​Spent the last two weeks mooching around the northern areas of Pakistan as a big birthday treat to myself. It's my third visit to Pakistan, returning for the first time in 15 years, and the first to the 'proper' mountains. 

My poor bits of Urdu were almost useless in the far north - instead I learned and spoke bits of Burushaski (a language isolate with no relations), Wakhi, and Balti. Somehow managed to walk in and travel through the Hindu Kush, Himalaya, and the High Pamir as well as the Karakoram. Their names alone are so evocative, and their colours and characters even more so. ​

To the left of these buildings - Corrour Station House, the most remote train station in the UK - is an area known as Na Caplaich / An Caipleach / The Mare. 

Here, a shepherd and his wife were making their way from Rannoch to Loch Treig on horseback when a winter storm blew up. The wifey was in a pretty bad way, so numb with cold she kept falling from her steed, and the shepherd knew she wouldn't make it. He knocked out his mare, gralloched her, and his wife crawled right inside the carcass to keep warm while the shepherd went to fetch help. She was dry and cosy and quite recovered by the time the shepherd returned. Hence the name of the place...

​It's not the only story I've come across about people sheltering inside animals for survival, but it's the only one (so far) that seems to be linked with a specific place - and easy to imagine the necessity, when the winds and snow are howling across Rannoch Moor! 

Seem to be on a tree theme. Birch & rowan encircling Avielochan chambered cairn, a Bronze Age burial cairn which is well worth a visit - enter through the passageway and sit amongst the stones and trees. 

The rowan that guarded the entrance has now fallen - second pic is from 2022 when it was still upright. 

The Avielochan area is full of hut circles, remains of townships, field systems, and has been habited for at least several thousand years. It's got a wonderful feel about it. ​

This loch only appears in winter, on Granish Moor, so I call it the Winter Loch.

Does anyone know if it has a 'proper' name? Or does anyone have their own names for it?

It's the highest I've seen it in a few years, lapping up to the dead Mini.

​How many other places do you know locally that are seasonal, only appearing in winter or summer? Or spring or autumn for that matter...

The Scots pines in this seemingly uninteresting picture on Granish Moor north of Aviemore tell several stories... reading a landscape is one of my favourite things, so many layers, so many perspectives too. No two people see the same. 

And there are always signs. Being outdoors is the best practice...
​
Remnants, past, future, attitudes, shifting lifestyles and values, different peoples, creatures, faiths, epochs.

I have a thing about singing whenever I come across ruins of farmsteads or townships, to bring back voice and life, even if for two minutes. I've been doing this for several years without really realising; it just seems quite natural. 

Popped up to Rinanuan today, sang the Parting Glass. Watched the light move and the snow showers come and go, the colour of the bracken and larch against the snow and sky, heard the burns sing too. 

Surprised and delighted to be heading to Glen Tanar with David Lintern Photography for a week next year to explore the premise that cultural loss is ecological loss.

If anyone has any current or past connections to Glen Tanar - working, living, stories, songs - drop me a line!

Many thanks to Bothy Project and Cairngorms National Park for this opportunity to highlight connections between land and people.

From the Cairngorms National Park press release:

Recently we shared a call for applications to be artists in residence with Bothy Project as part of our Cairngorms2030 programme, and received an incredible response.

We’re delighted to share that local creatives Sarah Hobbs and David Lintern were successful, and together will be diving into the rich history of Glen Tanar, exploring local cultural heritage and connections to the land. Through listening, walking and photography they hope to weave together the voices of people connected to the Glen, helping their stories to be heard.

Watch this space to find out how Sarah and David get on, and for future opportunities.

The Cairngorms 2030 programme is made possible by @heritagefunduk thanks to National Lottery players.

Shared some stories of the wartime 'lumberjills' in the strath at the weekend. The Women's Timber Corps were women from all over Scotland - mostly big cities like Glasgow - who travelled to the rural Highlands to fell trees during the Second World War.

There were many lumberjill camps across the strath; none are mapped and recorded (though one site is waiting to be uploaded to the historic environment record!)

Their work is not visible in the landscape, and it was only in 2007 that a statue was unveiled to commemorate their efforts, in Aberfeldy in Perthshire. 

