Sheep grazed where, for centuries, the Leslies and others had farmed. Public Domain. Lord Anchorfield put George Leslie in charge of the Arabella gardens where he worked until 1824. The Highland Clearances is still a very emotive subject to many people, in many parts of the world, today. Those that did not emigrate were forced to live in cities or on poor unfarmable land by the rugged sealine. Globe, March 17, 1847 List of donors to aid the destitute in Scotland. Austin Avenue: Subdivision 549 by Joanne Doucette, Heward’s Creek Illustrations, Photos, Maps, Follow Leslieville Historical Society on WordPress.com, http://www.artuk.org/artworks/the-missing-boat-12857, http://www.countysutherland.co.uk/66.html, http://www.tartansauthority.com/resources/the-highland-clearances/, http://www.military-history.org/regiment-profiles/the-93rd-highlanders-and-the-thin-red-line.htm. . Meanwhile the Scottish elite were running up debts to support a Regency life style, far away from the tiny crofts or farms who paid to support their “lairds” with the little they earned raising cattle. “All that remains there today is the occasional ruin. He referred to red-headed and fiery William Lyon Mackenzie from Dundee as “that little tiger mayor”. Berrydale in Caithness was just one of the estates in Scotland owned by the Marquess of Stafford who later became the Duke of Sutherland. George Crookshank’s house, Bathurst west side, between Dundas & College (Toronto Public Library) Artist Unknown. Refugees from the Highland Clearances began to come to Canada. ( Log Out /  They were not sea farers and did not know how to make a living from the sea. . The North West Company was a rival of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC’s). Thank you! In 1811 John Robertson and his wife Janet McKay, came to upper Canada … Public Domain. These veterans of Waterloo and the Peninsular War had hoped they might be overlooked, but their houses were burnt around them, their stock sized and their belongings scattered. The deer was undoubtedly poached, as was the grouse hanging from the little boy’s hand. Major William Clunes by Sir Henry Raeburn. ( Log Out /  The refugees from the Highland Clearances were not the first Scots to settle in Ontario. The Emigrants, 1844, by William Allsworth. These brutal Highland clearances devastated the Gaelic culture, split up families and clans and removed entire communities from the lands that they had farmed for centuries leaving them no option but to emigrate for a better life as in Scotland they were left fairly destitute. Virtually all of the people who lived in Rogart were ‘cleared’ though not the Leslies although they were on the list to be cleared. We start here with a very brief ac… In the late 1700s and early to mid 1800s Crofters and highlanders were systematically removed from their lands and their livelihoods to make way for sheep farming which was much more profitable at that time. James Hunter, The Making of the Crofting Community, John Donald, 2nd Revised edition, 2006 quoted on line and accessed June 13, 2016 at http://www.clannada.org/highland.php. The ruin of my great grandfather’s cottage is still to be seen and is not more than two or three feet high. The Highland clearances were a matter of great regret to the people of Scotland. The first mass emigration was in 1792 when many of the people were forced to leave the land that had been farmed by them and their forefathers to go to America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Public Domain. The village of New Lanark was created when mill owner, Robert Owen, provided good living conditions and a fair working environment. Scottish Ancestors © 2010 - 2019    Privacy Policy | Site Map. They rose again in 1745 but lost in the Battle of Culloden. Young George Leslie had a skill and an interest that helped him and his family survive the Clearances. He was ordained at Valladolid and was devoted to his Catholic kinsmen and clan. They would have better farmland than the beautiful, stony fields of the Highlands where they were no longer wanted. I feel for the refugees of today as they are forced to flee their homes due to famine and strife. If they did not attend, they would be fined. Two of the best documented clearances are those from the land of the Duchess of Sutherland, carried out by, among other people, her factor Patrick Sellar, and the Glencalvie clearances which were witnessed and documented by a London Times reporter. So if it hadn’t been for the Highland Clearances, the first and thirteenth Prime Ministers of Canada might not have been.”, http://www.electriccanadian.com/makers/diefenbaker.htm, 1930, the women of St. Kilda waiting to leave their home forever, Enter a captionThe children of St. Kilda, 1930. My great-grandfather and grandmother became attached to the Selkirk settlement. Many Scots were unhap… Many Scots were unhappy with the Union of 1707, uniting England and Scotland. 244 years ago, on 15 September 1773, the town of Pictou in Nova Scotia welcomed nearly 200 Scottish settlers on board the ship, Hector. In November 1854, The Times war correspondent William Russell, writing from the Crimea, reported that an attack by Russian cavalry had been repulsed, having come up against a piece of ‘Gaelic rock… a thin red streak topped up with a line of steel’ – a description that would later become ‘the thin red line’. John G. Diefenbaker quoted in “Diefenbaker’s North, from TIMESPAN quoted in and accessed at  http://www.electriccanadian.com/makers/diefenbaker.htm. The day will come when the big sheep will put the plough up in the rafters . Some of the places where George Leslie first worked gardening and planting trees when he came to York, Upper Canada, Osgoode Hall, build 1929, photograph, 1856 (City of Toronto Archives), Upper Canada College 1831-1891 (Toronto Public Library), The Parliament Buildings on Front Street where the CBC Building is today. He was appointed their chaplain, the first Catholic British Army chaplain in centuries. They settled mainly on Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Upper Canada. While some who left Scotland had means, most of the Scots had little more than they could carry. . In Bute, which Mr Lyon represents, there is Canada hill, a place so named because people would climb to the top of the hill to get a last glimpse of their emigrating relatives leaving Scotland -- their last glimpse for ever. Thomas Faed, The Last of the Clan, 1865. The Grits attacked alleged governmental waste and corruption in railway schemes, especially in regard to the Grand Trunk Railway. Displaced Highlanders went on hellships  to America, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. He never trusted the established elites as his father and forefathers had. Subsidized Housing! As a tribal patriarch he could do very little to raise it. Great work. 1813: Sellar clears Kildonan. As he grew into a young man, it was clear that gardening was his calling. Quote accessed June 16, 2016 at http://www.military-history.org/regiment-profiles/the-93rd-highlanders-and-the-thin-red-line.htm, The Thin Red Line by Robert Gibb, 1881, Oil on canvas. Highland Whiskey Still, R. R. McIan. Not all the hellships arrived. Oh yes! Since he was a child he had loved nature. Jan Holm/Alamy. Captain Craigie, R.N., the Duke’s factor, a Free Church minister and a moderate minister, have been piping the days for volunteers and recruits; and yet, after many threats on the part of the factor, and sweet music on the part of the parsons, the military spirit of the poor Sutherland serfs could not be raised to fighting power. Unlike those Leslies around him who were horribly maimed by their service in the Highland regiments, he never became a soldier, but was not a pacifist either. In 1812 he raised another regiment, the Glengarry Light Infantry Fencibles to defend Upper Canada against the Americans. Much recent historical work has been done on the subject, however, so there is no shortage of material for the interested reader. Landlords paid the passage of others, including some who were given no choice, but thrown into hellship holds, bound hand and foot. 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