Scotiana » Scotland

Scottish Photographer Richard Shucksmith Wins 2011 British Wildlife Photography Award

MAJA — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 22:03:06 +0000

Just stumbled upon this article about the 2011 British Wildlife Photography Award and being a photography lover, I’m very excited to share it with you.

Especially that it reports that the overall winner is Scottish Photographer Richard Shucksmith, who lives on the beautiful Shetland Islands!

Richard Shucksmith Scottish Photographer | Source: blipfoto.com

The winners in twelve categories of the 2011 British Wildlife Photography Awards (BWPAs) have been announced.

Aiming at honoring talented wildlife photographers, this year’s competition attracted thousands of photographers across the country and was considered as “a special opportunity to give the natural world that surrounds us the recognition, and reverence, it deserves.”

Jellyfish in the Blue Sea of Sula Sgeir, Scotland by Richard Shucksmith

Richard Shucksmith is the 2011 BWPAs overall winner with his photos of a jellyfish entitled “Jellyfish in the Blue Sea of Sula Sgeir, Scotland”. He captured the image at Sula Sgeir, a small uninhabited Scottish island, 41 miles north of Lewis.

This photo secured the £5,000 first prize. It’s also the winning photograph of the Coast and Marine category.

3. Where are you based?

I live on the beautiful and wild Shetland Isles. Over 2000km of coastline with a diverse range of marine habitats. One day in a sheltered voe watching otters and the next day on an exposed cliff watching orcas.

There is so much to see and photograph around Shetland I never feel the need to travel elsewhere although I do love the west coast of Scotland too. I work in Shetland as a marine/terrestrial ecologist working closely with industry in reducing their ecological impact during their development stage.

I have my own company and work short term contracts – I have chosen to work this way so I can spend more time undertaking my photography.

It also allows me to live in places that I find inspirational.

In other words, I live amongst the wildlife and wild landscapes that I love.

Don’t get me wrong, its sound great but this way of living is not for everyone as there is a lot of insecurity.

Source: Ten Questions To Richard Shucksmith – Interview

SGreg Armfield, Photography and Film Manager from WWF said “A truly beautiful shot of a jellyfish that perfectly captures its iridescent colours and magical qualities. All the more remarkable that it exists in UK waters. Fantastic.”

Source: BWPAWARDS.ORG

Below are the other winning photographs from all categories.

Stunning!

“Mystical Deer” taken by Mark Smith in Richmond, Surrey, England, wins Animal Portraits category

“Champagne Starling” captured by David Biggs in Bayston Hill, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England, wins Urban Wildlife category

“Grey Heron Walking on Water” photographed by Andrew Parkinson in Derbyshire, England, wins Animal Behaviour category

“Busy Wasp on Blackberries” taken by Rana Dias in Horley, Surrey, England, wins Wildlife in My Backyard category

“Hare in Morning Light with Hoar Frost” posed by Ian Paul Haskell in Norfolk, wins Habitat category

“Scorpion Fly on a Leaf” captured by Leslie Holburn in County Durham, England, wins Hidden Britain category

“Thick-legged Flower Beetle on Corn Marigold” posed by Ross Hoddinott in Pentire Point, near Newquay, Cornwall, England, wins British Seasons category

“It’s Only a Game” photographed by Neil Aldridge in Hertfordshire, England, wins Documentary Series category

The winner of Young British Wildlife Photographers, Up to 11 Years category, is Walter Lovell, 8, with “Frog Checking Its Frogspawn”

The winner of Young British Wildlife Photographers, 12 to 18 Years category, is Oliver Wilks, 16, with “Red Fox Yawning After His Afternoon Nap”

“Ladybird on Rose” taken by William Richardson in London, England, is highly commended in Hidden Britain category

Summer Wildlife 2011

Source of the article: Ezimark.com

To get your own copy of the fantastic coffee table book of all the BWPA win, simply click on the cover image below. It will navigate you to Amazon SuperStore where you can shop with confidence.

Briitsh Wildlife Photography Awards - Aa Publishing (September 30, 2011) - 224 pages

Enjoy!

Janice

PS: If you would like to view 2010 Best Wildlife Photos, click here.

Happy Hogmanay, Bonne Année , Happy New Year!

MAJA — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:28:16 +0000

Wishing You A Great 2012!

Great Britain Postage Stamp

Hogmanay is the Scots word for the celebration of the New Year in the Scottish manner. Its official date is the 31st of December. However this is normally only the start of a celebration which lasts through the night until the morning of the 1st or, in many cases, the 2nd of January.

There are many customs, both national and local, associated with Hogmanay. The most widespread national custom is the practice of first-footing which starts immediately after midnight. This involves being the first person to cross the threshold of a friend or neighbour and often involves the giving of symbolic gifts such as coal or shortbread, intended to bring different kinds of luck to the householder. This may go on throughout the early hours of the morning and well into the next day.

Immediately after midnight it is traditional to sing Robert Burns’ “For Auld Lang Syne”. Burns claimed it was based on an earlier fragment and certainly the tune was in print over 80 years before he published his version in 1788.

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot and auld lang syne
For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne,
We’ll take a cup o kindness yet, for auld lang syne.”

And it is worth remembering that January 2nd is a holiday in Scotland as well as the first day of the year – to give us all time to recover from a week of merry-making and celebration, all part of Scotland’s fascinating cultural legacy of ancient customs and traditions surrounding the pagan festival of Hogmanay.

Source: Scotlandia

Greeting Stamps - France

All the very best from Scotiana’s Team

Kenneth White’s Life & Works Across the Territories – Ayrshire

MAJA — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 18:46:23 +0000

Kenneth White - Lettres de Gourgounel - Les Presses d'Aujourd'hui - 1979

I would like to begin this post with a few words about Lettres de Gourgounel (1979), one of the first books written by Kenneth White (his first book of prose) and also the first book I‘ve read by this author. The title of the original English edition is Letters from Gourgounel (1966) but it has been out of print for a long time now. Lettres de Gourgounel remains one of my favourites books by Kenneth White. It is a ‘bouffée d’air pur’.

The author’s lively style and great sense of humour to tell us about the old farm he bought in Ardèche, a mountainous and wild region in south-central France, about his relationships with his colourful neighbours, make us feel as if we were up there at Gourgounel. We learn much about the place and the people who live there, about the author’s love for a simple life, close to nature, about his love for books and solitude, about his work. In Lettres de Gourgounel, Kenneth White shares with us, the best of his literary and philosophical knowledge and, at that early time of his life, it was already immense. He was only 26 when he wrote Letters from Gourgounel!

Having read this book a long time ago I feel like re-reading it now. I remember how I used to copy my favourite passages on the rough surface of the pages of a very nice leather-bound notebook I had been offered some time before. The kind of notebook so beautifully made you dare not write in it.

But the content is well-worth my nice hand-crafted notebook. I still keep it preciously

But let us try to know more about Kenneth White’s peregrinations ‘across the territories’! It is in Scotland that Kenneth White ‘s mental map begins to take shape.

Kenneth White - Un monde ouvert - Poésie Gallimard 2006

I was born on that Atlantic shore of Europe and I have its topography imprinted on my mind.

(Kenneth White – On Scottish Ground)

Kenneth White - Le grand rivage - Bilingual edition Le Nouveau Commerce 1980

Living as a boy on the shore

seeing and hearing the clouding

and clamouring of gulls

like overwhelming metaphors

or maybe a heron

‘na h’aonar ri atobh na tuinne

mar thigse leatha fhèin’s a’ chruinne

alone beside the sea

like a mind alone in the universe.

(From Kenneth White Le grand rivage - Editions Le Nouveau Commerce 1980 -

Original title : A Walk along the Shore)

Our best source of information about Kenneth White will be his own writings (poems and prose) and a few biographical books and studies written about him. There are many of them.

Gorbals Main Street 1911 Source Wikipedia

The Gorbals is an area on the south bank of the River Clyde in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. By the late 19th century, it had become over-populated and adversely affected by local industrialisation. It became widely known as a dangerous slum and was subject to efforts at redevelopment, which contributed to more problems. In recent decades, some buildings have been demolished for a mixture of market and social housing; others are being refurbished and restored to a higher standard.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorbals

Kenneth White was born in the Gorbals area of Glasgow on 28 April 1936 which was not reputed then for being the ideal place to rear a family. Kenneth White’s father who worked as a railway signalman and was also an avid reader and a lover of nature, decided to move to a more genial place and Kenneth White was only three years old when the family settled in Fairlie, a little village on the west coast, south of Largs in Ayrshire. There he spent his childhood and adolescence.

Kenneth White En toute candeur Mercure de France 1964

In that house of three storeys

only yards from the sea

a house with

anwar don lavar

levawr wrthi

a wild wave talking

and clashing beside it.

(From Le grand rivage -1980 – A Walk along the Shore)

A few strange words in this extract has for a long time puzzled me. I’ve found an answer to my questions in The Radical Field. Here is what Tony McManus writes about this passage: ‘It is in his removal of the family to the coast that White senior most influenced the future of his son, for so much of what Kenneth White has come to do has its origins in that landscape and seascape. In his long poem, ‘Walking the Coast’, he writes of the sound of the sea (quoting in the by-going, both for sound and sense, an old Welsh poem) which was a constant feature of his surrounding’

In Kenneth White’s books, we find many happy memories of this early time in Ayrshire : family life, relationships with friends and neighbours, school life, open-air activities including playing as well as working ones (Kenneth White contributed to the family economy by gathering wrack and picking shellfish on the shore), reading, much reading – and even churchgoing which he recalls with humour in the following poem:

I’d be getting at the window

and forgetting the sermon

(all about good and evil

with a lot of mangled metaphor

and heavy comparison)

eager to get back out

onto the naked shore

there to walk for hours on end

with a book sometimes in my hand

but never a thought of preaching in my mind

trying to grasp at something

that wanted no godly name

something that took the form

of blue waves and grey rock

and that tasted of salt.

