidh) of Clandonald; and Anne O'Rourke, née MacLellan (Nic IllFhaolain) of Vermilion.

In this article I won't even attempt to tell the stories of all three__ they will follow. Instead, I will concentrate on Alex MacPhee. Ailig Tormod Uisdean mac Ruaraidh Uisdean, as his Gaelic sloinneadh goes (Alex Norman, Hugh [his father], son of Roderick [his grandfather], and Hugh [his great-grandfather]), was born in Iochdar, South Uist, and came out to Alberta, while still an infant, with his mother and father in 1923. They came with neither Maighstir Iain nor Maighstir Anndra (Friars MacMillan and MacDonell) but on their own, and settled originally in the Ohaton area of east central Alberta. They did eventually join the Clandonald settlement, after encouragement from Friar MacDonell. It is perhaps because of this that Alex seems more objective in his judgements on the colony and Friar MacDonell. Whereas it must be borne in mind that in Ohaton, his father owned or at least was paying off his land; when they arrived at their dry, dusty quarter near Clandonald they ended up renting, like everyone else, from the CPR. So there is cause for resentment, though Ailing Tormod is always careful to speak diplomatically of both Maighstir Anndra and the colony.

It is perhaps his father, Hughie MacPhee (Uisdean mac Ruaraidh Uisdean) of whom he speaks the most unreservedly. Hugh was a crofter in his native Uibhist a Deas, but more importantly for Ailig Tormod, he was a traditional seanchaidh with a wealth of the traditional Gaelic tales, preserved down through the centuries in the Gaidhealtachd's of both Ireland and Scotland by word of mouth alone, known as sgeulachdan. According to Ailig Tormod, "Oh, bha moran sgeulachdan aige, 's cinnteach, 366!" (Oh, he had many stories, certainly 366!) One story for each night of the year and two for Oichche Chaillain (New Year's Eve). In fact, one of Hugh's stories, one of his versions of Am Breabadair agus an Gille Glas (The Weaver and the Grey Lad) was recorded by a team from the School of Scottish Studies at a nursing home in Vermilion and subsequently published in Tocher, the School's quarterly publication. An honour to be sure for a pioneer Gael in Alberta.

Though Ailig Tormod does not himself tell the sgeulachdan he heard so often in the small, 20 by 20 foot prefabricated stavelock house of his parents, he is still a seanchaidh in the sense that he carries on the stories of things old (which is the sense of seann) and shares them openly with those who seek them. In fact, he is one of the best and most willing Gaelic sources in the province. He tells, for example, of the hardship of the settlers when confronted with the bleakness and cold of their first winter in the SIAS's stavelocks. (These stavelocks were prefabricated shacks built by the Stavelock Lumber Company of Edmonton and purchased by SIAS.)

Regarding some of the people, Alex said that "cha robh even stobh aca!" (They didn't even have a stove!) and "bha 'ad gu gu math truagh" (They were quite badly off).

When it comes to how and why his family came across a sea and thousands of foreign miles to end up here, Alex's story, his sgeul, is fascinating "Bha m'athair taigh ur a togail, as an Iochdar, 'n uair a chunna mo sheanmhair, mathair m'athair, aisling... "(My dad was building a new house in Iochdar when my grandmother, my dad's mother, saw an aisling, a dream), it begins. An aisling, according to Ailig Tormod, is more than a dream. It is a waking vision, with second-sight overtones of what will come, for good or ill. In this case it was for ill. "Chunnaic i fear 'n a laighe air leac an stairsnich, marbh, agus bha 'ad 'ga thogail air falbh air doruis ur" (She saw a man lying on a threshold stone dead, and they were taking him away on a new door). And with that, "rinn ise suas a hinntinn gun deidheadh sinn uile a' null dha Chanada" (She made up her mind that we'd all go over to Canada). And so they did. Though not all, since she passed away before they left the old country.

But even that isn't the end of the sgeul. Sometime in the 1930s, they were finishing the house begun by Alex's father, when one of the men working on it was killed on site; he was carried away on the new door.

Recounting another tale of death, Ailig Tormod tells of how a woman he first heard about in one of Friar MacMillan's songs, sung by Alex, Annag Mor (though known in the Gaidhealtachd of Alberta as Bean Studa or Studa's wife), returned at last to her old home in South Uist. She had returned once or twice since the advent of the aeroplane, but on this particular trip she had let it be known that she would not be back. "Agus 'nuair thill 'ad dhachaidh, chaidh i dhan leabaidh, dhan rum, agus bha i marbh, bha i marbh" (When they returned home she went to bed, to the room, and she was dead, she was dead).

It is not only stories of death and strange premonitions that Ailig Tormod has. He also can recall the always popular Maighstir Iain, can sing several of his Gaelic songs, and told me the Father's preferred method of bardic composition. According to Alex, when anything of particular inspiration struck Maighstir Iain, "thug e a mach pacaid cigarette agus sgriobh e sios oran no dha! Direach mar sin" (He took out a cigarette package and he wrote down a song or two). Apparently, there were many such poetic scraps of Gaelic songs scattered throughout the province and in the minds and memories of the older members of our Gaidhealtachd.

Concerning the comparison between life in the old country and life on the prairies, Alex feels that from the time they came and throughout all the early Clandonald years, "an fheadhainn a' fuireach as an t-seann duthaich, bha ad' nas fhearr dheth na bha 'n fheadhainn s an duthaich seo" (The ones in the old country, they were better off than the ones in this country). But I will save more on the conditions of life in the colony for later.

It is here that I should thank Ailig Tormod Uisdean mac Ruaraidh Uisdean, and his always hospitable wife, Steva, for the time they have spent keeping the memories alive and the work they have done to allow those resting near Clandonald to be remembered. Alex and Steva's house in Vermilion is one in which the past is never far from reach, and one in which three languages have happily survived: English, Ukrainian, and, of course, Gaelic. In remembering his past, Ailig Tormod remembers their past and our past. A past, a story, a language and a people, remaining, "gus am bris an la 's a theicheas na sgailean air falbh."