Gaelic Sessions Going Strong

Starting on March 11^th and running to March 14^th the Gaelic College will be hosting its March-Break youth session. Colin MacDonald, director of Gaelic language classes at the college spoke to me about his history with the 78 year-old institution. He attended sessions like the up-coming March session when he was ten years old, and he played in the college pipe-band throughout his teens. He has also worked as tour guide for the Gaelic College museum during the summers. He has a long history with the college, and now Colin is positioned to welcome perhaps more than 100 young students, between the ages of 5 and 18, to Gaelic college where they will be immersed in Gaelic culture for three full days.

 The Gaelic College is an institution that provides expert knowledge and teaching on all these different aspects of Gaelic Culture and the students who go there are eager to soak up as much of that culture as they possibly can. Emma Boutilier was one of those students, and this week I spoke with her about her experience at the Gaelic College. 

 “I remember that I was too excited to be nervous. I had done sleep-away camps before. There were 

some people who had never had that experience before and were feeling a little bit nervous, but the Gaelic College is such a comfortable and friendly atmosphere that they didn’t feel that way for long.”

Now a student of English literature at the University of New Brunswick, Emma Boutilier first attended the Gaelic College summer session when she was fifteen. After that she went back twice more, once for the winter session and once again in the summer of 2010.

 “I really loved it. All my classes were either bag-piping or Gaelic language, and I would get to take one other course every time I went. Having the opportunity to learn new tunes and styles was fantastic. We had really great instructors like Mike Campbell. I learned a lot of new tunes, and styles like piobaireachd and stathspey.”

The students are all given the chance to perform what they have learned in a variety show at the end of the session.

The Gaelic College has not usually been open-year round. It opens its doors to students for weeks at a time, like for the up-coming March Session, and for groups that wish to rent out the facilities. However, as Colin MacDonald explained to me, the Gaelic College will soon be living up to its name. Students at Cape Breton University are now able to enroll in a four-week immersion program. 

This program earns the students six credits toward their CBU degrees, but are also transferrable to any university in Nova Scotia. It may not be long before the Gaelic College starts to offer year-round programming to anyone who wishes to take part in the on-going efforts to preserve and perpetuate Gaelic culture in Nova Scotia. 

Gach deagh dhùrachd / Every good wish!

Colin's favorite word in Gaelic is: Cànan / Language

School and Seanchas

Beth Anne MacEachen grew up in Howie Centre and her grandfather and great grand aunt lived together in North Sydney. Her weekly Sunday visits to their home exposed her to a language that she would hear mixed seamlessly with her native English—“tut tut  mo nàir’”.

Roy and Catherine MacEachen shared photo albums with Beth Anne and they told her the stories behind the old pictures. So much history and language preserved in the memory banks of two people who grew up during a time that is really not so distant, but may still feel like a world away. A visit with our elders may open a window to that world, and often we part the curtains completely unaware that the world which we look upon is also looking back at us.

Beth Anne went on to study Gaelic under Hector MacNeil at Cape Breton University.

"He took me under his wing in a pretty significant way" says Beth Anne, who explained how Hector helped her get into an exchange program to further her studies at Sabhal Mor Ostaig on the Isle of Skye, as well as driving her to the Gaelic College every day where he had helped Beth Anne get a job.

“He’s one of the main reasons, beside my grandfather and great-grand aunt, that I’m doing what I’m doing right now."

Today, Beth Anne teaches Gaelic Language classes at Citadel High School in down-town Halifax. She has 30 students in her Gaelic language class and there are 100 students currently taking Gaelic Studies. Citadel High School opened in 2007. The school has had a Gaelic grant from the Department of Educaiton (DoE) since it's opening, and in 2007 it was used to help fund a Gaelic club that met every day at lunch time. Melissa Shaw, a teacher at Citadel High School, ran the club with a few students. They would bring in educators and other community members to do language and music work-shops. In 2008 Beth had been working in Halifax for less than a year when she received a phone call asking her if she would want to teach Gaelic Language courses at Citadel High School.

“Of course I was definitely up for that!”

It’s fascinating to consider the ways in which culture influences our development. Formal education is one of many environmental pressures that shape who we are and where we are going. It teaches us how to write, how to add and subtract, and how to drive. More difficult to measure are those variables which we are exposed to in more causal settings. The music that our parents played around the house, or the family trips we would take to our grand parents' houses, or to the beach in the summer-time. How are they shaping us, and how will they inform our decisions further down the road? 

What is happening in schools across Nova Scotia is a synthesis of these two models of education. For Beth Anne MacEachen it was her great grand aunt Catherine and her grandfather Roy who opened the window. Now there are over 100 students at Citadel High School who are looking through the window for the first time.  

Gach deagh dhùrachd / Every good wish

Beth Anne's favorite word in Gaelic is Seanchas.

The Past Inside our Present

The lessons of history strike such a resonant chord when the figures of the past are our own family members. Once we learn those lessons our lives may take some unexpected turns.

For example: Kate Howley.

Kate Howley—whose maiden name was Beaton—was from Mabou. She did not learn to speak English until she went to school, where her mother-tongue of Gaelic was banned. For Anne Williams, this fact about her great-grandmother, Kate, was enough to start her on the path to learning more about the world that Kate belonged to.

“When I was a teenager, I remember asking my mother a lot of questions about her side of the family. She told me that her grandmother, was a native Gaelic Speaker, but she wasn’t allowed to speak it on school property. So, that really got me interested. I just wondered why Gaelic became this thing that was frowned upon, and I wanted to find out more about Gaelic being spoken today.”

Anne graduated from Dr. John Hugh Gillis Regional high school in Antigonish back in 2008. It was there at school where she first took a class in Gaelic studies. The school did not offer Gaelic Language classes, but her class did teach students a great deal of Gaelic history, and the teacher, Brian MacNeil, would often sprinkle his lessons with Gaelic phrases and words.

“I really enjoyed [the class], and then I discovered that I could study Celtic Studies in university, and it just kind of went on from there.”

It certainly has. During her four years studying Scottish and Irish Gaelic at St.FX Anne received a scholarship to study in Ireland, and after completing her undergrad she hopped across the pond once again to earn her master’s degree in Irish Gaelic from the University of Cambridge.

If Kate Howley could take a stroll through the hallways of today’s high-schools and hear the language of her household being spoken, what would she think? She would probably have a lot of questions about what has changed over the years. After-all, one year after her Great-grand daughter graduated high school, Dr. John Hugh Gillis Regional high school became one of many schools in Nova Scotia to offer Gaelic Language classes. And as for Anne’s achievements, I think it’s safe to say that Kate would be immensely proud. 

Gach deagh dhùrachd / Every good wish

Anne's favorite word in Gaelic is, gealach / moon.