(From ‘Scotia Deserta’ quoted by Tony McManus in The Radical Field)

Largs, North Ayrshire, Scotland - Source:Wikipedia

Of course, we can only try to imagine what it was like to live on the Ayrshire coast in the 1930s, decades ago and in such a different kind of society as our own, but even today it also remains ‘terra incognita’ for us for, when we go there, we are only passing travellers. However, even if Ayrshire is not the Scottish region we know the best, we quite remember the beautiful and wintry place, close to the ocean, with its many islands, hills, woods and moors. Good ground for a young poet to grow up!

We didn’t have time to stop at Fairlie and Largs when we passed there on our way to Ardrossan for we had booked on the next Caledonian ferry which was about to depart for Arran, the rugged and mountainous island often mentioned by Kenneth White in his writings. No wonder the poet found inspiration in these unforgettable Scottish landscapes, still wild enough to offer many opportunities to admire the landscape in silence and solitude.

The Cumbraes, North Ayrshire, Scotland - Source: Wikipedia

When driving southward on the picturesque A78 coastal road we only had time to catch a glimpse of the Little and Great Cumbraes, the two small islands situated just in front of Largs and Fairlie but we have been lucky to visit the nearby island of Bute, in May 2004, at the time when its gigantic rhododendrons are in full bloom. It’s quite magical! We’ll soon devote a page on Scotiana to this little island for it is really worth the visit. At Rothesay, there is an old mediaeval fortress with moats full of water reflecting canons which seem ready to fire, a mysterious and quite fascinating gothic palace at Mountstuart and the ruins of a very ancient abbey at St Blane’s in the South from where you can also get magnificent views across the water of the the island of Arran. While taking the ferry which crosses from Rothesay to Wemyss Bay and if the weather is fine you can also get unforgettable views of the Cowal Hills. The Kintyre peninsula is not far either but we’ll come back to it later, for it would be too long today to describe whatwe’ve seen there.

The Radical Field - Tony McManus - Sandstone Press Ltd - 2007

One of the most recent books published about Kenneth White, The Radical Field by Tony McManus, which is subtitled ‘Kenneth White and Geopoetics’, is open on my desk. There is often no better source of information about an author than his own writings and Kenneth White’s books are particularly rich in autobiographical elements but Tony McManus who is a great admirer of Kenneth White has devoted much time to the study of his works and of geopoetics and his book is full of quotations drawn from Kenneth White’s books .

The Radical Field is divided into into three parts: ‘The Initial Ground’, ‘The Emergent Field’ and ‘Open World Writing’). To make you an idea, I give you the contents of the book, the titles and subtitles of which are particularly revealing.

PART ONE: THE INITIAL GROUND

1   Family Alchemy
2   Shore and Moor
3   The Glasgow Student
4   Munich: Isolation and Meditation
5   Paris: The Incandescent Zone
6   Gourgounel : Resourcing
7   First Publications
8   On the British Literary Scene
9   The Departure

PART TWO: THE EMERGENT FIELD

1   A Scottish Constellation
2   Universal Ancestor: The Shaman
3   Cultural Analysis Now
4   The Drifting Dawn
5   Radical Europen Thought
6   On American Trails
7   Investigations into Asia
8   Pathways in Science
9   From Scotland to Alba end Beyond
Notes

PART THREE/ OPEN WORLD WRITING

1   The Essay
2   The Waybook
3   The Poem of the Earth
Notes

Bibliographies

The Radical Field Tony McManus Sandstone Press Ltd 2007 back cover

‘If I set out to write this book on the work of Kenneth White and geopoetics, it’s because it has been obvious to me for some time now, not only that White stands among the most significant writers and thinkers working today, but that his work belongs to a very rare category, one that stands outside those currently in vogue.
This has already been recognised in contexts other than the English language one.

Looking through the already bulky archives gathering around White’s work in the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh and the Fonds Kenneth White in the city of Bordeaux, one comes across statements such as these: (…) ‘At a time when a certain mediocrity is reaching planetary proportions, one of us has stood up, turned his back and, possessed of real knowledge,moved off’ (Revue des Belles-Lettres, Geneva); ‘White belongs to a silent vanguard, in solitary rebellion against not only the entrenched establishments, but the modernist cliques’ (Review of the University of Mexico); ‘Travelling out on his own ways, kenneth White is bound to appear more and more as the foremost English poet of these times’ (Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris).’ (The Radical Field - Foreword –Tony McManus – Edinburgh, September 2001)

To enter Kenneth White’s world is a fascinating quest but not an easy one. We hope this post and the other ones which we intend to devote to the great Scottish-French poet will be helpful for the readers who are trying, as we do, to enter this vast universe. You follow a blue road and you discover a white world, ‘un monde blanc’…

Bonne lecture !

A bientôt.

Mairiuna

Married at Gretna Green!

MAJA — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 17:33:40 +0000

“How far, how far to Gretna? ‘Tis years and years away,
And chaise and four will nevermore fling dust across the day;
But as I ride the Carlisle road, where life and love have been,
I hear again the beating hooves go through to Gretna Green.”

Anon.

Bonjour Jean-Claude, Janice et Marie-Agnès! Hello again from Scotland!

Isn’t this an exciting time of year? Spring is not far off, for when I paid our milk bill last week, I learned from the farmer that his first lambs had been born. As soon as the shed is full, they’ll go out to the new grass, many to the big field that surrounds our house.

It was good to hear, dear friends, that Scotiana is being read by more and more people, and pleasing for us to know that our post on St Valentine (‘St Valentine comes to Glasgow’) was the most popular on 14th February!

I do admire that line by my old schoolmate, Jim Gilchrist (of The Scotsman): “If ever a man – or a saint – could be said to amount to more than the sum of his parts, that man was St Valentine.” There do seem to be rather a lot of relics of the Saint about; on the other hand, there were in history at least two quite separate Valentines – so some room for confusion. But it’s a lovely idea, don’t you think, to have a patron saint of romance?

Gretna-Gretna Green-Carlisle-Edinburgh Scotiana modified Google map

The small Dumfriesshire towns of Gretna and Gretna Green – almost a mile apart – are particularly busy on 14th February (and also in high summer) for it’s possible to make a booking up to a year ahead to be married there. How different everything used to be, when young runaways would arrive at all hours wishing to be married instantly! For almost 200 years, couples travelling from England were able to take advantage of the Scottish practice of ‘Marriage by Declaration’; provided that they were both over 16, a couple had only to stand on Scottish soil and declare, in the presence of two witnesses, that they were husband and wife! And that was it – they were legally married, with no need to seek parental approval.

Until 1754, Gretna Green had been an unremarkable place, a tiny cluster of whitewashed cottages – including an inn – on the main road between London and Edinburgh. In that year, however, the marriage laws in England were changed, so that only those over 21 could get married without their parents’ consent. And all marriages had to be approved by the Church. Too many young people from rich families, it seems, had been choosing partners of whom their parents disapproved!

Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act 1753 Scotiana adapted image from Wikipedia source

Soon Lord Hardwicke’s Act of Parliament brought a steady stream of young lovers north to Scotland. Most, of course, had run away from home. They travelled slowly and uncomfortably by stagecoach; the ‘Carlisle’ horses were changed at the inn at Gretna (11 miles further on, and the first stop on the Scottish side of the border). Anxious and fearful in case their parents should catch up with them, the young runaways would ask – please, can we be married here, now? Gretna Green’s romantic image was born!

Today, we think of the Old Blacksmith’s Shop – the ‘smithy’ – whenever Gretna is mentioned; and, with the horses for the coach service being changed in the village, it was natural that there should be a blacksmith there from the earliest times. Yet the astonishing thing is that none of the first Gretna marriage ‘priests’ were actually blacksmiths by trade. (Strictly speaking, of course, there was no need to have anyone at all to conduct the wedding; but it seemed right to have ‘someone in charge’ – someone to take the part played by the priest or celebrant in a religious ceremony.)

George Gordon, the first ‘priest’, was a former soldier, and wore military uniform while performing marriages. Joseph Pasley (or Paisley) a smuggler and notorious drunkard, dressed up like a minister of the Church to conduct weddings in his cottage. On Pasley’s death in 1814, his nephew, David Lang, took over. Marriage was a profitable business!

Most memorable was the Gretna ‘Bishop,’ John Linton, who had married more than a thousand couples at Gretna Hall before his death in 1851. This was the inn favoured by the rich and the famous, and Linton, a refined and dignified man, knew exactly how to treat his aristocratic guests. Captains, generals, and gentlemen of all sorts married at the Hall. In 1846, an Italian prince came – Carlo Ferdinando, brother of the King of Naples – followed in 1847 by an Italian duke!

So, there was no blacksmith at Gretna who conducted weddings in the days of the stagecoaches. Yet even Charles Dickens, the novelist (who stayed at Gretna Hall in 1852) thought that the village blacksmith performed marriage ceremonies! The idea probably arose because the house of one of the ‘priests’ had a sign outside depicting a blacksmith’s shop; a young couple were shown joining their hands over the anvil, while the smith brought down his hammer to bless the union.

A new railway service from Blackpool via the Lake District brought large numbers of tourists to Gretna Green in the early 1900′s, and the visitors simply refused to believe that the ‘smithy’ – the blacksmith’s shop – was not the special marriage place! Taking advantage of all this interest, its owner decided in 1907 to convert the smithy to a marriage museum – and, very soon afterwards, the first ‘anvil wedding’ finally took place there.

