Who Was the First Scottish Immigrant to Canada ?

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Hello, I'm Bruce Fumi. As I prepared to head off to Canada in June and July to do my live standup comedy show, Scotland Made the World, it got me thinking about a YouTube video that I uploaded a while back all about asking the question, who was the first Scotsman to arrive in Canada?

[00:00:22]Please share this with every Canadian you know. Here's the video.

[00:00:28]Who was the first Scottish immigrant to Canada?

[00:00:33]I've seen it written that the first European to touch the North American shoreline was when the Viking Eric the Red explored the area.

[00:00:42]Before deciding whether or not to land, they sent two Scottish slaves ashore.

[00:00:48]And when the Scots survived 24 hours without being attacked by man or beast, the Vikings followed.

[00:00:56]Now, I can't confirm the truth of that story, but there's a later tale of Henry Sinclair, the prince of Ortney, an ancestor to the builder of Lorland Chapel. Apparently, he sailed west with some Venetian sailors, and discovered the Americas before Christopher Columbus.

[00:01:16]Now, that may or may not have been true, but I can confirm the journey of Alexander Fraser. So, if you're interested in the people, places, and events in Scottish history, then click the subscribe button at the bottom right of the screen and ring the notification bell to be told when I upload new videos. In the meantime, let me tell you a story.

[00:01:40]Sandy Fraser was a school boy in Buie on April the 16th, 1746.

[00:01:46]So for him, the 15-mi walk he was about to take would have seemed comfortable compared to some of the challenges to come.

[00:01:55]At the end of the walk, he found himself standing with other school boys peering as a group out onto Dramas Ma.

[00:02:06]He saw his clansmen line up against the red coat army and TM Jerich to the lords of love it. Sandy saw two of his brothers shot down that day on Colordin Field. To say nothing of members of his wider family.

[00:02:25]A year later in London, his clan chief would be the last person to be executed by beheaden in Britain for his part in the Jacobite rising.

[00:02:36]The 18th century saw the start of a wave of immigration from Scotland across the Atlantic. Now, this wasn't the clearances that would come later. Folks weren't yet being forced out of their homes, but being lured with promises of land. Land so good that you'd hear your children complain, "Ah, Mom, not milk and honey again."

[00:03:02]Speculators like John Pagan would obtain a grant of land from the crown on condition that they populated the area with colonists who would clear and farm the land to grow a new colony. Now, the number of Scots in the market for milk and honey soaked land was such that when he published adverts in the autumn 1772 editions of the Glasgow Journal and the Edinburgh Advertiser, Pagan was pretty sure that a never to be repeated opportunity of a lifetime would fill the boat in days.

[00:03:37]The first 20 families to apply would get 150 acres for husband and wife and 50 more for each child and servant. Not only that, the six pence an acre fee was in the basis of buy now pay later and no doubt double club card points.

[00:03:59]All you had to fork out now was the price of the passage.

[00:04:04]form an orderly queue. Ladies and gentlemen, 26 years after watching the siblings fall at the Battle of Colon, the first person to sign up for this scheme was Alexander Fraser. Now, let's be clear.

[00:04:24]I'm not suggesting that he was the first Scott to ever land in Canada. We've already covered possible candidates for that. And there were others from the time of the 1629 naming and colonization of Nova Scotia. Oh, incidentally, I made a video about that. Just come back and click the link top right.

[00:04:47]Alexander Fraser was however the first to sign up for passage on the Hector whose replicas undergoing work in the dry dock in Picto today. The Hector was the first of a wave of ships that would open the floodgates to a hundred years of vessels carrying people running to, running from, or expelled from land holdings in one side of the Atlantic or another. That's why the Hector's significant and that is why Alexander Fraser as its first might be considered its most significant passenger.

[00:05:31]On the ship, Fraser was reunited with somebody that he'd met before.

[00:05:37]Alexander Cameron, who would settle here in the new lock room, had been another one of the spectators who had stood watching tragedy unfold on Collord Moore when they were boys.

[00:05:51]When they were delivered in a Canadian autumn, the land of milk and honey promised turned out to be a land of forest, wilderness, and extreme cold where no food would be provided over the winter unless the newly arrived got to work on the frozen land allocated to them. Now, I've recounted in another video the response of Donald Macdonald, Colin Douglas, and Rodrik Mai to the situation that they found themselves in.

[00:06:21]If you want more detail, then you can click the link top right to see that video about possibly the most intrepid of the Highlanders who crossed in the Hector.

[00:06:35]Alexander Fraser took a different approach. He went up the eastern shores of Middle River and squatted on land that belonged to previous land speculators of the Philadelphia Grant who had failed to lure people onto it.

[00:06:52]Now before we go further, let me point out two things. Firstly, I think the indigenous Migma might have some different ideas about who was squatting and who the land belonged to. Secondly, when I chatted with one of the local galaxy speaking Kate Bretoners on this trip, he pointed out that without McMaw and the help that they provided his ancestors through their first winter, he would never have been here today.

[00:07:24]The New England settlers who had remained from the Philadelphia land grant had also survived with McMall help.

[00:07:31]We can attribute success in this area today to the resolution of Scotsmen or the resilience of Highlanders at least as much should be ascribed to the generosity of indigenous peoples.

[00:07:47]In case you didn't know, my reason for traveling to Canada back in 2024 was to tour my standup show. And in June and July of 2026, I'm coming back with a new show called Scotland Made the World.

