After the Hector: The Scottish Pioneers of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, 1733-1852 (review)

This is the fourth book on the often dramatic story of emigrant Scots by Lucille H. Campey and it will soon be followed by a fifth. She has placed her focus on Scottish migration to Canada, and it is a topic filled with persuasive evidence of poverty and hardship combined with often incredible stories of communities recreated in a distant land. The research behind this study of the path-breaking ship The Hector, which brought the nearly two hundred first arrivals from Scotland to Nova Scotia and Cape Breton in 1773, and the migrations that followed, is the key element to this book. Campey impresses us with her work on Lloyds Shipping Register detailing the condition and cargo of the 213 ships (which she was able to identity) carrying timber and people between Scotland and Nova Scotia in this period, as well as bringing together the extant passenger lists for these ships (Appendix 1, 193 - 233), material that had otherwise appeared in a range of secondary sources.

While giving due attention to the Highland clearances, especially from the Hebridean Islands and from Sutherland, Campey makes clear the importance of the 'pull' factors of migration. It was not just the 'push' from the land that set the migratory trail in motion, and indeed Campey explains that in the 1770s to 1790s the lairds were reluctant to lose their key economic resource, their tenants. The push from the land became more important in the nineteenth century, with the period of economic downturn after the Napoleonic War being particularly severe, as well as famine in 1846 - 7. The familiar story of sheep replacing tenants, and the initial success then failure of the kelp industry, were the main pressures in the decision to head for Canada. But Campey remains determined to explain the pull of trade and the prospect of economic prosperity, particularly through lumber exports from Nova Scotia.

Much of the analysis throughout the chapters then falls on the different destinations of Catholic and Presbyterian Scots upon arrival, both within the province and over to Cape Breton. We know that migrants tend to head for the destinations of kin and friends, but Campey shows that these recreated communities were divided by religion. We are also told that these migrants tended to arrive safely, a point made repeatedly throughout the chapters. Campey explains that conditions onboard the migrant ships were frequently fit for purpose and that the new arrivals were poor and hungry, and not likely to achieve the immediate rewards they hoped for - or were erroneously promised - but they were generally safe and well. The condition of the boats, from the evidence in Lloyds Shipping Register, makes chapter 9 the most impressive in the book. With the survey of these ships, Campey is able to conclude with confidence that 'the popular image of leaky and sub-standard vessels is simply not borne out by the evidence' (166). It deals with this one issue in a systematic way and with good illustrative case study material. The earlier chapters are not so discrete, and there the reader is lost in a wave of statements about which part of Nova Scotia or Cape Breton received its migrants from which part of Scotland. It was the kind of evidence best suited to one chapter, not spread among several, and best displayed by a series of maps and tables. Similarly the analyses around economic downturns, the timber trade, and the religious divide perpetuated by each new set of arrivals were repeated too often and to the detriment of other themes.

Unfortunately the excellent primary and secondary researches were confined to the appendices and footnotes at the book's end, and while informing the narrative they received scant interrogation up-front. Thus we have an example of the desire to produce an accessible text undermining the power and the importance of the archival work that has undoubtedly been done. A reordering...