Can Winnie Ewing really speak Gaelic? by Ronald Mackay
Life in Glengarry County was a world away from life in Quebec. My link was the train journey between the train station in the village of Alexandria and the busy Central Station in downtown Montreal. Back and forth morning and evening, it allowed me to make the comfortable switch between farmer and university professor.
But a simple telephone call tied these worlds together quite by accident, at least for a day.
“Professor Mackay?”
“Speaking.”
“I’m Rory Campbell and my friend here sharing this call is Iain MacLennan. We’re both Scots and we both captain Canadian Coast Guard icebreakers throughout the Arctic.”
I earned my university research funds through consulting work, so I was used to strange calls. Calls often brought requests to undertake unusual projects throughout the length and breadth of Canada.
“Iain and I support the Scottish Nationalist Party. Winnie Ewing is visiting Canada next week. We’ve been asked to host her while she’s in Montreal. We want you to arrange a public lecture in your university. Tuesday evening would suit. She’ll talk about the role that languages play in nation building.”
I knew that Winnie Ewing was the first Scottish Nationalist MP to be elected to Westminster. Her constituency was the Scottish Highlands and Islands. I also knew that though she was a native speaker of English, she’d learned Gaelic to get closer to her constituents and was promoting Gaelic and encouraging its wider use in Scotland.
After a polite pause to suggest I was considering the request seriously, I replied, “Sorry. Impossible.”
“Really?” “Really?” Two disappointed voices.
“Unlike the Canadian Coast Guard, universities are unable to respond so rapidly to any request.”
“Oh!” “Oh!” Again, disappointment.
“Besides, in the present separatist climate here in Quebec it would be suicide for an English-speaking university to provoke the Péquisite government by promoting bilingualism. René Levesque and his Péquisites want French to be the sole language in Quebec. They demand monolingualism. French only!”
After a pause, Rory asked, “Any alternative suggestions?”
“Can she be free next Saturday morning?”
Mumbled voices consulting, then: “What’ve you got in mind?”
“If you drive her to Alexandria in Ontario on Saturday morning. I’ll introduce her to two of the few remaining native Scottish Gaelic speakers left in Glengarry County.”
More mumbles then, “Right. Where and when?”
“The Mill Inn, just inside the Ontario border in Alexandria at ten in the morning.”
“We’ll be there with a journalist or two and a TV cameraman.”
“Please don’t. Only you two and Winnie Ewing!” Restricting the number of strangers to merely three, I’d have to be persuasive. No stranger, and certainly no woman, had visited Donald A and Alex’ farm since their mother died decades before.
Once home, I immediately put my proposal to Donald A and Alex.
“Here? Why?” Donald A looked alarmed.
“A woman? Who is she?” Alex showed equal alarm.
“Winnie Ewing’s Scottish. She’s a member of parliament in Westminster. She supports Scottish independence from the United Kingdom.”
I saw the incomprehension in their faces and started again.
“Like you, she speaks both Gaelic and English.” They looked sceptical. You and she’ll enjoy speaking Gaelic together.” I saw no brightening in their eyes.
“She can’t speak Gaelic!” Alex announced.
Donald A nodded. “If she’s not from Glengarry she can’t speak Gaelic.”
For them, the case was cut and dried. Winnie Ewing was an imposter.
Months before, I’d had to coax Donald A and Alex to admit to me that they spoke Gaelic to each other when they were alone. I’d heard them one day when I’d made a surprise visit. Immediately, they’d switched to English. They’d shaken their heads vigorously when I asked. “We speak only English.”
Over time, they’d taken me into their confidence. In what to them was the mists of bygone ages, their Gaelic-speaking ancestors had come from the Scottish Highlands as the first settlers in the region they called Glengarry to remind them of home.
Over time, that Highland community had been diluted as the more ambitious abandoned hardscrabble farming and sought better opportunities. Others had taken their place. First, farmers escaping from warring European empires, then others fleeing the First and Second World Wars. English had become the lingua franca between neighbours, including the few French who remained from Lower Canada.
On the appointed Saturday, I sat waiting for Winnie Ewing and her cohort in the Hub in Alexandria. It was a beautiful stone building that for a century had served as the village gristmill.
Three cars bearing Quebec license plates with their distinctive blue and white fleur-de-lys drew into the car park. A good-looking, smiling woman and two gentlemen emerged from one; from the others a motley assortment of reporters and cameramen replete with paraphernalia.
Just as I suspected, I thought. I’ll have to lose them before heading to the assignation with Donald A and Alex.
“We thinned the numbers down to this.” Rory gestured to the group.
I introduced myself to Winnie, Rory and Iain.
Winnie was smiling, middle-aged, smartly but casually dressed, and utterly charming. “I’m looking forward to meeting the last of the Gaelic speakers in Ontario, Ronald. Thanks for arranging this.”
‘She’ll fit in fine,’ I thought.
“It’s early, let’s have coffee, “I stalled. As we drank and I explained the circumstances of Donald A and Alex, Winnie came to appreciate why only she, Rory, Iain and I could make the visit. From experience, she well knew the reserved and private way of life of the Celtic crofters in her Scottish constituency. She was able to understand how the final remnants of the Glengarry Highland community might be even more conservative and less aware of the wider world.
