Our thanks to Heather for providing us with this information. 

Standing in a park overlooking the east Sutherland village of Helmsdale, a statue depicts a young 19th century family, with the father looking out to the North Sea, while the mother faces inland casting a final glance at her beloved Strath of Kildonan.

The Emigrants is a tangible tribute to the thousands of courageous Highlanders who sailed to the New World after being evicted from their homes during the Clearances in the 19th century.

Between 1807 and 1820, approximately 2000 people were removed from their homes in Kildonan to make way for more profitable sheep farming. These traumatic and life changing events are still passionately talked about and remembered by descendants.

Two hundred years on from this turbulent period of history, Timespan Museum & Arts Centre in Helmsdale, is marking the bi-centenary of the Kildonan Clearances with a Translocation Festival which will see the locals and the Diaspora uniting in a series of creative and historic events.

The festival is as much a celebration of the human spirit as it is a commemoration - from a service in the tiny Kildonan church where the evicted heard their final sermon before leaving the Strath, to sending out candles from Helmsdale harbour, bearing the names of the evicted who had no choice but to set sail for Canada on 12 August 1813.

Timespan’s historian, Jacquie Aitken says that for some families, the link to their Clearances ancestors is only a couple of generations away and can be seen in the eyes of their forbearers staring out from old family photographs.

“The stories and oral histories which have survived from that time are an important reminder that these were ‘real’ people with the same thoughts and feelings as us,” points out Jacquie. “They faced incredible difficulties as they were forced to make life changing decisions.

“Their choices were limited to either moving to the coast and becoming fishermen or growing crops on steep uncultivated hillsides, or leaving family and friends behind for a new life thousands of miles away.”

The Clearances took place across the Gaeltacht, but my fascination with the story of the Strath of Kildonan stems from the fact that my great-grandfather was a hill shepherd there in the 1870s and my family has lived in Helmsdale for generations.

Helmsdale was featured in Neil Gunn’s classic novel The Silver Darlings, and the film of same name will be screened during the festival. Musician Edwyn Collins, who has strong family connections with the village, features Helmsdale as it is today in the video of his new album.

The festival is the culmination of a year-long project, including the excavation of a longhouse at Caen township just outside Helmsdale. It was initiated by Timespan in response to the local community who wanted to learn more about the people of the Clearances. 

The longhouse was the hub for the family at work, sleep and play and many stories were told around the peat fire which was eventually put out for the last time when the family was evicted.

Finds in the Caen longhouse confirmed that people were forced to leave in a hurry. According to Keir Strickland, archeology lecturer at Orkney College UHI: “We have found an unprecedented amount of broken pottery, glass and metal, along with more personal finds such as a button, a metal  buckle, a clay pipe as well pieces of copper with rivets from a probable illicit whiskey still”.

Visitors to Timespan can navigate life in the original Caen township in a virtual world using digital gaming technology created by St Andrews University.

The Evictions

‘The preacher ceased to speak, the people to listen. All lifted up their voices and wept, mingling tears together. It was indeed the place of parting and the hour.’

This was a moving description of the last service held at Achness and  Ach n’a h-uai in May 1818, the church by the Rev Alexander Sage whose son Donald wrote ‘Gloomy Memories’, an early definitive account of the Clearances. While Alexander was supportive of his parishioners, many ministers were discouraged from interfering in estate management.

By the end of the 18th century wool prices had soared and there was an ever increasing need for good hill pasture. In 1805, the Countess of Sutherland visited her holiday residence, Dunrobin Castle in Golspie and set in motion ‘the perfect plan’ which by 1840 resulted in over a thousand tenants displace by 18,000 sheep on the Strath.

In January 1813, the Kildonan tenants came together to try and resist the eviction with a list of proposals which included agreeing to rent increases, if they could stay.

On two occasions riots broke out and for 12 weeks no one from the estate would set foot in the Strath for fear of their lives. The tenants tried attempts to negotiate proved futile, including sending a petition to the London based landowners.

The policy of the Sutherland estate was to set fire to the timbers of the longhouse roofs to prevent tenants from returning to their homes. One of the most infamous estate factors, Patrick Sellar, was briefly imprisoned on the charge of culpable homicide of an elderly woman in 1814 but was later acquitted.

“This was a time of physical and cultural translocation,” says Jacquie, “which impacted in many ways on the lives of those displaced, including emigration trails to North America.”

The first evictions in Kildonan took place on Whitsunday in May when the leases expired and those who had received summons of removing had to leave their homes. Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, offered them a lifeline in the form of assisted passage on The Prince of Wales to his newly created agricultural settlement on the banks of the Red River in Canada.

From the original 500 or so who had signed up to the scheme, around 100 people, predominately made up of family groups, could be accommodated in the ship provided by the Hudson Bay’s Company, which sailed from Stromness in June.

