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Interview of Ron MacLeod : Interview
Description
March 15, 25 2004 (the voice volume/clarity is quite bad in the March 25 interview; one of the tapes at the end is distorted)
John Ronald MacLeod (May 22 1924, Victoria). His brother, Ian, who worked at UBC, went out fishing in 1955 and never returned. He was married with two children. He was also a piper.
His Gaelic name, which isn’t spelled out, means “fair-haired little Ronald”. He understands a little Gaelic; his uncle used to take Sunday school in Gaelic, and he says he could “understand the flow of it”. He went to Victoria Highschool and then King Edward in Vancouver. He quit High-school at Grade 12 and then went to work for the province newspaper, then worked at construction at Tofino airport. He went back to high school but then his father got cancer and he never went back after that. He then went to work at several logging camps. He then joined the navy in Victoria – the Fisherman’s Reserve. He then went to Gibson’s Logging Company. After this he became a watch-keeper for the Tofino Lifeboats. He also went to a School for ex-service people in Vancouver. After this he went to University for a couple of years and then went back to logging and fishing. He eventually became the Director-General of Pacific and Freshwater Fisheries. He received the Order of Canada for his lifetime’s work in the Fisheries. In 2000 he also received the Chancellor’s Distinguished Service Award for his services to Simon Fraser University.
He remembers there being a very close Scottish community in Tofino. Although his uncles and so forth didn’t want to go back to Rossa, they kept on telling stories and reminiscing about the place. His uncle, Alec, who came out around 1911, was a big influence on his feelings of Scottishness. For example, he would sing songs and recite passages from the Bible in Gaelic. When John goes to Scotland, he has a feeling of “belonging”. When he enters/crosses the English-Scottish border, he feels “home”.
His father was Murdo (Kylerrona, Rossa, 1880). He also gives his father’s name in Gaelic, but doesn’t spell it out; his full name charts his genealogy back into the Lairds of Rossa. On his father’s mother’s side was someone called Peggy Vantruck (“the widow of John of the Field”), whose parentage was Alastair More (“Donald the Blacksmith”). More’s grandfather was a Macbeth from Applecross and was approached by the Laird of Rossa at the Rossa Games to be his blacksmith and take the MacLeod name. John can trace the family name back to founder of the Macleod family/can around 1200: he was an illegitimate son of King Olaf the Black, was given lands in Lewis and married a woman called (?) who brought Dunvegan into the family. So John’s family is a mix of Gaelic and Norse. In fact, John participated in a DNA test with around 700 other Macleods from around the world and they found it to be around 30% of Norse origin. He suspects he has Norse blood in him. His father’s second brother, Ewan, left police force in Glasgow and came to Tofino first and became a policemen for the Native population, then went to Lilloet and Kamloops. This was the impetus for his father coming out to Canada. Murdo married his wife Julia in Victoria, 1919. He Joined a Pioneers Regiment in Victoria during the war, building bridges and roads on the front line; he was wounded. He then became Overseer of Fisheries in Tofino. He was a Gaelic speaker. He and his wife would speak English most of the time, but would speak Gaelic if they wanted to keep something from their children. His attitude to his children was that he brought them to Canada “to be Canadian”. His father felt a special affinity for the Native population; as a Highland Scot, he felt them as a fellow dispossessed people.
John’s mother was Julia MacLeod (Island of Flatta, Rossa, 1882). He also gives mother’s full Gaelic name. Her last name, Callum, joins the two families together through Captain Malcolm MacLeod, who fought for the Chief of Rossa and Bonnie Prince Charlie in the ’45. He fought at Falkirk and Culloden. He also taught the famous piper John Mackay and helped Bonnie Prince Charlie escape Government capture after Culloden. MacLeod was eventually captured by Captain Fergusson of the British Navy and was sent to London to be tried for treason, but there was a lack of evidence to prosecute him. John Mackay’s son, Angus, put the piobaireachd into the modern musical form (He was also a composer: “Lament for Prince Charles”, “Colbeck’s Lament” and “Lady Doiley’s Salute”). She was educated in Rossa and then went to Australia as a nanny when she was around 31 before coming over to Vancouver and marrying her husband.
John is asked to explain the piobaireachd: It merely means “act of piping”; also called ceol mor. It is the music of the Highlands, celebrating heroes, events, and small events. For John is has an “appeal and beauty” akin to Mozart.
John also talks about Gaelic names: they usually depict a certain characteristic or geographical locale (e.g. “Ian the Stout”). He also talks about mythologies around Rossa, such as storms being caused by witches who filled an eggshell with water, shake it, and this would create a storm. John’s father never finished a boiled egg without breaking the bottom of the shell. Another myth his father brought with him was a belief in the power of the Rowantree to protect the home from evil spirits. He planted a Rowantree in 1931 at his house in Vancouver.
His grandfather on his father’s side was Ian (Kylerrona, 1855). He lived in a “blackhouse” (no windows). It has 2 rooms and was occupied by himself, his wife, and 7 children (Isabella, John’s father, Ewan, James, Catherine, Alec, Marianne). There was no running water; it had a dirt floor; there was no toilet, not even outhouse. He died at 35. He had two plots of land and some crops and sheep. They depended mostly on fish (dried, salted fish). It was a “very tenuous survival”: thecCrops could rot, sometimes the fish would be barren, etc. The landowners were also “avaricious and ruthless”, buying up the land for sheep farming and games and driving the people off.
Keywords: Victoria; bagpipes; fisheries; SFU; Gaelic; Kyleronna; Tofino