Richard Rennison was the best-known of the modern anvil ‘priests’, conducting over 5000 marriages between 1927 and 1940. Marriage by Declaration ended that year – amid the turmoil of the Second World War; perhaps there had been a rising tide of bigamy? The marriage ‘priests’ were swept away, to be replaced by professional registrars appointed throughout Scotland – only they and ministers of religion could now legally perform wedding ceremonies.

Gretna Registration Office with Mackintosh style rail Google Scotiana modified Google Map

A new registration office was opened, not at Gretna Green but in the town of Gretna. It was situated in a modest, single-storey building (which I once visited, although I didn’t get married that day!) The story of this little office is the story of its world-famous registrar, Miss Pat Bryden, MBE, who spent her entire working life there. (I seem to recall that the entrance was shared with a dentist’s surgery; you turned right for Miss Bryden’s, left for Mr Boon to have your tooth filled!) After marrying more than 10,000 couples, Miss Bryden herself got married – in church – at the age of 59, and retired soon afterwards. “I really didn’t think it would ever happen to me,” she said. “I am very, very happy.”

Miss Bryden’s small office could not cope with the demand for summer weddings, so a handsome new building was opened in 1991; containing three separate marriage suites, it is decorated and furnished in the Glasgow Style associated with the architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Some couples go on to visit one of the blacksmiths for the fun part of their wedding – to be ‘married’ again over the anvil; most today are in their 30′s, and many are marrying for the second time. A typical Gretna wedding is now quite a sophisticated affair; older couples have more money to spend, and often do things in style. About half the brides wear beautiful long dresses, and many arrive in Rolls-Royces or horse-drawn carriages.

The principal change in recent years is that (since Summer 2002) registrars are now able, by arrangement, to conduct wedding ceremonies outwith their own registration offices – but only in a number of ‘approved venues’, mostly hotels.

See the webpage: http://www.gretnaonline.net

Marie-Agnès, Janice, Jean-Claude, wouldn’t it be nice if some readers were to share with us their memories of being married at Gretna?

You know, we still have, lying around somewhere, a copy of the little green guide book ‘Gretna – Your Wedding’. The advertisers include a ‘trained soprano’ (the best kind, really!) and a poet. And one hotel has an interesting brass bed that ‘does not jingle’. Just the thing when you’re tired after a long and busy day!

A bientôt, Chers Amis.

Iain.

Our Top 15 Most Popular Posts!

MAJA — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 21:54:50 +0000

Mairiuna, before the New Year ramps up, why not investigate about our most popular posts to see what are our readers’ favourite subjects?

Let’s see what the stats reveal. Suspense….

And the winners are :

1. Rannoch Moor: First Steps Into The Scottish Wilderness

People seemed to be energized in the clear and fresh atmosphere of the place and everybody looked happy and cheerful, not to say euphoric.

It’s one of our best travel memories. But beware of the appearances!

The weather is very changing in Scotland and Rannoch Moor may suddenly offer a gloomier face to its visitors and even prove to be dangerous for unprepared walkers …

Read more…. | Watch Video ( Royal Scotsman entering Rannoch Station)

The Complete Book of Tartan by Iain Zaczek and Charles Phillips

2. Scottish Tartans: “Children Of The Mist”, The Clan MacGregor

Scottish clans have more than one tartan attributed to their name and the only person to make a clan tartan an “official” one is the chief. Surprisingly enough, the “clan tartans” date no earlier than late 18^th century.

That means this tradition was not in use when the battle of Culloden took place in 1746!. The clansmen were wearing different tartans….

So how did the clansmen recognize who was who? By the colour of ribbon worn upon the bonnet !

Sherlock Holmes - Playing The Violin

4. From Conan Doyle’s Sycamore to Sherlock Holme’s Violin

If you question people about Conan Doyle’s nationality many will probably answer : ‘English’. But let’s try to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.

If Conan Doyle did spend most of his life, died and was buried in England, he was born, spent his childhood and studied medicine in Edinburgh.

That is why, on 22 may 2009, the day of his one hundred and fiftieth birth anniversary, he was paid a very moving tribute in Edinburgh, his native town.

Art Nouveau in architecture - Princes Square Peacock

5. Art Nouveau Peacock On Princes Square Shopping Center In Buchanan Street, Glasgow

At the end of the nineteenth century, Art Nouveau transformed towns and countryside around the world. Even though its style had gained popularity from just the last ten years or so, Art Nouveau permeated many arts & crafts: jewellery, book design, glasswork, textiles, wrought iron, and architecture, to name just a few, with its high Victorian design and craftwork.

The peacock being the most spread Art Nouveau pattern, a great example is the one adorning the Princes Square building facade on Buchanan Street in the heart of Glasgow.

In 1985, Hugh Martin & Partners were commissioned to renovate the Princes Square building. They had several meetings with Alan Dawson to create the Princes’ building decorative art program consisting of gates, balustrades, the famous “Peacock” and other associated decorative ironwork.

While studying at the School of Art, Mackintosh met sisters, Frances and Margaret MacDonald and they were to form a group along with Herbert MacNair, to become known internationally as the Glasgow Four.

On our trip to Scotland in 2007, it was with great excitement that we arrived on Sauchiehall Street, to visit and admire one of his greatest masterpiece! We took pictures of the elements composing the building’s facade, and upon examination of these mysterious, or should I say, mystical elements, I wondered about the meaning that Charles Rennie Mackintosh, his wife Margaret, and the group all together were trying to convey through the symbols of the tree, the rose and the flower heads, to name just these few.

Glencoe Lochan

10. Lord Strathcona’s Glencoe Estate Bought Back By Macdonalds of Glencoe Descendance

Donald Alexander Smith had always been interested in Scotland’s most popular glen, Glencoe, that was owned by the McDonalds of Glencoe until 1894, when Archibald Burns McDonald put the land up for sale.

Upon taking possession of the Glencoe Estate in 1895, he moved from Canada to Scotland with his wife Isabella Sophia Hardisty and built a very imposing house, the Glencoe House.

Even though he planted a Canadian-like tree forest on the Estate to resemble his wife’s native land’s environment, she could not overcome home sickness. They consequently moved back to Canada and a portion of the land was transformed into a beautiful park offering three different walking trails, known as the Glencoe Lochan Walks.

Edmund J Sullivan, the man behind the beautiful illustrations contained in Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus.

Born in London in 1869, he studied art with his father. He was only 20 years old when he began contributing to various magazines including the Daily Chronicle, The Daily Graphic, The Pall Mall Gazette and Punch magazine.

To give you an example of his unique style, take a look at this superb drawing to illustrate one of the characters of the book, Blumine. (page 169, of the 1898 George Bell and Sons edition of Sartor Resartus, see book cover at the end of the post)

Read more… (includes links to 79 illustrations!)

12. Buchanan Street: Up and Down One of Glasgow’s Most Popular and Coloured Streets

We never stayed long enough, alas, to be able to visit all the treasures hidden in the rich and fascinating Scottish metropolis but it did not take long for us to feel the sense of place there and to love it. Glasgow speaks with a very specific accent which mixes with many other ones due to its cosmopolitanism. A harsh accent, not easy to understand for foreigners

I never saw a town singing in the rain as Glasgow does with its coloured umbrellas. “Can I help you ?” will say the Glaswegian to the drenched visitor desperately looking for his way on a map. For that and for many other reasons too, we do love Glasgow and it was love at first sight when we got out of the plane, at Paisley, one wintry day, in may 2000.

Painting by Sir Francis Grant of "Sir Walter Scott in his study at Abbotsford writing his last novel 'Count Robert of Paris' ", 1831. Source : SCRAN

14. A Writing Day For Walter Scott In Company of His Favourite Dogs

(…) to help us trigger our imagination, let us open again A Day with Scott. In this little old book I had mentioned in my last post, May Byron seems to have catched the sense of the place particularly well. I still don’t know when this book was published, but I will check that soon in our Sir Walter Scott Bibliographical History. For biographical purposes we’ll also make some incursions in Lockhart’s Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. The author of this very interesting biography happens to be Sir Walter’s son-in-law, so he must know better.

(…) I’ve often wondered how a man like Sir Walter Scott can have posed for so many long hours with his dogs, keeping still and quiet …But I let the master speak for himself and for the dogs. In his Journal, on 7 saturday 1826, Sir Walter has written something full of humour and tenderness about the question…

I’d like to write a word or two today about the world-famous Scottish tenor, Mr Kenneth McKellar, who sadly died last week in the USA at the age of 82. Following a short but serious illness, Mr McKellar passed away at the home of his daughter, Jane, in Lake Tahoe, California, on 9th April. Scotland has lost a most worthy and distinguished ambassador.

I find it tremendously sad when a great singer leaves the stage; it’s as though a bright light has gone out.

I’m reminded of the words of John McCormack, quoted by his wife Lily in her memoir, ‘I Hear You Calling Me’ : “I live again the days and evenings of my long career. I dream at night of operas and concerts in which I have had my share of success. Now, like the old Irish Minstrels, I have hung up my harp because my songs are all sung.”

Read more… | Watch Video 1 / 2 / 3 / and 4/…

A special mention and great thanks to our dear Scottish friends, Iain & Margaret, who provided such great and moving Scottish stories in ”Letters from Scotland“ .

We wish to thank everyone who visits and reads, on the site or via email or RSS feed. Your feedback/comments on the blog are very much appreciated and we love to hear from you.

