=* A Distributed Proofreaders Canada eBook *=

This eBook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions.
These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the eBook
(other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are
making commercial use of the eBook. If either of these conditions
applies, please contact a https://www.fadedpage.com administrator before
proceeding. Thousands more FREE eBooks are available at
https://www.fadedpage.com.

This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright
in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's
copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT
DOWNLOAD OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE.

_Title:_ The Highland Society of Canada
_Date of first publication:_ 1913
_Author:_ William Wilfred Campbell (1860-1918)
_Date first posted:_ July 28, 2026
_Date last updated:_ July 28, 2026
Faded Page eBook #20260763

This eBook was produced by: Mardi Desjardins, Cindy Beyer & the online
Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net

This file was produced from images generously made available by
Canadiana.





                          [Cover Illustration]




                        THE HIGHLAND SOCIETY OF
                                 CANADA


                         BY  WILFRED  CAMPBELL

          AUTHOR OF “IAN OF THE ORCADES,” “A BEAUTIFUL REBEL,”
                        “THE GREAT LAKES,” ETC.












DOWN on the shores of the St. Lawrence, where it widens into what is
called Lake St. Francis, are the two old Loyalist and Highland Townships
of Lancaster and Charlottenburg. These two townships comprise the whole
south front of the historic County of Glengarry, famous in Canadian
annals for its Scottish and Loyalist military settlements.

This is a region of an early colonial influence, where every other
country home, could it speak, has a story to tell, and every old settled
hamlet has been the birthplace or biding-place of some distinguished man
or group of men. Here, in the dreamy Canadian summer afternoon, one can
loiter down lilac-bordered garden lanes, or across the drowsy opens, by
stream and field and note on every hand the signs of age in man’s
occupancy of the soil. The old moss-covered barns, and one-time
hospitable stone chimneys, in roofs and gables, all speak rather of the
effort and ideal of the past than of the energy of the present. Yet it
is a delightful country to abide in, and pleasant and interesting to eye
and soul, with rich soil and well-tilled fields of a people contented if
not overly ambitious.

Here it was that in the early eighties of the eighteenth century, even
before the founding of the Upper Province, came the first Loyalist and
military settlers, over-flowing from the more seaward settlements and
Montreal, where some of them were residing as refugees and veterans of
the Scottish and Loyalist disbanded regiments. It was these intrepid
colonists, who, daring to meet the privations of a forest-life, became
the earliest pioneers of old Upper Canada.

The Grand Trunk Railway, the pioneer railroad of Eastern Canada, runs
along the river front of this interesting old district, and the
observing traveller will notice the general appearance of a long-settled
community in the aspect of the villages and the country farms and
houses, scattered along the line of travel. Leaving the train at
Lancaster, an old frontier town, a drive of about eight miles along the
picturesque river Raisin, through a finely cultivated countryside,
brings us to Williamstown, one of the most ancient villages and
settlements in what was once Upper Canada. Here is St. Andrew’s, the
oldest Presbyterian church in the Province, and said to have been the
first place of Christian worship in Upper Canada. The parish was
organised in 1787 by the Reverend John Bethune, a retired military
chaplain of a Loyalist regiment, who came from Montreal, where he was
minister of St. Gabriel’s church, and founded this, the first Protestant
religious mission. Bethune was a man of piety and ability, and he
founded one of the most distinguished Canadian families. Of his sons,
one was the second Bishop of Toronto, succeeding Dr. Strachan, who was
his schoolmaster at Williamstown; and another was Archdeacon of Montreal
and the first Principal of McGill University. The present church, a
quaint stone building, which is built on the site of the first one,
dates from the 12th of September, 1812, a few weeks before the death of
Brock.

Here also still stands on the river’s bank, the old wooden building
where Strachan, that other famous old Scottish divine, whose life has
been written by Bishop Bethune, taught his grammar school. It is a low
gray building, with rough clapboard walls, giving no present sign of its
historic importance as the one-time hall of learning for Canadian youth.

Northward again, between these places in Glengarry is St. Raphael’s, the
pioneer place of Roman Catholic worship in the Province. Here settled
Father, afterwards Bishop, Macdonell, who brought out the disbanded
regiment of Glengarry Highlanders and settled them in this now historic
spot.

This old county became noted for its group of military Highlanders, many
of them chieftain-like gentlemen of the Macdonald and other clans, who
attempted to re-create, in the wilds of Canada somewhat of that old
Highland condition of life and society for which old Scotland is famous.

Farther along the River Raisin, which often seems like a large canal so
even are its hanks and so placid its waters, is Martinstown, another
small social centre of bygone days.

