A longtime resident of Uxbridge, Ted Barris has written professionally for 40 years - for radio, television, magazines and newspapers. The "Barris Beat" column began in the 1950s when his father Alex wrote for the Globe and Mail. Ted continues the tradition of offering a positive view of his community. He has written 16 non-fiction books of Canadian history and teaches journalism at Centennial College in Toronto.
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All the world is Scottish
?All the world is Scottish
The other day I spent some time with an everyman. Actually, his name is Bob Whitman. This weekend, he returns to Elgin Park to offer play-by-play and colour commentary for what are called the Heavy Events at the 14th Highlands of Durham Games. As he described for me the seven events that comprise “the Heavies,” I felt I was in the company of a dyed-in-the-wool Scotsman.
“No,” Whitman said. “I'm just a wannabe William Wallace.”
The name refers to the Scottish nobleman who became an outlaw when he refused to swear allegiance to King Edward I of England in the 14th century. Though the real William Wallace was ultimately betrayed, captured, tried and executed in 1305, Hollywood chose to portray him (in the 1995 movie Braveheart) as the rebel representing any oppressed peoples seeking self-determination and freedom.
“It is all for nothing,” Wallace declared, “if you don't have freedom.”
Bob Whitman is not a freedom fighter, although he has devoted much of his professional life (more than 30 years) to law enforcement as a police officer with both the Toronto and York Regional forces. Whitman is, however, Scottish at heart. During our chat, he told me what he loves about participating in the Highlands of Durham Games are the sights, sounds and atmosphere of Scotland. He said you don't have to be from the old country - where the games were born - to feel the essence of them.
I agree. I have absolutely no Scottish bloodlines. I am the grandson of first-generation Greek immigrants and, if not for my father's pursuit of a writing career in Canada, might have grown up an American citizen. Until I became a volunteer in the Highlands of Durham Games, this year, I probably couldn't have told you the difference between a caber toss and a sheaf toss, but I have certainly handled heavy fence posts and tossed my share of hay bales. And even those with a Mediterranean background can relate to the skirl of the bagpipes, if not the delicacy known as haggis. (Greeks are famous for their creativity with goat's milk, if not the animal's stomach.)
More than that, though, I have a number of other connections to Scottish culture. When I was growing up in east-end Toronto, the neighbourhood had its fair share of Scots who introduced me to such treats as taffy and Scotch eggs. As well, each year at school we witnessed the precision, balletic excellence and athleticism of Scottish sword dancing courtesy of a female classmate. Meanwhile, our high school band regularly called on members of the woodwind section to put aside their clarinets in favour of the bagpipes.
Then in 2002, my wife - a MacAulay - and I travelled to Scotland in search of her family roots. While I did not play a round of golf at St. Andrews, en route, we did manage to take in castles from Glasgow to Inverness. And in Edinburgh we walked the Royal Mile and took in most of the pubs on Rose Street. What perhaps made me feel more at home in Scotland than anything, however, was a visit to Edinburgh's famous Writers' Museum, dedicated to the works of Robbie Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott.
Seeing the first editions of “Auld Lang Syne,” Treasure Island and Ivanhoe (respectively) gave me goose bumps. It made me realize the universality of discovering the literature of any culture.
What resonated most for me, however, was our trip to the Outer Hebrides, where a local genealogist directed us to the ancestral croft of Jayne's great, great grandfather and his family cemetery. Along the Atlantic coastline and just up from peat digging sites, we put our hands on the weathered tombstones of those MacAulays who'd chosen to stay behind while the younger ones departed for Nova Scotia in the 1830s. Then, we drove a short distance to a dried-up creek bed, climbed some limestone foundation stones on what had been the ancestral home and sat contemplating their emigration from the old country - a journey made by millions from Europe, Africa and Asia over the last two centuries. In that sense, Jayne's Scottish family exodus symbolized the migration of every culture to the New World.
I felt absolutely at home in the Hebrides as I have with our Highlands of Durham Games itinerary. Learning from Heavy Events expert Bob Whitman (he of English ancestry) about the legacy and evolution of the games, illustrated to me that in a way “we are all Scots.”
“Heck,” Whitman said, “the Canadian champion of the Scottish caber toss is Dan Markovic, a Yugoslavian.”