I’d also like to call your attention to Mairiunas’s series-of-posts (7) featuring our travel on the ”Blue Road” through the Province of Quebec, inspired by Kenneth White’s novel: The Blue Road

Following the Blue Road on the Steps of Kenneth White in Quebec =>

As soon as Mairiuna recuperates her voice, we will continue the ongoing audio recording of Walter Scott’s most popular novel: Rob Roy

We’re looking forward to an even more active 2011. Stay tuned for more reporting on our favourite Scottish authors and themes. We’ve already introduced a few of them on Scotiana but there is so much more to read and share with you.

Of course, we’ll go on with our reading of Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Iain Rankin, Thomas Carlyle, Kenneth White but we also intend to introduce many other Scottish writers (Neil Gunn, Iain Crichton Smith, George Mackay Brown, Margaret Oliphant, George Douglas Brown, Lewis Grassic Gibbon…)

We are also eager to introduce on Scotiana some of our favourite subjects in the historical and archaelogical fields (The Pictish Stones – The massacre of Glencoe…) and, while preparing our next trip to Scotland, we will share with you many more photos of our previous Scottish travels. There is so much to say about the Scottish landscapes, cities and towns, the old abbeys and castles… and what about Scottish lifestyle : whisky and food… and delicious recipes : scones, pancakes, soups!

If there is a subject you would like us to tackle, do not hesitate to contact us and share your thoughts.

Have a wonderful 2011!

Best,

Mairiuna and Janice

Robert Louis Stevenson: Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Catriona, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde…

MAJA — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 23:57:45 +0000

Carl Spitzweg The Bookworm c.1850

‘Books!’ said Tuppence.

She produced the word rather with the effect of a bad-tempered explosion.

‘What did you say?’ said Tommy.

Tuppence looked across the room at him.

‘I said “books”,’ she said.

‘I see what you mean,’ said Thomas Beresford.

In front of Tuppence were three large packing cases. From each of them various books had been extracted. The larger part of them were still filled with books.

‘It’s incredible,’ said Tuppence.

‘You mean the room they take up?’

‘Yes.’

(Agatha Christie – Postern of Fate 1973)

Robert Louis Stevenson Knox Series 1880

Last Saturday, as my calendar pointed to the date of November 13th 2010, it occurred to me that it was the 160th birth anniversary of Robert Louis Stevenson, who was born on a wintry and chilly day, at 8 Howard Place, in Edinburgh. To celebrate this event we’ve decided to open on Scotiana a new category dedicated to the great Scottish writer. As I tried to establish the list of my books written by or about Stevenson, I realized how much space his books took on my shelves.

Stevenson has always been one of my favourite writers. My love for this great story-teller began a long time ago when I first read Treasure Island, in an old illustrated French edition, probably an abridged one. Adventure books were supposed to be for boys then, but as I was more attracted by that kind of books than by those generally reserved for girls, it is with great pleasure that I followed the perilous adventures of Jim Hawkins, Dr Livesey and squire Trelawney, on their long journey to find the much coveted treasure in a mysterious island.

Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson Penguin Classics 1999

SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17__ and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.

I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow—a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:

Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest—
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

Stevenson’s life was terribly short but it is a long story to tell, full of events and adventures as in his novels. A lot of ink has been spilled over it and I will only recall the main events here.

Robert Lewis Stevenson (he would later change his name of ‘Lewis’ for ‘Louis’) was the only son of Margaret Isabella Balfour (1829–1897) who belonged to an old gentry family and of Thomas Stevenson (1818–1887), son of Robert Stevenson who had become famous all over the world for the building of lighthouses. Lighthouse designing had indeed become a family affair and, had he been born with a more robust constitution, the young Stevenson would perhaps have followed on the steps of his ancestors. It was finally decided that he would study law rather than engineering at the University of Edinburgh, which he did succesfully.

But the young man wanted to become a writer. Leading a bohemian style of life which strongly antagonized his family, he began to write for periodicals. In order to restore his health, which was worsening under the Scottish climate, he decided to look for sunnier skies, and thus began a new life of travel, writing down his experiences in a number of captivating travel books.

Fanny Vandergrift Osbourne c.1876

In France, he met Fanny Osbourne, his future wife. After a long and adventurous periple which led him in the New World and the South seas, he finally settled with his wife at Vailima, in Samoa, where he became very popular under the nickname of ‘Tusitala’ which means ‘story-teller’ in the local language… a well-worth reputation. Stevenson has become famous all over the world for his adventure novels, his short stories and tales.

Despite ambiguous feelings , Stevenson certainly did love his native country and, had he lived longer, he would probably have returned to his roots.

Stevenson's Scotland Edited by Tom Hubbard & Duncan Glen Mercat Press 2003

‘Stevenson’s love of his native land is understood mainly by means of his absence from it. He is perhaps the most celebrated ‘Scot abroad’ and in this respect he leads a literary pantheon occupied by such figures as George Buchanan, Sir Thomas Urquhart, R B Cunnighame Graham, Alastair Reid and Kenneth White. A book remains to be written on this major but neglected area of Scottish literary history.’ (Tom Hubbard – Stevenson’s Scotland – Introduction)

Robert Louis Stevenson, from a photograph by Lloyd Osbourne

I was born within the walls of that dear city of Zeus, of which the lightest and (when he chooses) the tenderest singer of my generation sings so well. I was born likewise within the bounds of an earthly city, illustrious for her beauty, her tragic and picturesque associations, and for the credit of some of her brave sons. Writing as I do in a strange quarter of the world, and a late day of my age, I can still behold the profile of her towers and chimneys, and the long trail of her smoke against the sunset; I can still hear the strong strains of martial music that she goes to bed with, ending each day, like an act of an opera, to the notes of bugles; still recall, with a grateful effort of memory, any one of a thousand beautiful and specious circumstances that pleased me, and that must have pleased anyone, in my half-remembered past. It is the beautiful that I thus actively recall; the august airs of the castle on its rock, nocturnal passages of lights and trees, the sudden song of the blackbird in a suburban lane, rosy and dusky winter sunsets, the uninhabited splendours of the early dawn, the building up of the city on a misty day, house above house, spire above spire, until it was received into a sky of softly glowing clouds, and seemed to pass on and upwards, by fresh grades and rises, city beyond city, a new Jerusalem, bodily scaling heaven…

Memory supplies me, unsolicited, with a mass of other material, where there is nothing to call beauty, nothing to attract – often a great deal to disgust. There are trite street corners, commonplace, well-to-do houses, shabby suburban tan-fields, rainy beggarly slums, taken in at a gulp nigh forty years ago, and surviving to-day, complete sensations, concrete, poignant and essential to the genius of the place. From the melancholy of these remembrances I might suppose them to belong to the wild and bitterly unhappy days of my youth. But it is not so; they date, most of them, from early childhood; they were observed as I walked with my nurse, gaping on the universe, and striving vainly to piece together in words my inarticulate but profound impressions. I seem to have been born with a sentiment of something moving in things, of an infinite attraction and horror coupled. (Early Memories – Robert Louis Stevenson)

Robert Louis Stevenson A Child's Garden of Verses London; John Lane - New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1909

Robert Louis Stevenson Edinburgh Picturesque Notes London Seeley & CO.Ltd. 38, Great Russell Street 1903

The old edition of Treasure Island which had enchanted my childhood has long since disappeared but it is with a child’s enthusiasm that I’ve rediscovered this novel recently, in a more austere and unabridged edition. Maybe I owe to those olden times my love for ancient books and the nice illustrations we often find in them. Indeed, when I happen to fall upon a cheap old edition of a book written by one of my favourite authors, I can’t resist to the temptation to add it to my library, as was the case with the 1903 edition of Stevenson’s Edinburgh Picturesque Notes and the 1909 edition of A Child’s Garden of Verses. The first one is a captivating light and dark picture of Edinburgh and the second one is a marvellous little book of poetry written for children, with many delightful illustrations in it.

Robert Louis Stevenson A Child's Garden of Verses 1903 Dedication to Alison Cunningham

A Child’s Garden of Verses is dedicated to his nurse Alison Cunningham. ‘Cummy’, as she was nicknamed, had looked very affectionately after Stevenson, when he was a little boy, all the more since he was very often confined to bed because of recurrent fits of illness. Cummy seemed to possess an extensive repertoire of old stories which she used to tell him, thus contributing to enrich the imagination of the child who already began to invent his own stories …

Canongate books has published a number of Scottish classics and among them most of the books written by Stevenson. In 1995, a big volume appeared containing four of his most famous novels:

Kidnapped (1886) subtitled ‘Being memoirs of the adventures of David Balfour in the year 1751. How he was kidnapped and cast away; his sufferings in a desert isle; his journey in the wild Highlands; his acquaintance with Alan Breck Stewart and other notorious Highland jacobites; with all that he suffered at the hands of his uncle Ebenezer Balfour of Shaws, falsely so-called.’

Catriona (1893) which is the sequel of Kidnapped and was published seven years after it which explains the author’s comment in a letter to Charles Baxter: ‘ It is the fate of sequels to disappoint those who have waited for them; and my David, having been left to kick his heels for more than a lustre in the British Linen Company’s office, must expect his late re-appearance to be greeted with hoots, if not with missiles’.

The Master of Ballantrae (1889) was written between Kidnapped and Catriona. In a very interesting introduction to this book, Eric Watson writes: ‘The Master of Ballantrae is a challenging book, and numerous readers have puzzled over its dynamics. On the surface the novel looks like an adventure epic – a marriage of Kidnapped, Treasure Island and Fenimore Cooper’s leatherstocking tales, with something of the later Kipling, perhaps in the mysterious Secundra Dass. And yet earlier readers were puzzled by the book’s final effect, which did not seem to fit the adventure conventions at all (…) With all the apparently familiar adventure trappings of Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and even of Jekyll and Hyde, he has produced a memorable ‘winter tale’ instead: a tale which ends in mere blankness, just as the brothers end, in a wilderness of cold and night.’