It's been an exceedingly busy month! 30 hours of storytelling to 137 people in Glencoe, Aberdeenshire, Glenmore, Aviemore, Glen Feshie and Nethy Bridge (at the brilliant Hill to Grill organised by Cairngorms Connect - thank you to Catriona Parmenter Photography for the wonderful photos!)

I also ran an event as part of the Scottish International Storytelling Festival for the very first time - thank you to all of you who joined the walk weaving together tales from the Highlands and Palestine!

Plus ran a story session for Love Outdoor Learning as teacher training, as well as several private and public storywalks.
​
It's been wonderful and very intense! Thank you all. 

Black History Month 2024

Prior to the NHS being established, healthcare facilities and hospitals were funded by wealthy individuals or families. Our Highland hospitals have therefore had some unexpected origins, which we’ve benefited from for hundreds of years.

At least eight hospitals across Highland were part-funded with the great amount of money that was brought into the region from colonising other countries, some of it profits from the slave trade. Let’s shine a light on some of the links Highland healthcare has with the spoils of empire.

​We’ll begin in Skye, whose first hospital, Gesto Hospital in Edinbane, opened in 1878 and was built from the profits of estates in India owned by Kenneth Macleod. He’d made his fortune there through owning tea and indigo plantations[1] worked by indentured labourers and left £10,000-£30,000[2] (equivalent to £1-3million in today’s money) to specifically build a hospital to benefit ‘his countrymen the people of Skye.’

Cultivation of indigo in Bihar, where Kenneth Macleod’s lands and plantations were, was “forced on the peasants who had to produce the material for foreign markets.”[3] Tenant farmers were subject to extreme violence in turning over their rice fields to grow indigo. Entire harvests plus additional monies had to be given to British landowners. In nearby West Bengal this exploitation led to the Indigo Rebellion, where an uprising of farmers aimed to force out the indigo plantation owners.

Colonising other countries and establishing industry there was often a family or neighbourly affair, sometimes with whole extended families or townships leaving the Highlands to settle the far reaches of empire. The personal networks were key to ‘success’ and Kenneth’s story is similar: he travelled out to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) at 16 to meet his cousin, a Mackinnon, and later brought over his nephew to work for him. He was surrounded by businessmen who were fellow Highlanders, and spoke Gaelic: Mackenzie, McInlay, Ogilvie, etc.[4]

A second hospital in Skye, the Martin Memorial Hospital in Uig, was built in memory of John Martin who had travelled to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) as a coffee planter.[5] Most likely he owned or managed coffee plantations there, as the term refers to the ‘planter class’ or ‘planter aristocracy,’ Europeans who had established plantations across the empire. (The Planters’ Association of Ceylon exists to this day.)

The Mackinnon Memorial Hospital in Broadford was part-funded by James Coats of Paisley, manufacturers of silk and cotton thread. Their raw materials were shipped in from across the empire, and made them one of the largest companies in the world at that time. (Coats also funded a library for the Nicholson Mackenzie hospital in Strathpeffer.[6])

​Mackinnon Memorial hospital also received a donation from the Governor of Uganda.[7]

A further hospital in Skye, Ross Memorial in Portree, was named after Dr. David Ross who worked in the plantations of Surinam[8] (then Dutch Guiana) providing healthcare to enslaved people – where many other Highlands men had established sugar and cotton plantations worked by enslaved Africans – before he later moved to Skye. There were at least 18 doctors from the Highlands working in the plantations of Guiana – colonies of the British and Dutch – and the West Indies, according to ongoing research work by author, historian and former NHS Highland chair David Alston.

Continuing our journey to Lochaber, Glengarry Cottage Hospital was converted from a house in 1880 by the Ellice family.[9] Edward Ellice Senior was director of the Hudson’s Bay Company, a vast fur trading company which furthered French and British colonial rule in what was to become Canada. (His son, also Edward, later became deputy director of the Hudson’s Bay Company.)

Edward Senior also co-owned eight sugar plantations in the Caribbean and what was British Guiana (now Guyana) with 300 slaves, and received government reparations of at least £7,000 (around £676,000 in today’s money) when the enslaved people were freed.
 
Glencoe House was built by Donald Smith, Lord Strathcona, in 1895 as his home, and was later converted to a hospital in 1940 during the Second World War. He also provided funds to build Leanchoil Hospital in Forres.[10]

Despite his humble origins in Forres from a family of crofters, Donald Smith made his name and fortune by part-funding the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), a 7,000-mile railroad to fulfil the colonial vision of Canada, the new British America, as a country from coast to coast.

