Scotland and Quebec – meetings and encounters
In July 1608, French explorer Samuel de Champlain founded a settlement on the banks of the St Lawrence River in the North-Eastern region of the New World claimed as New France.He named the new city – one of the first European settlements in the Americas to merit the name – for the Algonquin word describing its local geography: Kébec, or where the river narrows.In the four centuries since that fateful day, Quebec City has grown to be one of North America’s major metropolitan centres, lent its name to Canada’s largest and second most populous Province, of which it is the seat of government, and stolidly retained its Francophone culture and heritage. Now within Canada, Quebec has played its part in forging a country celebrated around the world for its tolerance, diversity and generosity.
Scotland’s historic links with Canada are well known, from the settlement of Nova Scotia (Latin for New Scotland) by Scottish colonists, via the mass migration of Scots as a result of the Highland and Lowland clearances, to the wave of Scottish expatriates who found a home in Canada following the Second World War. In this article we will explore the modern-day connections between the Scottish people and Canada’s French-speaking Province.
Quebec City’s quadricentennial celebrations provide a platform for the international exposition of French-Canadian culture, and as well as the festivities planned in the city itself Quebec is proudly exporting its arts, not least to Scotland. Quebecois multimedia theatre company 4D Art brought their latest production to Stirling recently, in honour of the Scot who inspired it. Norman is the brainchild of theatrical experimenters Michel Lemieux and Victor Pilon, and performer/choreographer Peter Trosztmer, who have fused ballet, documentary and animation to create a mixed-media tribute to Norman McLaren, the Scottish animator who is widely regarded as one of the great forces in Canadian cinematic history.
McLaren was born in Stirling in 1914, and studied at the Glasgow School of Art before crossing the Atlantic in 1939. Initially he made his home in New York, but it was in Canada, where he moved two years later, in which he found the fertile creative soil that would allow his genius to blossom. It was another Scot, the documentary filmmaker John Grierson, who invited McLaren to live and work in Canada to assist him with the newly-created National Film Board of Canada (NFB, Office national du film du Canada or ONF in French). It was during his time at the NFB, at its operational headquarters in Montreal, that he created his best-remembered works and left a lasting influence on Canadian film. Never intimidated by artistic boundaries, McLaren freely mixed animation, live-action photography and documentary to create masterpieces that defy genre and convention. Most famously, in his Academy Award-winning 1952 short film Neighbours, he pioneered the technique of pixilation – combining still photos of live actors animated by stop-motion with traditional hand-drawn animation – to deliver a stark anti-war message. Norman McLaren’s films, and his international work with UNESCO, saw him created a Companion of the Order of Canada (Canada’s highest civilian honour) and become the first native English-speaker to receive Quebec’s Prix Albert-Tessier for an outstanding career in Quebec cinema.
Following in the tradition of the great Scots at the heart of its creation, the NFB has received great international acclaim, particularly for its documentary and animated films. NFB films have received eleven Academy Awards over the years, and in 1989 the Academy recognised the Board’s 50th anniversary by bestowing on it an Academy Honorary Award for commitment to excellence in every area of filmmaking. At Canada’s own Oscars, the Genies, NFB films have garnered more than 90 wins.
Scotland’s theatrical world will be returning the favour this summer when the National Theatre of Scotland’s uncompromising Iraq-war drama Black Watch comes to the Canadian stage as part of Toronto’s Luminato Festival of Arts and Creativity. Drawing heavily from interviews the playwright Gregory Burke conducted with front-line combatants, Black Watch follows a group of Scottish soldiers from their homes in Fife through the horrors of war. Debuting on the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006, and since playing to packed houses and rapturous applause across the UK, Black Watch won critical acclaim and awards from The Herald, The Scotsman, The South Bank Show and the Writers’ Guild. The show has successfully toured the world, wowing audiences in Australia, New Zealand and the United States – where it found a place on the Best-Of-2007 lists of the New York Times, the LA Times, Newsweek, and Time Out New York, among others – but this is its first trip to Canada.
Black Watch may not be heading to Quebec (this time), but does enjoy a local connection. Montreal is home to Canada’s own Black Watch, The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada. The regiment’s history dates back to 1862, before the formation of modern Canada, when the region was still known as British North America and Canada’s Black Watch was consciously modelled after the Scottish regiment, taking not just its name but its tartan and the distinctive red hackle that adorns their caps. Soldiers from Canada’s Black Watch fought valiantly in both World Wars, and can number four recipients of the Victoria Cross among their roll of honour.
Scotland has also benefited from the work of one of Quebec’s leading architectural minds. The rebuilding of Corrour Lodge on the banks of Loch Ossian provided the opportunity for Moshe Safide to bring his modernist vision to the tranquil surroundings of the Scottish Highlands. Safdie was born in Israel and during his youth moved with his family to Montreal, where he went on to study architecture at McGill University – founded by Scottish merchant James McGill in 1821. He began his professional career with the Habitat 67 housing complex built for the Montreal World’s Fair, Expo 67, which remains a city landmark to this day. He has since designed public spaces in his adopted home of Canada, including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and in his native Israel, where the design of the main museum of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem was entrusted to his hands: a greater honour, or a graver responsibility, can scarcely be imagined. His basic theme of harmony between past and present resonates both in Scotland and in Quebec as well as in the land of his birth.
It would seem unavoidable, given the pivotal role of the Scots diaspora in the building of modern Canada and Scotland’s ancient alliance with the French, that Scotland and Quebec should make natural bedfellows, and such is indeed the case. It is a reassuring thought that oceanic and linguistic divisions count for so little when two peoples are determined to come together in the spirit of international cooperation and mutual benefit. Let us celebrate this, and proclaim to the world the shared vision of the Scots and Quebecois of friendship through diversity, of pan-human respect and affection, and of cultural differences as a way of bringing people together rather than driving them apart. After all, we’re a’ Jacques Tamson’s bairns.
Image by Chris Nash and supplied by Motionhouse Dance Theatre from the production Driven.
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