Weir of Hermiston is Stevenson’s last and unfinished book.

Below is an extract of Kidnapped in keeping with the illustration of the cover.

Robert Louis Stevenson The Scottish Novels Canongate 2002 Cover: The Torrent in the Valley of Glencoe by N.C. Wyeth

The mist rose and died away, and showed us that country lying as waste as the sea; only the moorfowl and the pewees crying upon it, and far over to the east, a herd of deer, moving like dots. Much of it was red with heather; much of the rest broken up with bogs and hags and peaty pools; some had been burnt black in a heath fire; and in another place there was quite a forest of dead firs, standing like skeletons. A wearier-looking desert man never saw; but at least it was clear of troops, which was our point.

We went down accordingly into the waste, and began to make our toilsome and devious travel towards the eastern verge. There were the tops of mountains all round (you are to remember) from whence we might be spied at any moment; so it behoved us to keep in the hollow parts of the moor, and when these turned aside from our direction to move upon its naked face with infinite care. Sometimes, for half an hour together, we must crawl from one heather bush to another, as hunters do when they are hard upon the deer. It was a clear day again, with a blazing sun; the water in the brandy bottle was soon gone; and altogether, if I had guessed what it would be to crawl half the time upon my belly and to walk much of the rest stooping nearly to the knees, I should certainly have held back from such a killing enterprise.

Toiling and resting and toiling again, we wore away the morning; and about noon lay down in a thick bush of heather to sleep. Alan took the first watch; and it seemed to me I had scarce closed my eyes before I was shaken up to take the second. We had no clock to go by; and Alan stuck a sprig of heath in the ground to serve instead; so that as soon as the shadow of the bush should fall so far to the east, I might know to rouse him. But I was by this time so weary that I could have slept twelve hours at a stretch; I had the taste of sleep in my throat; my joints slept even when my mind was waking; the hot smell of the heather, and the drone of the wild bees, were like possets to me; and every now and again I would give a jump and find I had been dozing.

The last time I woke I seemed to come back from farther away, and thought the sun had taken a great start in the heavens. I looked at the sprig of heath, and at that I could have cried aloud: for I saw I had betrayed my trust. My head was nearly turned with fear and shame; and at what I saw, when I looked out around me on the moor, my heart was like dying in my body. For sure enough, a body of horse-soldiers had come down during my sleep, and were drawing near to us from the south-east, spread out in the shape of a fan and riding their horses to and fro in the deep parts of the heather.

When I waked Alan, he glanced first at the soldiers, then at the mark and the position of the sun, and knitted his brows with a sudden, quick look, both ugly and anxious, which was all the reproach I had of him.

“What are we to do now?” I asked.

“We’ll have to play at being hares,” said he. “Do ye see yon mountain?” pointing to one on the north-eastern sky.

“Ay,” said I.

“Well, then,” says he, “let us strike for that. Its name is Ben Alder. it is a wild, desert mountain full of hills and hollows, and if we can win to it before the morn, we may do yet.”

“But, Alan,” cried I, “that will take us across the very coming of the soldiers!”

“I ken that fine,” said he; “but if we are driven back on Appin, we are two dead men. So now, David man, be brisk!”

(Robert Louis Stevenson – Kidnapped – Chapter 22 ‘The Flight in the Heather: The Moor’)

While we were reading Kidnapped we learned about the existence, in Edinburgh, of two bronze statues representing David Balfour and Alan Breck, the two heroes of the novel. On our following trip there, we tried to find them. It was not easy and without the indications given to us at the Edinburgh Writers’ Museum and by a nearby security guard, we would probably never have found them. We also learned that the statues had been unveiled by another Scottish heroe whose name is… Sean Connery

http://heritage.scotsman.com/robertlouisstevenson/Sir-Sean-unveils-statue.2562733.jp

Robert Louis Stevenson Tales of Adventure Canongate 1997

Robert Louis Stevenson Tales of the South Seas Canongate 1996

Many of Stevenson’s books contained in my library are still on my reading list but some of them have been read one or several times like, of course, the three most famous ones: Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Viking Illustrations by François Place 1999

I would like to make special mention of Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879). I’d rather say Voyage avec un âne dans les Cévennes since I’ve read it in French. This little book, which was written by Stevenson when he was 29, after one month of solitary walk in the wild countryside of the Cévennes, is a masterpiece of travel writing. There is a number of very interesting and lavishly illustrated books about the Stevenson’s Trail in the Cévennes.

Robert Louis Stevenson Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes Imprint Illyria Books 2009

Robert Louis Stevenson Voyage avec un âne dans les Cévennes Garnier Flammarion 1991

Among these books, I would like to recommend Le chemin des crêtes. This very beautiful book, which contains a lot of nice water colour illustrations, has been written by Kenneth White. We’ve recently introduced this great contemporary Scottish author on Scotiana and we intend to say more about him in our next posts. The Blue Road, one of his most successful books , has been our travelling ‘bible’ on our itinerary towards Labrador, in Quebec. Kenneth White has created the concept of ‘geopoetics’. He is a great traveller and also a great admirer of Stevenson.

Illustrations de Paul Moscovino Photographies de Christian Lhuisset Etudes & Communication 2005

Stevenson was a marvellous story-teller and a very prolific writer. He wrote many books, in different genres : poetry, novels, tales, travelling books, essays… I often wonder how he can have managed to write so many of them in so few years and in such a bad state of health.. ‘I wish to die in my boots’, he had said and so he did. He was only 44 years old and still at work on Weir of Hermiston when he died, a book which would remain unfinished and of which he had said ‘It’s so good that it frightens me’. It begins : “In the wild end of a moorland parish, far out of the sight of any house, there stands a cairn among the heather, and a little by east of it, in the going down of the brae-side, a monument with some verses half defaced. It was here that Claverhouse shot with his own hand the Praying Weaver of Balweary, and the chisel of Old Mortality has clinked on that lonely gravestone. Public and domestic history have thus marked with a bloody finger this hollow among the hills; and since the Cameronian gave his life there, two hundred years ago, in a glorious folly, and without comprehension or regret, the silence of the moss has been broken once again by the report of firearms and the cry of the dying.”

As if to say good bye to his native land, Robert Louis Stevenson was writing on these pages when he suddenly died, probably from a brain haemorragia, and so far from Scotland …

Robert Louis Stevenson's Tomb in Samoa Wikipedia

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

(Robert Louis Stevenson)

Bonne lecture.

A bientôt.

Mairiuna.

Following the Blue Road on the Steps of Kenneth White in Quebec: Episode 5

MAJA — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 17:45:57 +0000

Kenneth White - The Blue Road -1990 - Mainstream Publishing

Herman Melville came North to Canada on his honeymoon trip, when he was twenty-nine years old. In Montreal, he met Captain Coffin, about to leave on a whaling expedition up the norh Coast to Labrador. Maybe that was when the idea of the White Whale started germinating.

Stromness Harbour, Orkney, Scotland - Wikipedia

A few months back, at Stromness, a little port in the Orkneys where the whalers used to take on crew before going up farther North. I was in the local museum, admiring a collection of harpoons, the elegant lines, the dull glint on the points.

I was admiring the harpoons, thinking of Melville… (The Blue Road – Kenneth White)

Herman Melville Moby-Dick The Northwestern edition 2002

Herman Melville Moby-Dick Penguin Classics 1992

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

( Herman Melville – Moby Dick 1850)

Route 138 -Wikipedia

5 Octobre
Forestville: Do you know what is an arboriduc?
Longue-Rive: Big Eyes on the road and a magic garden.
Les Escoumin: Still no whales .

Modified Google Map of Quebec by Scotiana showing itinerary of the day: - Forestville_Longue rive_Les Escoumins_Essipit_Tadoussac_Les Escoumins

So, here we are, ready to start again on our blue road, at Forestville, from the Motel Quatre Saisons where we’ve begun the day with a good breakfast! As it is getting colder and colder every day we begin to fear that we won’t see any more whales on our way to the North. So, we first stop at the Tourist Office of Forestville to get information about the best places to see them. We are cheerfully welcomed by a young man who was born in Forestville and knows quite a lot of things about the place. We stay a long time there…

Forestville, Quebec Côte-Nord, Source: Wikipedia

The name Forestville does not derive, as we first thought, from the word ‘forest’ but from the name ‘Forrest’, which was given to the town in 1945 in honour of the man who had run the first sawmill built, in 1845, on the estuary of the river ‘Sault-aux-Cochons’. The town, built in 1937, at a time when the wood industry was booming, had first been named after the river ‘Sault-aux-Cochons’. As the town’s motto ‘Per Sylvam’ well indicates, the wood industry is vital here.

Long Haul Truck Carrying Tree Logs, QC © Scotiana October 2010

Here’s one of those splendid big trucks carrying wood logs all over the country. Our friend advises us not to leave Forestville without taking a look at the old ‘arboriduc’ which is another means of transportation for the wood.

Arboriduc in Forestville, Côte-Nord, QC © Scotiana Octobre 2010

The arboriduc is also called ‘dalle humide’ or ‘floom’. This one, at Forestville, is no longer in use but it had been built in 1942 by the anglo-canadian company Pulp and Paper Mills Ltd. It was used to carry the wood logs from the estuary of the river Sault-aux-Cochons to the harbour on St Lawrence River where they were loaded on barges.

