For Duncan and Hughie MacLeod, summers in Glencoe weren’t all about play. One day they were sent to help old Mr. MacDonald down the road. The old man was part of a large family known locally as the Bornish MacDonalds, to distinguish them from all the other MacDonalds, who were (and still are) legion in [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Canada, Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, names, Nova Scotia, Scotland
Not long after their walk up over River Denys Mountain, nine-year-old Duncan MacLeod and his eight-year-old brother Hughie went to church with their uncle Dan and the other MacLeods. Saint Margaret of Scotland Church in Glencoe had been completed in 1841 and had literally grown with the community: it had actually been split in half [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Canada, Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, MacLeod, Nova Scotia
On July 2nd, 1937, after school had finished for the summer, Susan MacLeod put her two eldest sons, nine-year-old Duncan and eight-year-old Hughie, on a train bound for Boisdale. The arrangement went something like this: they would spend a night with the Boisdale stationmaster, who lived above the station; the next day they would get [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Canada, Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, English, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, names, Nova Scotia, travel
The death of her husband at noon on the 2nd of June 1937 was a harsh blow to my great-grandmother, Susan MacLeod. But if she thought that day couldn’t possibly get any worse, she was wrong. After the funeral, Father MacGillivray showed up at the door of her small apartment on Intercolonial Street with two [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Canada, Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, English, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, migration, names, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, photos
My great-grandfather, John Rory MacLeod, was born in July 1889 in the area of Cape Breton island which contains the small communities of Glencoe and Upper Southwest Mabou. (There are several distinct places up there associated with my family, such as Glencoe Mills, MacLeod Settlement and Upper Southwest Mabou, but my grandfather always refers to [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Canada, Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, English, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, migration, names, Nova Scotia, photos, Scotland
A few pages into Alistair MacLeod’s 1976 short story The Closing Down of Summer there’s a brief description of moonshine the main characters were drinking on a beach on the west coast of Cape Breton:
It is the purest of moonshine made by our relatives back in the hills and is impossible to buy. It comes [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: books, Canada, Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, names, Nova Scotia
As I’ve been interested in history and genealogy for many years now, I’ve often found myself wishing I had a time machine, to see places as they once were and meet the people who contributed to my eventual existence. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Well, what if I told you I could do it?
I was [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Acadians, Canada, Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, English, family, French, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, names, Nova Scotia, Religion
Most people who know me (and probably most people who read my blog) know that it really annoys me when someone spells my last name wrong. Actually, it annoys me a little less these days, just because I’m so used to it. But it’s still annoying. No matter how many times I tell people it’s [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: English, family, Gaelic, history, language, MacVay, migration, names, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, photos, Scotland
My family’s pretty Scottish, despite the fact that the most recently anyone in my family tree actually lived in Scotland was around the middle of the 19th century. When the Scots on my mother’s side of the family — all Catholic, Gaelic-speaking Highlanders — migrated to what is now Nova Scotia, they lived in little [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, migration, names, Nova Scotia, Scotland
My great-great-great-great-grandfather, John MacLeod, son of Duncan MacLeod, was born sometime between 1762 and 1770 in the village of Laig on the isle of Eigg and married a woman named Effy (short for Euphemia), who was born in 1771 in nearby Grulin (on an island that small, I suppose everything is nearby). John and Effy [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, Eigg, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, Ireland, language, MacLeod, migration, names, Nova Scotia, Scotland, Ulster
My maternal grandfather, Duncan MacLeod, whom I call Papa, once told me we were kicked off the Isle of Skye for stealing sheep. He told me this early in our talks about the family history a few years back, though they weren’t really talks. No, they were storytelling sessions, an important part of our culture, [...]
Categories: Heritage
Tagged: Cape Breton, Duncan MacLeod, Eigg, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, MacLeod, migration, names, Nova Scotia, Scotland
Here’s a nice travel piece about Cape Breton. The writer describes it as
…a place where impenetrably forested mountains plunge straight to the sea, their descent interrupted only by the frail ribbon of the Cabot Trail; and where the vast saltwater sprawl of Bras d’Or Lake convolutes nearly every route between one place and another. Its [...]
Categories: Miscellaneous
Tagged: Cape Breton, Gaelic, travel
What is this, a treasure hunt? How could those things possibly go together? Well, they could in MACVAYSIA. I’d like to tell you about an interesting (or perhaps just plain stupid) habit I’ve developed. Have you ever taken great care to iron a shirt, but then after you’ve put it on and tucked it in [...]
Categories: General
Tagged: Canada, Cape Breton, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, language, MacVay, Malaysia
OK, I guess one of the first things I should do here is explain the meanings of the strange-looking foreign words at the top of this page [Update: As you can see, the phrases I'm about to mention are no longer at the top of the page]. Malays or any other Muslims will immediately recognize [...]
Categories: General
Tagged: Canada, Cape Breton, English, family, Gaelic, genealogy, history, immigration, Ireland, language, MacLeod, MacVay, Malaysia, Nova Scotia, Scotland, Sydney, Ulster