From there we arrive at last after a drive of some miles, at
McGillivray’s Bridge, the old country-place of the McGillivrays, a
family whose head is a clan chieftain in Scotland, and whose Canadian
founder was a prominent public man.

Here resided in the early half of the nineteenth century the late
Honourable John McGillivray, one of the leading men in his time in Upper
Canada. He held many important county and provincial offices, and was
raised to the Legislative Council of the Province in 1839 by Sir Charles
Poulett Thompson. He married a daughter of Colonel Neil McLean, a noted
military Loyalist, whose son became Chief Justice of Upper Canada. Mr.
McGillivray’s eldest son, Neil, succeeded to the chiefship of the clan,
and inherited the family estates in Scotland, and another son, George,
who was lately prominent in the county, being a public official,
acquired the Canadian home at McGillivray Bridge. The house here, a fine
sample of a Canadian country residence, stands by the river bank in a
small park with well-kept grounds, and it commands a good view of the
river and country beyond.

It was here, at this old Canadian home, that of a typical country
gentleman, a class of home all too rare in Canada for the country’s
good, that the writer discovered the long-forgotten papers and
record-books of the long defunct Highland Society of Canada.

Who is there living to-day who even remembers the existence of such an
association? Yet between sixty and seventy years ago, in the early half
of the nineteenth century, its membership included the leading men of
Scottish blood in the two Provinces of Canada.

In a large rambling garret, under the pine-raftered roof of the old
house, dimly lighted by small, dusty, gable windows, where I groped on a
loose floor of scattered boards, in search of rare documents, I came
suddenly on the old records, which had long been lost to the memory even
of their custodians themselves. The place of hiding was a brass-nailed,
hairskin-bound trunk that showed evidence of having made over-sea
voyages in the early years of the last century. There, with old books
and papers, mice-nibbled and dusty, reposed the minute books and papers
which chronicled the doings of this dead association.

So long had they lain there, and so many decades of years with other and
alien dreams and ideals had passed in between, that their existence and
contents had utterly gone out of mind, as had the old-time spinning
wheels and candle moulds and other obsolete necessaries and practices
and customs of a forgotten and vanished era.

It was interesting to the historian, the man with the true love for the
voices of the past, on parchment or foolscap, to scan once more those
musty bundles of the sayings and doings of a generation gone. Little
after all to the material mind were these old papers. No great find;
just a few leather-bound minute books of an old association and some
dusty old letters and petitions transcribed in the fine old clerky hand
of a period that could and did take pains to write well and correctly on
honest foolscap in honest ink—the chronicles of scenes and actions,
ideals and convictions of men now long mouldering beneath the turfs of
the old Williamstown, St. Raphael’s and other churchyards. And yet, what
pictures of living men, what throbs of dead and gone patriotism are
stirred anew by the perusal of those old mildewed pages.

There was the roll of membership, recalling a host of personages of a
wide difference of vocation, religion and politics, and resident in all
corners of the scattered colony; tickets and invitations to annual
dinners, reviving pictures of old-time conviviality, long winded and
deeply drunk toasts, continued into the wee hours, quite to early
cock-crow; resolutions representing strong convictions on public and
patriotic questions in a turbulent and perilous period of our history;
and, last but not least, addresses to the various Governors, with their
replies, showing the prominence, prestige and dignity of the Society.

But the Highland Society of Canada was much more than all this. It was
not a mere loose association of social conviviality and patriotic
sentiment. It was a branch of the Highland Society of London, England; a
serious and powerful organization, with aims and action connected with
the welfare of Scotland, and having for its head a Prince of the Blood
Royal.

The Canadian Branch had its inception at a meeting held at the residence
of Angus Macdonell, near the church at St. Raphael’s, on Tuesday, the
10th of November, 1818. This meeting was called under authority from the
parent society, bearing the seal of that corporation and the signature
of His Royal Highness the Duke of York as president. The objects of both
the parent and daughter societies are stated in the commission as
follows:

    “The preserving the language, martial spirit, dress, music and
    antiquities of the ancient Caledonians; for rescuing from
    oblivion the valuable remains of Gaelic literature; for the
    establishment and support of Gaelic schools; for relieving
    distressed Highlanders at a distance from their native homes;
    and for promoting the improvement and general welfare of the
    northern parts of the Island of Great Britain.”