Postcard: La Chapelle Anglicane, Forestville, Côte-Nord, QC - Photo Jacques Ross

We would have liked to visit this nice old little chapel but must content with this beautiful postcard. The Trinity Church was built in Forestville in 1948 and was closed in 1979. It has been converted since in a museum which opened in 1994 under the name of ‘La Petite Anglicane’.

Fermont City, Labrador- Source: Wikipedia

Of course, we can’t help introducing the subject of Labrador and our friend becomes still more talkative. He has worked there We look at maps of this isolated and wild region and he gives us a lot of information about the few towns that are to be found there: Fermont, Labrador City, Schefferville… industrial towns built round the iron industry as some names indicate.

The towns of Fermont, Labrador City and Churchill Falls are partially closed in by buildings arranged as a wall. In Fermont this wall consists of 440 dwellings (city offices, school, library, stores etc. and private homes). In the winter, this helps to block the dominant winds. It is referred to as Le Mur. In both Labrador City and Churchill Falls these walls are used to protect the remainder of the town against the winter winds. At Churchill Falls you notice the diminished height of the trees as you are at the apex of the roads for northern travelers of Labrador. They are now in the process of building a new gravel road from Churchill Falls to Happy Valley-Goose Bay. The open pit gravel road now in use is rough to say the least.

http://www.alinerclub.org/pierre/crossing_translab.html

Postcard: Sunset in Fermont City, Labrador - Photo Claude Bouchard

How we would like to go there! At the Tourist Office we buy a lot of colourful postcards to make us dream of that day …
Now, if we want to see whales, our friend suggests, we’d better go to Les Escoumins or Tadoussac. Maybe we’ll be able to catch sight of one or two of the big cetaceans from the shore but, if we want to embark on a whales watching cruise, we must hurry for it is the end of the season and the companies are closing one after the other.

After looking for the arboriduc and taking some photos there, we leave Forestville and resume our road towards Les Escoumins.

The road goes on and on… Suddenly, at Longue-Rive, we stop ! Big eyes are staring at us. We get off the car, cross the road, and find ourselves in front of a nice wooden fairy-tale styled house, a sculptor’s house as the sign informs us. The big eyes, three pairs of them in fact, belong to Indian statues which are welcoming us into an extraordinary garden, full of vividly coloured sculptures and huge masks: among them a big cock and a superb peacock. It’s magical!

And here’s the artist! He has got out to welcome us. We introduce ourselves. Denis St-Pierre is an internationally known artist for his antler, metal and stone carvings. In 2002, he was selected as the Canadian representative for the project to ‘Monument to Mankind’. Now he leads us into his workshop and we go from discovery to discovery… after the big statues and the masks we’ve discovered in the garden, our eyes now marvelled at a multitude of small carvings: all sorts of people, animals, trees and fantastic creatures are crowding on the artist’s workbench. It’s fabulous ! We had a great pleasure meeting this man and his creatures and didn’t feel like leaving the place.

We depart Denis St-Pierre’s enchanting kingdom at about 17 h, after being given the name and characteristics of every tree growing in his beautiful garden. As it is too late now for a whale watching cruise, we go back to Les Escoumins. We stay some time on the quay there, just in case. But no sign of the big sea creatures. We book at Hotel-Motel Le Pelchat and have a delicious supper at the restaurant in front, Le Bouleau. A good way to end the day!

6 octobre

Les Escoumins: We decide to make reservations for a zodiac cruise!

Essipit: The man who saw a big beautiful whale dancing in the St Lawrence!

Tadoussac: Whales on the St Lawrence!

Les Escoumins: Back to the starting point for a good night rest.

At the Pelchat Motel, in the morning, we finally decide to embark on a whales watching cruise and the receptionist make reservations for us with Otis excursions company. The weather is fine and we choose a zodiac cruise to get the best of this marvellous adventure. We will embark at 13 h at Tadoussac harbour… WOW !

In the car again… we are very happy to go back to this nice little town !

On our road to Tadoussac, we stop at Essipit ! Tepees in the woods, signs with Amerindian symbols and writing. We immediately feel that we’ve arrived in an Indian reserve.

Essipit (known as Les Escoumins until 1996) is an Innu Indian reserve and community in the Canadian province of Quebec, located on the north shore of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in the Côte-Nord region. It belongs to the Innue Essipit First Nation.

The reserve is named after the historical name of the Escoumins River, that around 1664, was known as Esseigiou. Charles Arnaud, who spent many years of his life among the Montagnais stated that the river was also called Etshipi, meaning “river of shells”. Essipit (known as Les Escoumins until 1996) is an Innu Indian reserve and community in the Canadian province of Quebec, located on the north shore of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in the Côte-Nord region. It belongs to the Innue Essipit First Nation.

The reserve is named after the historical name of the Escoumins River, that around 1664, was known as Esseigiou. Charles Arnaud, who spent many years of his life among the Montagnais stated that the river was also called Etshipi, meaning “river of shells”.

The Montagnais have frequented the place for thousands of years, gathering berries that covered the rocks and adorned the mossy plains in the spring. The Jesuit Relations reported on the presence of “Excomminquois” in the region since 1611. It presented them however as an enemy nation of the French and distinguished them from the Montagnais of the region who were recognized as friends. It is assumed that they likely were Mi’kmaq tribes that from the middle of the 16th century onwards sporadically left their territory around Chaleur Bay and visited the North Shore of the Saint Lawrence Gulf.

In 1863, about 40 Montagnais people were counted at the Mission of Escoumins. In 1881, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs appointed surveyor Elzéar Boivin to delineate the land occupied by them. On July 23, 1892, the Government of Canada purchased the land and the Réserve indienne des Escoumins (Escoumins Indian Reserve) was formed.

In 1994, the reserve changed its name to Communauté montagnaise Essipit, made official by Commission de toponymie du Québec on June 7, 1996. On August 7, 2003, the name was changed again, and it is now known as Innue Essipit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essipit,_Quebec

We will soon be able to build our own teppee in our garden

We had been recommended to visit the local innu craftwork shop… it’s full of very interesting objects and we have a ‘coup de coeur’ for ‘les capteurs de rêves’, the dream catchers !

In Ojibwa (Chippewa) culture, a dreamcatcher (or dream catcher; Ojibwe asabikeshiinh, the inanimate form of the word for “spider”or bawaajige nagwaagan meaning “dream snare”) is a handmade object based on a willow hoop, on which is woven a loose net or web. The dreamcatcher is then decorated with personal and sacred items such as feathers and beads.

While dream catchers originated in the Ojibwa Nation, during the Pan-Indian Movement of the 1960s and 1970s they were adopted by Native Americans of a number of different Nations. Some consider the dream catcher a symbol of unity among the various Indian Nations, and a general symbol of identification with Native American or First Nations cultures. However, other Native Americans have come to see dream catchers as over-commercialized.

American ethnographer Frances Densmore writes in her book Chippewa Customs (1979, pg. 113), “Even infants were provided with protective charms. Examples of these are the “spiderwebs” hung on the hoop of a cradle board. These articles consisted of wooden hoops about 3½ inches in diameter filled with an imitation of a spider’s web made of fine yarn, usually dyed red. In old times this netting was made of nettle fiber. Two spider webs were usually hung on the hoop, and it was said that they “caught any harm that might be in the air as a spider’s web catches and holds whatever comes in contact with it.”

Traditionally, the Ojibwa construct dreamcatchers by tying sinew strands in a web around a small round or tear-shaped frame of willow (in a way roughly similar to their method for making snowshoe webbing). The resulting “dream-catcher”, hung above the bed, is used as a charm to protect sleeping children from nightmares. As dreamcatchers are made of willow and sinew, they are not meant to last forever but are intended to dry out and collapse as the child enters the age of wonderment.[citation needed]

The Ojibwa believe that a dreamcatcher changes a person’s dreams. According to Konrad J. Kaweczynski, “Only good dreams would be allowed to filter through . . . Bad dreams would stay in the net, disappearing with the light of day.”[4] Good dreams would pass through and slide down the feathers to the sleeper.

Another version from the same article was, “Luscious dreams pass through the center hole to the sleeping person. The bad dreams are trapped in the web, where they perish in the light of dawn.”

In the course of becoming popular outside of the Ojibwa Nation, and then outside of the pan-Indian communities, “dreamcatchers” are now made, exhibited, and sold by some New age groups and individuals. According to Philip Jenkins, this is considered by most traditional Native peoples and their supporters to be an undesirable form of cultural appropriation.

The official portrait of Ralph Klein, former Premier of the Canadian province of Alberta and whose wife Colleen Klein is Métis, incorporates a dreamcatcher.

The idea of a dream catcher was used by Margaret Salinger, daughter of J.D.Salinger, in her book of memoirs about her father, Dream Catcher: A Memoir.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcatcher

A Resident of Les Escoumins Who Witnessed An Humpback Whale Performing 7 to 8 Jumps Out Of The Water. Watch The Video Below To Hear The Story (Quebec French Language)

While we marvel at the many pieces of traditional Native American craftwork displayed in the shop, a man enters with the air of someone who has big news to tell and he begins to chat cheerfully with the members of the staff who seemed to know him very well. He must be a local. He speaks with such an irresistible Quebecois accent, accompanying his speech with so expressive gestures, that we stop our shopping to listen to him… the day before, while they were in their chalet, he and his wife had suddenly caught sight of a new whale on the St Lawrence.