After leaving the disappointed reporters behind, I nevertheless took the precaution of driving this small party in my own truck by an indirect route. I wanted nobody following us, so I chose gravel side roads and, finally, the swampy road by Baltic Corners where a sign warned Garter Snakes on Road. I looked back and relaxed. We were alone.
Donald A and Alex were sitting in the open end of their woodshed when we drove up. They wore clean working greens, had washed their faces and even made a valiant attempt at shaving. Their demeanour, nevertheless, suggested uneasiness about meeting an unknown Gaelic speaker–a woman to boot!
Smiling, Winnie greeted them and offered them her hand. Pretending not to understand her Gaelic greeting, they rose unsteadily to their feet and gave her a cagey, “Gidday!”. “Gidday!” is the universal greeting in rural Ontario. They looked at her with curiosity as well they might–the first woman visitor to their farm in decades.
I introduced everybody by name.
“Beer?” Donald A gestured to a case of Moosehead half hidden under the stove wood.
Winnie accepted, opened her can expertly and drank. Donald A and Alex admired her expertise. A good start! I thought.
Our cagey hosts insisted that conversation begin in English. Winnie, totally at ease in the woodshed, went with the flow. She sat on a chopping block and admired the stacked chords of split hardwood drying before winter.
“You use white birch,” she observed.
“How would you know?” Alex looked at her suspiciously.
“The bark!” Pointing, she added, “I see elm, ironwood and what looks like ash.”
Our hosts were warming to Winnie as she led them comfortably into simple exchanges about their daily rural life. She had the knack of making people feel relaxed.
Soon, imperceptibly, she switched to Gaelic. Donald A and Alex responded, cannily at first, but soon the conversation grew warmer.
Alex looked at us non-Gaelic speakers, Rory, Ian and me, and asked, “How does she know Gaelic? She doesn’t really know it does she?”
‘Why not ask Winnie herself?’ I thought but said, “She’s been speaking it fluently with you for the past ten minutes, hasn’t she?”
“But she’s not from here. Where could she learn it?”
Winnie laughed, elbowed Alex in the ribs, and said, “In Scotland. It’s the native language of many in the Highlands and Islands.”
Alex still looked sceptical, as though she were trying to fool him, but Donald A came to the rescue. “I remember! We went once to the museum in Dunvegan.”He pointed northwest towards the nearby village. “They had photos of the first settlers. They all spoke Gaelic.” He turned to his younger brother, “You remember Alex?”
“I remember nothin’. She speaks funny anyway. Not like us.”
Winnie just smiled, opened another can of beer and passed it to Alex. He accepted it readily. And so they continued talking in Gaelic for another ten minutes.
Suddenly Alex sprang to his feet. “Wrong!”
We all looked at him. “What’s wrong Alex?”
“I knew it.” He was gleeful. “She doesn’t really speak Gaelic!”
Winnie looked amused. Rory, Iain looked puzzled.
“Now Alex, what makes you say that?” Winnie smiled and cocked her grey head to one side to show that she was interested in his opinion of her expertise.
“You got it wrong!” Alex was dancing with excitement. “I knew you couldn’t speak Gaelic!”
We waited for Alex to explain.
“You asked when our father and mother died. You used the word caochail. Then we talked about how we raise a calf every year and slaughter it in the fall and you said bàsaich! The word for the death of an animal is casgradh. You can’t use bàsachadh for a steer!
Alex was jubilant to have found evidence of Winnie’s deficiency and evidence for why she couldn’t possibly be a real Gaelic speaker.
Whether Winnie’s usage was the result of differences between 19th and 20th century Gaelic or perhaps the fact that shed taken the trouble to learn the language out of respect for her constituents, I’ve no idea. What I do know is that she took Alex’ criticism with grace, smiled at him and complimented his insight.
“I hand it to you, Alex, you got me there! You’re the expert.” She directed a charming smile at him. “What a fine brother you’ve got there, Donald A! You must be very proud of him!”
Alex looked at us, eyes shining. This may be the first compliment any woman has paid Alex in his entire life, I thought.
Donald A returned her smile. Then he looked fondly at his brother. “Nigh 80 years and never a cross word between us!”
Quietly, Alex exchanged a few words with his brother, left the woodshed and returned from the farmhouse with a brown envelope. First, he and then Donald A moved to sit closer to Winnie.
For the next fifteen minutes, entirely in Gaelic, they shared the few family photos that they kept as treasured memories of their mother and father and of the single visit they had made as a family in 1908, by train to Canada’s capital.
Winnie was no longer a singular and suspect stranger. She’d become a fellow with whom the two brothers were proud to share memories of their simple life. A consummate politician and humanitarian, she’d won them over just as she’d wooed her constituents in the Highlands and Islands.
Rory and Iain gave polite indications that it was time to go.
“Back to Scotland?” Alex asked. “How long will it take you to drive back there?”
Winnie shook hands first with Donald A, the elder, and then with Alex. Skilled politician that she was, she could only smile kindly in answer to his question.
As we returned to the parking lot at the Hub in Alexandria, the journalists and photographers trooped out to meet us, seeking something from Winnie to justify their efforts.
Confidently, she stood before them, head erect, and smiled. “Glengarry has given me one of the proudest days of my life. My constituents in the Highlands and Islands will treasure the stories I have to tell them of how their ancestors created new lives for themselves in Eastern Ontario.” She turned to me. “Thank you for such a memorable day!”
Winnie Ewing, first Scottish Nationalist Party member in Westminster