The voyage was hazardous and typhoid soon took a grip of the crew and passengers.  In August, the ship landed on the coast of Hudson Bay as the onset of winter approached.

Over 200 of those displaced people were among the founding population that arrived at the Red River Settlement in 1813 and 1815, which developed into the City of Winnipeg.

Canadian Phyllis Fraser who recently visited the Caen dig from Canada, is a direct descendent from one of the evicted Caen families. “As the first group of Selkirk settlers arrived in the Red River in October 1812 we in Manitoba marked the 200th anniversary last year. 

“The Kildonan group is particularly significant to us in Winnipeg as it is this group who largely stayed in the settlement and whose descendants are still here, many still farming the land as their ancestors did on their arrival. 

“My ancestors who came from the Caen area were Mathesons, Alex and Ann,  their children, and Alex’s widowed mother Janet.  Their young son John was only six months old at the time of their departure from Sutherland in mid-August, 1815.”

Phyllis gave a detailed of account of the hardships her forbearers faced on arriving at the Red River Settlement on 3 November. “The winters were hard and food and shelter were not in abundant supply so the settlers had to journey a further 100 miles south to winter at Fort Daer, returning in the spring to plant crops and build homes. 

“Each family was given a long narrow lot of land which bordered on the Red River.  Lord Selkirk encouraged them to build homes and break the land to prepare it for agriculture.

“After being forced off the land in Scotland, the settlers would have had high hopes for a better life in Canada, but instead found themselves caught in the middle of a fur trade war between the Northwest Company and the Hudson Bay Company. 

“Their homes were destroyed by those who wanted them gone and the locusts did the same to their crops.  Hostilities came to a head in 1816 when 20 of the colonists, including Governor Semple were killed by the Northwest Company in the Battle of Seven Oaks. 

“Although the two rival fur trading companies amalgamated in 1821, the challenges continued with a huge flood in 1826, but in spite of these hardships, the settlement survived and eventually prospered. The settlers were grateful to Chief Peguis and his people for keeping them from starvation and other hardships on many occasions.”

“Last year many of the settlers’ descendants travelled to Winnipeg from across North America to join in a week of commemorate on.  I know some of these descendants will visit Helmsdale this August to take part in the festival.”

It’s a tribute to the spirit of the Kildonan tenants that as part of the Translocation Festival at The Gathering on 10 August, the people of Helmsdale and Winnipeg will simultaneously dance a Strip the Willow – a dance of the Diaspora.

None of this could have taken place without the work of Timespan which has been the heritage and cultural hub for a generation. Timespan’s fundraising endowment appeal will allow this meeting place of the past, present and future to survive for generations to come. After all that their ancestors endured, the young generation must be allowed to keep this heritage alive and have their voices heard.

Visit www.timespan.org.uk for details of how you can contribute. 

Saturday 10 August – play and outdoor screening, storytelling

19:30     The Gathering, Timespan

Sunday 11 August

15:00     Commemorative Service, Kildonan Church

Monday 12 August

19:00     Translocation Ceremony, Helmsdale Harbour

Tuesday 13 August

19:30     Talk: Jenny Bruce, Timespan

Jenny Bruce whose talk homes in on a parallel story to the Clearances, looks at the personal histories of  the Border shepherds who came to Caithness and Sutherland in the late 18th early 19th century.

Thursday 15 August

14:00     Clearances Trail, meet at Timespan

19:30     Theatre - Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Sheep, Helmsdale Primary School

Friday 16 August

17.30 Talk, Oliver Mezger, Timespan

Oliver is an experimental film-maker and Timespan’s digital artist in residence is fascinated by the work of Margaret Tait, Scottish film-poet and writer who lived in Helmsdale between 1965 and 1973. Tait’s film 'Caora Mor: The Big Sheep (1966) captured the way of life, landscape and culture of East Sutherland. 

Saturday 17 August

11:00     Helmsdale Highland Games, Couper Park

Sidebar

Sock Sampler Exchange

The trans-Atlantic knitting exchange group stemmed from a letter and wool sent to one of the early settlers in 1813. Inspired by this, a group of local knitter which meets at Timespan has reactivated the link with knitters in Winnipeg. Their combined efforts are on display in Timespan.

Caption

This photo of shepherd John Cameron’s family in front of a peat stack must have been taken around 1904, as my late grandmother Daisy Cameron, who is pictured on the far left in a white pinafore and appears to be around four years old, was born on the first year of the 20th century.

John and Mary Cameron and their family lived in Craggie, an isolated corner of the Strath. The only way the photographer could have reached the family was by walking several miles uphill on foot. The last time I visited the house, not even a four-wheel drive could negotiate the path.  As I stood outside my grandmother’s former home, a herd of deer ran past in front of me; it is still that remote.