Here, they seem to know each cetacean living in the local waters, loving them as pets and even giving them affectionate names. This one seemed to be a young one, nicknamed “Picotine” because of the two white spots on her black tail ( picots in Quebec French language) and seems to be about three years old. She is big and beautiful, and they watched her for a long time, while she was happily diving and jumping out of the water. In 25 years, the man explains that he has never witnessed such an extraordinary sight!

After this remarkable performance, the man says good-bye and leaves. So captivated had we been by the storyteller that we stay a moment without speaking but Janice has had the very good idea to take a video of the whole scene.

What a good introduction to our whales watching cruise! We buy a few postcards and hurry on towards Tadoussac for it is already 11 h 30 !

We arrive at Tadoussac at 12 h 15… and so eager are we to embark on our zodiac that we go directly to the harbour, looking for the Otis Company boarding dock Of course, it is still closed.

Here’s the zodiac, waiting for us in the harbour! Are we really going on the St Lawrence aboard this tiny little boat?

I can’t help thinking with some anxiety about the big advertisement we’ve seen and photographed in the town and which could be entitled ‘The tiny little boat and the big creature’! It looks like a picture to illustrate the book cover of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, except that the boat passengers are peaceful tourists only armed with cameras and not with harpoons! But will these huge beasts make the difference, I wonder! Anyway we’ve booked for a zodiac cruise and the die is cast!

Not enough time now to take a meal or to visit something, so we stroll around the place waiting for the boarding office to open. It’s quite pleasant for the weather is fine. The vivid colours of the boats in the harbour and of the nice wooden houses in town add their magic touch to the splendid autumn colours…

Time to embark! 12 passengers + the pilot = 13! No problem, we’re not superstitious !

Let’s go! Our pilot says ‘Fait frette’… Water temperature 2° C… survival time in the water before hypothermia: 15 minutes! I should have taken with me one of the Gideon Bibles we find in nearly every hotel in the country!

Et c’est parti!

GREAT ! ‘ça brasse’, says Janice who reminds me that she can’t swim! But we trust Jean-Michel, our pilot. He seems to be the man of the situation!

It takes some time to find the whales… we hear him discussing on the radio, for he is connected with the other boats sailing in the area and the captains are constantly exchanging information… indeed, we can see a superb Dufour whales watching cruiser on the horizon, soon a bigger zodiac than ours will join it. The big and well-equipped cruiser must be quite comfortable to travel in but we don’t regret to make a three-hour journey on board of our little zodiac.

Silence on tourne!

Here are the whales! And they are so close! Just in front of us… a few yards only! It suddenly came to our mind that they might be swimming under the boat… Mightbe or maybe?!

Anyway, it’s magical time! Everything is so quiet! So luminous! That’s really a great moment on our Blue Road adventure! We’ll never forget it!

Jean-Michel is not only a very good pilot but he is also very knowledgeable about the whales and he tells us many interesting facts about them. Have I heard that we only see 10% of these big creatures? ‘My God’ as you say in Britain! Just imagine…

Difficult to say what kind of whales we’ve seen here, given the fact that we can see so little of the beast. There were many “common rorquals” for sure and maybe a blue whale. There seemed to be two distinct species swimming there.

The fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus), also called the finback whale, razorback, or common rorqual, is a marine mammal belonging to the suborder of baleen whales. It is the second largest whale and the second largest living animal after the blue whale, growing to nearly 27 meters (88 ft) long.

Long and slender, the fin whale’s body is brownish-grey with a paler underside. There are at least two distinct subspecies: the Northern fin whale of the North Atlantic, and the larger Antarctic fin whale of the Southern Ocean. It is found in all the world’s major oceans, from polar to tropical waters. It is absent only from waters close to the ice pack at both the north and south poles and relatively small areas of water away from the open ocean. The highest population density occurs in temperate and cool waters. Its food consists of small schooling fish, squid, and crustaceans including mysids and krill.

Like all other large whales, the fin whale was heavily hunted during the twentieth century and is an endangered species. Almost 750,000 fin whales were taken from the Southern Hemisphere alone between 1904 and 1979 and less than 3,000 currently remain in that region.The International Whaling Commission (IWC) has issued a moratorium on commercial hunting of this whale, although Iceland and Japan have resumed hunting: in 2009, Iceland took 125 fin whales during its whaling season, and Japan took 1 fin whale in its 2008-2009 Antarctic season. The species is also hunted by Greenlanders under the Aboriginal Subsistence Whaling provisions of the IWC. Collisions with ships and noise from human activity also significantly threaten recovery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fin_whale

The Blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) is a marine mammal belonging to the suborder of baleen whales (called Mysticeti). At over 33 metres (108 ft) in length and 180 metric tons (200 short tons) or more in weight, it is the largest animal ever known to have existed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_whale

Now, time to go back to Tadoussac. The sun is setting, the whales are gone and it is getting colder and colder!

Many thanks to our friendly, learned and experimented pilot for this marvellous experience! He drove us back, safe and sound, to the harbour.

We dock at the harbour at about 16 h.

It’s time for us to take off our colourful sailor’s clothes! With some regret, I must admit…

But, we are cold and very hungry for we have had no meal since our breakfast so we now look for a restaurant in quest for a big bowl of hot soup.

Another stop, however, still deletes dinner time!

A golden Indian invites us to visit a very picturesque old house!

Here’s the beautiful illustrated board advertising Chauvin House, which has been converted into a Museum. We can hear music coming out from the inside…

WOW! Here’s the house. A very nice old wooden house, or it seems so, because it has been reconstructed after the original one.

Jacques Cartier came to the site in 1535 during his second voyage, and found there Montagnais hunting seal. Later that same century, it was visited by Basques, whaling on the river.[3]

Tadoussac was founded in 1600 [4] by François Gravé Du Pont, a merchant, and Pierre de Chauvin de Tonnetuit‎, a captain of the French Royal Navy, when they acquired a fur trade monopoly from Henry IV. Gravé and Chauvin built the settlement on the shore at the mouth of the Saint Lawrence River to profit from its location, but only five of the 16 men with them survived the first winter. In 1603, Samuel de Champlain visited the place. In 1615, the Mission of L’Exaltation-de-la-Sainte-Croix-de-Tadoussac, named in memory of a cross planted by Jean de Quen, was founded by the Récollets who sang the first Mass two years later.[3]

Tadoussac remained the only seaport on the river for 30 years. By the 17th and 18th century, it was the center of fur trade between the French and First Nations peoples. Competition over the fur trade increased among the nations. Historians believe the St. Lawrence Iroqouians, who inhabited the St. Lawrence river valley further west, were defeated and pushed out by the Mohawk by the early 17th century. Colonists from the Tadoussac area were involved in whaling from 1632 until at least the end of the century.

In the 19th century, with industrialization reaching other parts of Canada, tourists discovered the appeal of the rural village and wealthy Québécois built a number of villas. A Victorian hotel was built in 1864; it later was lost to a fire. In the 1940s, it was replaced by the large Hotel Tadoussac.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadoussac,_Quebec

No time to visit it now, so we’ll content ourselves with taking a few photos of it and reading the very interesting historical boards which we find at the entry.

We begin to be very hungry. Too late for a dinner, too soon for a supper… here’s another case of a day with just one meal!

We finally stop in front of restaurant La Bohème! Good name, good atmosphere and a very cheerful welcome! We won’t regret our choice!

Au menu : ‘Soupe aux lentilles et aux légumes’ – a huge pizza margarita for Janice – a ‘bagel au saumon’ forJean-Claude and a sublime ‘quiche lorraine’ and salad for me – We end on a delicious ‘brownie au chocolat’ for Janice, an ice-cream for Jean-Claude and… a fabulous ‘Tarte aux noix de pécan’ for me, the whole accompanied with a TRUE expresso! We won’t need supper tonight. Quel festin!

And now, what about a big glass of hot cider with orange and cinnamon to end with !

Chin Chin!

A bientôt for the conclusion of our Blue Road adventure.

Mairiuna, Janice et Jean-Claude

Following the Blue Road on the Steps of Kenneth White in Quebec – Episode 1

Following the Blue Road on the Steps of Kenneth White in Quebec – Episode 2

Following the Blue Road on the Steps of Kenneth White in Quebec – Episode 3

Following the Blue Road on the Steps of Kenneth White in Quebec – Episode 4

Following the Blue Road on the Steps of Kenneth White in Quebec – Episode 6

Following the Blue Road on the Steps of Kenneth White in Quebec – Episode 7

Following the Blue Road on the Steps of Kenneth White in Quebec – Episode 8

Following the Blue Road on the Steps of Kenneth White in Quebec – Episode 9

Following the Blue Road on the Steps of Kenneth White in Quebec – Episode 10

Hunting Down Scottish Greenknowe Tower’s Ghosts…

MAJA — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 21:49:43 +0000

Mairiuna, as a continuity to your post on Greenknowe Tower, let’s put together a video, mixing the recording that Jean-Claude did of the sound produced when opening the iron gate (the yett) and the pictures we took while investigating this beautiful ruined tower in Berwickshire.

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Although local folk tales, as you mentioned, said this place is the most haunted place in the area, we could not find in our respective libraries and archives, nor on the Internet, any further documentation relating to this fact. If anyone has some information to that effect, we would be very grateful to know about it, as it does intrigue us much.

Being both fascinated by Scottish ghost stories and other mysterious legends of the Highlands and Islands, we despair in not finding more facts and feats relating to the haunting tales of Greenknowe Tower.

While researching the web, we did stumble upon Lucy M. Boston’s novels: The Children of Green Knowe, but they don’t seem to relate to the Scottish Greenknowe Tower.

Green Knowe means “green hill”, so it could be anywhere in the world!