[00:08:01]I'll be traveling the whole country from Sydney and Cape Breton on the 5th of June through to Victoria BC in the 26th of July in every province in between. Go to my website www.brfumi.co.uk for venues, dates, and tickets. And please share this with everyone you know in Canada who's interested in things Scottish and I'll see them at one of my shows. Back to Alexander Fraser struggle.

[00:08:31]In Scotland, he'd been relatively comfortable, kin to the love at Frasers and married to a Leair's daughter. Here, he faced hardship.

[00:08:42]Some examples are given in Donald Mikai's book, Scotland Farewell, the people of the Hector.

[00:08:50]In that, the family had to go to Truro to sell their labor. Alexander Fraser's son later told how he as a boy once walked the 40 miles to Truro carrying his little sister on his back. On the 3-day journey, the only food they had was the tail of an eel.

[00:09:12]One return from Trudeau, they brought seed potatoes, but no sooner were they buried for a future harvest than they had to be dug up again to feed empty bellies. Now, another potato related incident was when the cupboards were so bare that Alexander resorted to cutting down a birch tree to boil the buds for his family to eat.

[00:09:39]When there was no nourishment to be squeezed out of them, the well-born Fraser shamefully walked a distance to the harbor and in desperation dug up some potatoes an established settler had planted.

[00:09:54]When the religious minded New Englander heard of the theft, he said that he thanked God the potatoes had been there to feed Fraser's family.

[00:10:05]Fraser's status as minor gentry back home didn't prevent his second son having to be bound out like many other young boys as an indentured servant in Truro.

[00:10:18]After a while the family finally scraped together enough cash for a cow and the eldest Fraser boy was sent to Truro to buy it. When he got to Truro, he met his younger brother who was so desperate to get out of his indenture that young Alexander used the money intended for the cow to buy his brother's freedom.

[00:10:40]You can imagine the two young lads on the return, the younger brother sheepishly sending the older in first to respond to his mother's request of, "Well, have you got the cow?"

[00:10:54]"No," came the reply.

[00:10:56]I bought my brother Simon instead.

[00:11:01]His mom smiled, saying, "Poor as I am, I'd rather see Simon than a cow."

[00:11:13]Another time, mother saw the depths of the children's hunger and killed the only laying hen because there was nothing else to eat.

[00:11:23]They had no salt, so they boiled it in salt water from the sea as seasoning.

[00:11:28]With no vegetables, she used herbs from the forest that the natives had assured them were trustworthy.

[00:11:34]Needless to say, they were soon hungry again, and the cycle continued.

[00:11:42]You wouldn't think to look along Fraser Road today in a Canadian spring, but back then the winters were harsh and long.

[00:11:51]However good your trousers are, they're useless without two pairs of stockings and hairline moccasins tightly laced with thongs.

[00:12:00]If I'm not careful, my nose and lips freeze, and my ears are always in danger from the north wind with its biting bitterness.

[00:12:10]But they struggled on, dressed in homespun clothing like their New England neighbors elsewhere in the area. But on special occasions, they wore the kilt, a freedom denied to the Highlanders who'd remained in Scotland, unless they joined the British army.

[00:12:34]Slowly but surely, the Frasers made headway. They learned fishing, forestry, and hunting in a new environment. They cleared and cultivated land with axe and spade, foothull and sickle. They first harvested a crop of potatoes that could feed the family, then enough surplus to carry on their backs to market. They reaped some oats and replanted till eventually they had enough for porridge.

[00:13:03]Shellfish from the harbor and salmon from the river. And little by little they made this place work. all the way along receiving advice from natives and more established settlers alike.

[00:13:19]Others settled around them. Donald Macdonald, Colin Douglas, Alexander Ross from near Aleppool, James Mloud from Southerntherland, and Kenneth Fraser.

[00:13:32]As the 1770s came to a close, other countrymen, veterans from the recent war against colonial rebels, started to arrive around these parts, fleeing persecution in the new country of the United States of America. This area became overwhelmingly Scottish. The community requested galaxing Presbyterian ministers from Scotland. A monument on the other side of the bay marks the place where a first sermon was preached. The Reverend McGregor, who later led services in a wooden church like this one, was followed by the Reverend McCullik, whose school transformed the life and children's education of this Scots community and provided an educational foundation that impacted the breadth of Nova Scotia.

[00:14:26]Ultimately, Alexander Fraser obtained a land grant with his family of more than 500 acres.

[00:14:34]No longer a squatter, but a landholder, Alexander Fraser, kin to the love it freezers who witnessed collordin as a boy, was the first to risk a future and sign up to a crossing on the Hector.

[00:14:53]When he got here, he refused to be cowed by the land speculators, choosing perseverance over pangs of hunger. Now he'd achieved an independence that he could never have enjoyed in Buie.

[00:15:09]On September the 24th, 1803, Alexander Fraser died at the age of 75.

[00:15:17]He'd seen his wife deliver seven children. Two of his five sons were born at Picto. They were Canadian Scots for whom he'd built a new future. But even as we commemorate him, I'm reminded of Angus Mloud, the GAC teacher that I met in Cape Breton, who rightly asserted that if it wasn't for the help that Native Mau gave his ancestors, he wouldn't be here today.

[00:15:48]I've made videos about other Scots pioneers. There are some fantastic stories of courage, heroism, and some dodgy stuff, too. There's one coming up on screen now. You really should watch it. The channel really doesn't survive without your support.

[00:16:04]So, help the channel by clicking top right to become a Patreon member or buy me a coffee in the description below.

[00:16:11]Ham and dog is going to be a llama life.

[00:16:14]Cherry and raster.