While an engineering marvel, it was essentially a land-grab from the First Nations peoples under threat of violence. Simultaneously, the railway became a way to contain and control (assimilate and segregate) the indigenous peoples, as the new Canadian government created reserves in which First Nations would now live. The railroad disrupted bison migration patterns and with it First Nations’ ways of life to survive and thrive. (They were subsequently starved as the government attempted to save money by not providing them food.) Vast inequalities persist to this day for First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples within Canada, stemming from this era.

​Smith was one of a number of Highlands men who were instrumental in forming Canada as a country, including his cousin George Stephen from Dufftown, who also part-funded the CPR and later built a hospital in his hometown, and also John A. Macdonald, the first prime minister of Canada who was born in Glasgow but whose family was from near Aviemore. Under his government the Indian Residential School system was begun which forcibly removed indigenous children from their families and was found by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 to amount to ‘cultural genocide.

Moving on to the Highland capital of Inverness, around a third of the original funding for the Royal Northern Infirmary came from colonial links in Bengal as well as plantations in the Caribbean which were owned by local families and run on slave labour.[11]

Lachlan Mackintosh of Raigmore Estate contributed funds made in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta, West Bengal) not only to the Infirmary[12] but also to Inverness Royal Academy which similarly also received money from plantations and the slave trade in the West Indies. He later became a Director of Inverness Royal Academy.

The Infirmary later received money from local individuals who had made their fortune in Canada,[13]  Tasmania,[14] and India[15], all places where the British were expanding their colonial and economic interests.

Similarly the original Nairn Hospital was largely funded through many smaller donations by local ‘military men’ in Bengal.

Not only hospitals but Highland schools were funded through slavery and empire, including Inverness Royal Academy, Tain Academy, Fortrose Academy and schools in Cromarty. As a consequence of relations between Highland plantation owners and enslaved women – as ‘mulatto’ lovers, as wives or ‘country’ wives, or through sexual violence – it was said there were proportionately more mixed-race children in 19th century Inverness then there are today – listen to 25-mins of BBC Good Morning Scotland with David Alston explaining more.

Hospitals of course were funded in several ways; here we aim to highlight only some of the connections to Empire. But what’s the relevance for us in Highland here and now?

Knowing and understanding these connections may be a first step to realising the often complex journey of wanting to improve the lives of our families and communities – which is very relatable – but which may be at the expense of others.

How does ‘do no harm’ play out today? What practices are we personally and collectively a part of which might contribute to ongoing inequality and injustice, both here in the Highlands and elsewhere?

When we consider these questions and our colonial roots, we acknowledge and address how colonialism and oppression still shows up in our modern day lives – how much it may be embedded, only being noticeable to those it most impacts. How much do we notice it, or feel it? And if we don’t, what might we be missing?  
 

A postscript: This article, written in English, is a sign of colonialism. Gaelic was the dominant language of the land here in the Highlands for several thousand years, English for only several hundred. There was concerted English effort over many centuries to stamp out Gaelic – it was physically beaten out of children at school, amongst many other measures – and to restrict Gaelic cultural practices. It was largely successful.


Endnotes/references:

[1] HFHS-Journal-341-S.pdf (highlandfhs.org) p12
[2] History of the Macleods with genealogies of the principal families of the name (nls.uk) p198
[3] Indigo Cultivation and the Rural Crisis in North Bihar in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century on JSTOR p72
​[4] Full text of "History of Behar indigo factories ; Reminiscences of Behar ; Tirhoot and its inhabitants of the past ; History of Behar light horse volunteers" (archive.org) p228-229
[5] JC & SJ Leslie (2011) The Hospitals of Skye p26
​[6] Strathpeffer Hospitals (historyofhighlandhospitals.com) p13
[7] JC & SJ Leslie (2011) The Hospitals of Skye p35
​[8] Ibid p44
[9] JC & SJ Leslie (2013) The Hospitals of Lochaber p46
​[10] Ibid p73
​[11] JC & SJ Leslie (2017) The Hospitals of Inverness p36
​[12] Ibid p47
[13] Ibid p67 and p84
[14] Aberdeen Press & Journal, 13 May 1896 (accessible at https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/)
[15] JC & SJ Leslie (2017) The Hospitals of Inverness p73 and p100