Still took time to learn more about this attractive children’s classic series and can tell you they will soon find a place on our bookshelves. As an insight, here’s a reader comment:

The Children of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston 2006

A ghost story for children, the novel revolves around Toseland (Tolly) Oldknow who goes to live with his great-Grandmother in the ancestral family home, Green Knowe, that has been known as Green Noah for centuries. Tolly and his Grandmother see ghosts of their ancestors, primarily three siblings -an earlier Toseland (Toby), Andrew, and Linette- who lived during the reign of Charles II and died in the Great Plague. There was a curse placed upon a large (green) topiary of Noah in the garden by a witch, the resulting tree demon affecting the Oldknow males and the topiary is left to become overgrown ever since, and another supernatural element in the protective stone St Christopher who becomes animated.

The novel is supernaturally evocative; the reader is caught up in the magic and its charm was not lost on me as an adult. The more ominous, frightening, tension was less effective now but that is only to be expected. The writing is beautifully depictive, the descriptions poetic, and I found this line wonderfully expressive:

He heard no thunder. It was even unnaturally quiet. Perhaps it only seemed unnatural because he himself was brimming with excitement. He heard the weir pounding at the end of the garden. It only made the quietness quieter. It was rather like a heart that is only heard when it beats too loud.”

Read more => http://paperbackreader2.blogspot.com/2009/06/children-of-green-knowe.html

In another search engine result, a descriptive text on the Manor of Hemingford Grey indicates it became famous with Lucy M. Boston’s series of children’s books, so we guess that answers our question about which residence influenced the author!

“The house was recreated and made famous as the house of Green Knowe by Lucy Boston in her series of children’s books, now regarded as classics. Her son Peter’s illustrations depict many of the things in the house and garden. The attic contains toys used by the fictional children of the past; thus visitors get the feeling of ‘walking into the books’.

She wrote about family belongings in the house and her son Peter Boston illustrated the books, drawing many of these as well as the house and garden.

In the winter, as well as writing, Lucy Boston made many exquisite patchworks, most of which are on display. Rarely can such an important collection be seen in the house in which the exhibits were made.

This moated house is surrounded by four acres of garden renowned for its collection of over 200 old roses and a collection of irises containing many famous Dykes medal winners, most of them dating from the 1950s. There are hidden corners in the garden so visitors find themselves coming to unexpected parts which are unanticipated from the first impression gained by looking down into it from the public footpath along the towpath beside the river Great Ouse. With its large herbaceous borders of mainly scented plants the garden gives the feeling of being a cottage garden full of favourite plants in a rather formal setting of lawns with topiary coronation shapes and chess pieces in their black and white planted squares.

Read more => http://www.greenknowe.co.uk/history.html

Lucy M Boston - The Green Knowe Children's Book Series

Product Description

(….) L.M. Boston’s thrilling and chilling tales of Green Knowe, a haunted manor deep in an overgrown garden in the English countryside, have been entertaining readers for half a century. There are three children: Toby, who rides the majestic horse Feste; his mischievous little sister, Linnet; and their brother, Alexander, who plays the flute. The children warmly welcome Tolly to Green Knowe… even though they’ve been dead for centuries. But that’s how everything is at Green Knowe. The ancient manor hides as many stories as it does dusty old rooms. And the master of the house is great-grandmother Oldknow, whose storytelling mizes present and past with the oldest magic in the world.

About the Author

Lucy Maria Boston (1892-1990) purchased a ramshackle manor house near Cambridge, England, in 1935, which over a period of two years she lovingly restored. It is the house that inspired her, at the age of sixty-two, to take pen in hand and create the beloved Green Knowe chronicles. L.M. Boston said she wrote her books to please herself–but the pleasure of her stories extends to all who read them.

Ref: Amazon.com

Talk soon,

Janice

A Sneak Peek of Aboyne’s Highland Games in the Aberdeenshire Region of Scotland

MAJA — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 21:47:17 +0000

While touring Scotland’s beautiful Aberdeenshire region, we heard that the Aboyne Highland Games Annual event was taking place, so Mairiuna, Jean-Claude and myself, traveled to nearby Aboyne city to experience our first Scottish Highland Games!

Aboyne Highland Games, Aberdeenshire (Source: Google map)

The abolition of the powers of the chiefs which followed the defeat of Culloden and the accompanying banning of all things Highland put an end to such gatherings, but at the beginning of the nineteenth century when the proscription of the tartan and the bagpipes had been lifted, and the nation, thanks to Sir Walter Scott, was beginning to take a keen interest in all things Highland, the gatherings were revived, and since then have spread in every place where there are descendants of the Clans.

Walter Scott - Portrait

The sports which accompany such gatherings still show their links with the past, in the competitions for dancing and bagpipe music, in the granite balls which are used for putting the stone, and in the wooden shafts of the hammer which replace the flexible steel handles, though the conventional head of the blacksmith’s long-handled hammer has been replaced by a metal ball.

Readers of Waverley will recall Sir Walter’s account of such a gathering and of the impromptu athletic competitions that followed the military exercises. Such competitions must have taken place on the Aboyne Green when Mar’s Highland army camped there after
marching down from Braemar where they had raised the standard in 1715.

Source: http://www.aboynegames.com

Wonderful Piping Bands, Heavy Events (throwing shot, discus or wire hammer, caber toss), Light Events, Highland Dancing (what a cardio work-out!) and Fiddle are all great competitions that takes place in this perfect venue for family fun.

On this side of the ocean, during the Glengarry Highland Games, in Maxville, Ontario, Canada, Josée Morneau took the 3rd place on the professional podium and she also won the 2007 Fergus Scottish Festival and Highland Games Women’s Open Event.

Josée Morneau, Winnipeg, Man., Canada, Womens Division

“Ce que j’aime des jeux écossais, c’est que les épreuves sont toujours les mêmes et que les poids des roches et des marteaux sont égaux d’une compétition à l’autre, indique-t-elle. Je peux alors m’entraîner et tenter de battre mes records personnels. C’est une motivation supplémentaire. “

The Caber

This is the most well known and popular of the heavyweight Scottish events. The competitor must “pick” (pick up) the caber, run, and toss it so it lands straight out from him/her at a 12 o’clock position. The caber is tossed for accuracy, not distance. The judge must “call it” just as the caber hits the ground. A side judge will sometimes be used to determine if the caber rotated through 90 degrees – if not – it’s a “Fifer” and not counted. The Caber can be any size, and can range between 18′-26′, and weigh from (approximately) 100 lbs. – 150 lbs. Size is important, but so is the athlete’s style.The athlete gets three attempts in this and all the heavyweight events.

Wow….I’m impressed!..aren’t you?

You might ask yourself: do we have to be Scottish to compete in the Games?

The answer is no. You can join the field if you feel like it and start mastering the arts.

Talk soon!

Janice

Art Nouveau Peacock on Princes Square Shopping Center in Buchanan Street, Glasgow

MAJA — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:04:51 +0000

The peacock being the most spread Art Nouveau pattern, a great example is the one adorning the Princes Square Shopping Centre building facade on Buchanan Street in the heart of Glasgow.

They had some doubts about the delivery dates promised by Alan Dawson, for such an extensive project would require much time. They were also sceptic that it would all fit inside the budget, but Alan Dawson was confident that he could accomplish the task within deadline and budget.

Following a partnership with the Workington firm Shepley Engineering, he teamed with traditional artist-blacksmiths. They started the program in 1987 and in 1990, in time and within budget, the main exterior peacock was added to the Buchanan Street facade, in part as a contribution to the City of Culture Festival in Glasgow that year.

The Princes Square’s peacock is a magnificent piece of metal art and deserves we take some time to know more about its features.

Located on the top of the facade, the peacock’s sculpture is made in coloured hand-forged wrought iron and steel, extending to its colossal dimensions of 10m high and 20m wide. It comes out from the iron ring which is located in the center of the attic balustrade.

Its tail, outspreading in the air are tipped with bronze aluminium rods making it an eye-catching sculpture and definitely a dominant landmark of the Buchanan Street’s south section.

Peacock - Princes Square Galleries by night - Photo by gordonjc (Flickr)

The use of a consistent pattern of imagery throughout, as well as a candid dependence on Art Nouveau precedents in the style, enables the scheme to be read as a visually and conceptually unified whole.

Public Sculpture of Glasgow by Raymond Mckenzie

Glasgow is notable as being one of the few British cities to have resisted artistic centralization based in London. Only in Glasgow were there significant local workshops, often family-based, training dynasties of native sculptors. Public Sculpture of Glasgow includes work by some of the most influential British and continental sculptors during the last 200 years including John Flaxman, John Gibson, J.H. Foley and Carlo Marochetti. Ray McKenzie has in this volume for the first time demonstrated the importance of Glasgow’s architectural sculpture and explained its function with a wealth superbly arranged and carefully marshaled detail.

I cannot write about Art Nouveau without mentioning the name of Charles Rennie Mackintosh!

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

He was an architect-designer and has put Glasgow on the map with the formation of the Glasgow School of Art, along with other local artists around the turn of the century. His work can be seen around the city in the shape of many historical buildings, and his designs and architectural works are still a source of inspiration for many modern designs of today.

During our last trip to Scotland, we visited some of Mackintosh’s heritage sites : The Hill House, Glasgow School of Art ( founded in 1845 which makes it one of the oldest creative institutions in the UK ), The Willow Tearooms, The Mackintosh House ( Hunterian Art Gallery), The Queen’s Cross church and Mairiuna and I are eager to write several posts about them.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh was more than just an architect. He was also an outstanding international artist and designer, so stay tuned for more!

Enjoy the read and leave a comment below to share your thoughts.

Talk soon.

Janice