Culturally Speaking: A Guide to Gaelic Alberta

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What do Sam Livingston (Calgary’s first European settler-colonist), Colonel James Farquharson MacLeod (the man who gave Calgary its name), and Ewan MacKay (the ancestor of the founders of Cochrane’s world-famous Mackay’s ice-cream) all have in common?

Believe it or not, the common thread that binds these people and places together – once glowingly prominent, but today made almost invisible by the historical dominance of Anglophone hegemony – is their continuity with the linguistic and cultural patrimony of the Gaels: a cultural nation indigenous to Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man who, displaced by the British Imperial project from their traditional homelands, became the unlikely ambassadors of that enterprise in the lands that would become Alberta.

We invite you to join Dr. Adam Dahmer – the recipient of a PhD in Celtic Studies from Scotland’s University of Edinburgh, and a historical interpreter and educational docent at Heritage Park – to explore the little-known legacy of the Gaelic people by undertaking a guided investigation of the surnames, placenames and traditions they left in their wake as they trekked westward.

Culturally Speaking Event Series