This purpose and aim of the parent society, established in London in
1778, was adopted by the Canadian Branch with slight variations to suit
the country, as is seen in the printed rules of the society issued on
the re-organisation in 1843, and taken from the original minutes of
1819. Thus the establishment of Gaelic schools was extended to “other
parts of the British Empire,” and with the improvement and general
welfare of the “northern parts of the Kingdom” was included that of the
“Highland settlements of Canada.” It is interesting to note, here as
elsewhere, that the “British Empire” was regarded as a well-established
fact in those days and long before.

Another significant fact regarding this Association is that, though a
Canadian branch, it still recognised its obligations to the welfare of
the old land, and instead of contenting itself with work for Scotsmen in
Canada, considered the scope of its work as embracing both the old world
and the new. This Imperial spirit was one which at that day animated all
the best of our people; and the parent and the daughter societies worked
for the common good.

The commission from London was addressed to several gentlemen: the
Honourable William McGillivray, Angus Shaw, Esq., the Reverend Alexander
Macdonell (afterwards Bishop of Regiopolis), John Macdonald, Esq., of
Gart, and Henry McKenzie, Esq., “it being felt by these and others that
the Highland settlements of Upper Canada offered a most favourable field
for such an association.”

The inauguration address of the chairman of the first meeting, Simon
McGillivray, Esq., one of the Vice-Presidents of the London Society, is
full of suggestions. He showed that the parent society, starting as a
mere convivial club, and a place of Highland resort, grew into a great
association of noblemen and gentlemen, ambitious to preserve all the
best traditions, ideals, and characteristics of their race, together
with the improvement of the Highlands. He further emphasised the fact
that this was even more necessary in the Scottish settlements of the
newer Empire of the West; so that it was possible and important to have
a strong public association in Canada, acting with the mother society
here and at home.

The first officers elected in 1818, according to the minute book, were:
President, His Excellency Sir Peregrine Maitland, K.C.B.;
Vice-Presidents, Reverend Alexander Macdonald, Honourable Colonel Neil
McLean, Lieut.-Colonel Donald McDonell; Treasurer, Alexander Fraser,
Esq.; Secretary, Archibald McLean, Esq.

The life-membership roll, from November 24th, 1818, to June 18th, 1824,
included the names of Simon McGillivray, London; Honourable William
McGillivray, Montreal; Archibald McLellan, of the North-West Company,
and Henry McKenzie, of Montreal. So it will be seen that there were many
famous old Northwesters in its ranks.

The society continued to flourish with a large general membership until
about 1824, when it gradually declined, to be revived again two decades
later, by re-organisation in December, 1842. During that period much had
happened, both at home and in the outer parts of the Empire.

In Canada, the greatest changes had taken place; indeed, it had been one
of the most crucial periods of the country’s history. The rebellion of
1837 had come and gone, bringing about consequent results, among them
the union of the two Provinces, in 1841. More significant even was the
passing of old social and other influences. What was called the old Tory
rule had passed, and out of the extreme conflicting factions more
temperate parties had to arise in order to make the rule of the country
possible. The fierce militant spirit that produced the rebellion had to
soften down into what was called the Baldwin, or Constitutional Reform;
and the old Tory party to re-arise under John A. Macdonald, as the
Liberal-Conservative. It was a middle or transitional period, when the
old association was revived by re-organisation in the last days of 1842.

The first report of the revival, dated at Cornwall the 23rd of January,
1843, showed by a highly respectable list of officers and directors that
the society had taken on a new lease of life. Sir Charles Bagot was
Chief, and the leading spirits including the President, John Macdonell,
Esq., of Galt, comprised the most representative men of the historic old
county, and many prominent Scotsmen in all parts of Upper and Lower
Canada. Among these, were Sir Allan McNab, the last and greatest of the
old Tory school; John Alexander Macdonald, a young Kingston lawyer, who
was soon to be to the new Conservatives what McNab had been to the old;
the second Bishop Macdonell, of Regiopolis, and Bishop Strachan, a man,
who as a great educationalist, divine and statesman, had been and still
was a paramount influence in the making of the whole country. The report
of the 13th of July, 1843, says of the society that “Since its revival
it has acquired a large accession to its members. Many of the most
respectable and influential individuals in the Canadas have enrolled
their names, and His Excellency the Governor-General has been graciously
pleased to become its Chief.”

The same report pays the following just tribute to the memory of the
great Roman Catholic prelate, Bishop Macdonell:

    “The society feels confident that the parent society will
    approve of its first act since its re-organisation, by which it
    has paid a tribute of respect to the memory of a man who
    presided over it for many years, who was a member of the parent
    society, and who was named in the commission under which this
    branch was formed, the late lamented Bishop Macdonell, who
    during the whole course of his valuable life exerted himself in
    Britain and in Canada to promote the interests and welfare of
    his countrymen.”

The society in its scheme of organisation elected local vice-presidents
at different centres, such as Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, Toronto, and
Hamilton. The following letter is from that greatest of all Canadian
statesman, afterwards Premier of Canada, and the dominant personality in
its politics, during the greater part of the nineteenth century, but
then mentioned in the minutes as “John A. Macdonald, Esq.,
Vice-President at Kingston.” He says:

    “It will give me great pleasure to be enrolled as a member of
    the Highland Society of Canada. My avocations are such as to
    prevent my doing justice in the capacity of a local
    Vice-President, and would recommend that some person with more
    leisure should be appointed to that office. If, however, the
    society should be unable to fill the office otherwise, I shall
    be proud to act in it, and perform the duties according to the
    best of my abilities.”

Macdonald was then a hard-working young lawyer in Kingston. He commenced
his political career the following year, when he was elected as member
for that city. Sir Allan McNab, the old Tory baronet, of Dundurn, and
still active in politics, writes on the 12th of September, as
Vice-President for Hamilton, appreciating the honour conferred upon him
and suggesting the advisability of holding a meeting of the society at
Kingston during the meeting of Parliament.

The Honourable and Right Reverend John Strachan, Bishop of Toronto, also
accepts office as a Vice-President.

William Stewart, Vice-President at Bytown, writes from the Legislative
Assembly at Kingston, suggesting that “the Honourable Thomas Mackay, of
New Edinburgh, should be appointed as the other Vice-President at
Bytown, in the room of my particular friend, the Chief of McNab, as that
gentleman resides at a distance of upwards of seventy miles from that
town.” This is the Chief of McNab who founded the unfortunate McNab
settlement up the Ottawa. There is a story that he and Sir Allan were
registering at the same hotel, and the Chief signing as “The McNab,” Sir
Allan signed himself “The Other McNab.”

An address was presented by the society to Sir Charles Metcalfe, at
Cornwall, on the 2nd of September, 1843, as the Governor was on his way
to Kingston. The address referred to His Excellency’s “talents,
experience, firmness and integrity to preside over the destinies of this
Province, at a time when such qualifications are so eminently required”;
and assured him in conclusion that one of the chief objects of the
society was “to cherish in the minds of our countrymen, in this their
adopted land, those sentiments of genuine and devoted loyalty, for which
their ancestors have been so distinguished, and individually and
collectively use our best exertions to support the Constitutional
Government of this Province and to perpetuate our connection with the
Mother Country.”

Such, indeed, were the staunch ideals and purposes of this historic old
society, which, during its existence not only kept in touch with the
parent society in Britain, but also with the two strong Scottish
societies in Halifax and St. John.

On the 18th of February, 1847, an address was presented to Lord Elgin,
congratulating him on his appointment as Governor. It referred to his
illustrious Scottish name and ancestry, and requested his acceptance of
the Chiefship of the society. His Excellency, in reply, responded to the
appeal and accepted the office of Chief. But about this date or a little
later, the proceedings seem to close. Whether the desperate conditions,
political and otherwise, which followed, destroyed the harmony of the
association, or other causes were to blame, is not exactly known.

One reason for the Society’s decline might have been its aristocratic
tendencies and composition. Its leaders were chiefly Scottish country
gentlemen of Glengarry and elsewhere; and with the gradual passing of
the well-to-do classes in Upper Canada who strove to maintain the
traditions and customs of old world country life, and the drifting of
their sons into the professions and business life of the towns and
cities; such an institution would naturally, as it no doubt did, pass
into oblivion. Then, the strain of a period like that of the burning of
the Parliament Buildings in Montreal in 1849, when most of the members
would be almost at war with their illustrious Chief, Lord Elgin, would
about destroy its future possibilities.

Time brings about grave changes. The old order passes, but does it
always give place to conditions as beneficial as those destroyed? It
would have been a great blessing to Canada had her ruling, and wealthy
classes, stayed in or gravitated to the country life. Men’s minds are
awakening more and more to the weaknesses of the so-called democracy,
and the curse of the crowded city, where all are consumers and none
producers.

May the day be not far distant when once more the great social
gatherings of a Province, including the leaders in statecraft, church,
intellect, and social supremacy, will be held, not in over-crowded and
pauper-creating cities, but in little hamlets and country villages like
St. Raphael’s or historic Williamstown.




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.

[The end of _The Highland Society of Canada_, by William Wilfred
Campbell.]