As the third-largest ethnic group in Canada and amongst the first Europeans to settle in the country, Scottish people have made a large impact on Canadian culture since colonial times.

[15] The first documented source of Scots in what would become Canada comes from the Saga of Eric the Red and the Viking expedition of 1010 AD to Vinland (literally, the land of meadows), which is believed to refer to the island of Newfoundland.

An apocryphal voyage in 1398 by a captain named Zichmni, believed to be Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, is also claimed to have reached Atlantic Canada as well as New England.

Gordon resorted to hiring a fleet of ships and forcibly transporting his Hebridean crofters to Canada, where they were conveniently abandoned on Canadian authorities.

The government made certain potential immigrants know of the advantages, sending agents to recruit Irish and Scottish emigrants to settle in western Canada between 1867 and the 1920s.

It set up offices in towns in Ireland and Scotland, and agents went up and down the land pasting up attractive posters, giving lectures, handing out pamphlets and trying one-on-one to persuade farmers and laborers of the virtues of life in Canada.

[citation needed] A number of Scottish loyalists to the British crown, who had fled the United States in 1783, arrived in Glengarry County (in eastern Ontario) and Nova Scotia.

In 1803, Lord Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk, who was sympathetic to the plight of the dispossessed crofters (tenant farmers in the Highlands), brought 800 colonists to Prince Edward Island.

In 1811, he founded the Red River Colony as a Scottish colonization project on an area of 300,000 square kilometres (120,000 sq mi) in what would later be the province of Manitoba — land that was granted by the Hudson's Bay Company, in what is referred to as the Selkirk Concession.

One prominent settler in PEI was John MacDonald of Glenaladale, who conceived the idea of sending Gaels to Nova Scotia on a grand scale after Culloden.

The surrounding lands surveyed by Captain Bruce in 1762 attracted many Scottish traders when William Davidson of Caithness arrived to settle two years later.

[21] Canadian Gaelic was spoken as the first language in much of "Anglophone" Canada, such as Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Glengarry County in Ontario.

The Gaelic influences of Scottish immigrants continue to play an important role in defining the cultural life of the province, especially in its music.

The original Micmac inhabitants, Acadian French, Irish, Loyalists from New England, Lowland Scots and English have all contributed to a history which has included cultural, religious, and political conflict as well as cooperation and synthesis.

The Highland Scots became the largest community in the early 19th century, and their heritage in music, folklore, and language has survived government indifference, but it is now threatened by a synthetic marketable 'tartan clan doll culture' aimed primarily at tourists.

When the Don de Dieu sailed up the St. Lawrence River during the first wave of colonization of French Canada, it was piloted by a Scot, Abraham Martin.

Unemployment and suffering following the end of the Napoleonic Wars caused the British government to reverse its former policies and actively encourage emigration.

An educational institution of Scottish origin is Queen's University in Kingston "the Aberdeen of Canada", founded largely through the efforts of noted scholar George Munroe Grant.

[citation needed] Scottish influence has been an important part of the cultural mix both in metropolitan Vancouver and wider British Columbian society.

These two castles brought Scottish Baronial architecture to very prominent landmarks in Victoria, both of which have been designated as National Historic Sites for their significance to the city.

West Vancouver's first European settler, John Lawson, planted holly by the side of the "burn" or river flowing across his property; he coined "Hollyburn" as the name for his place.

Mrs. MacKinnon was asked by the British Columbia Electric Railway manager R.H. Sterling to name the interurban tram stop at Wilson Road (today West 41st Avenue).

[citation needed] Other evidence of the Scottish influence on the development of British Columbia can be found in the names of streets, parks, creeks and other geographical features throughout the province, the most notable of which are the Fraser River and Mount Douglas (PKOLS).

The Tartan days, clan gatherings, highland games, and showings of films like Braveheart indicate a sense of Scottishness that is informed by stories, narratives, or myths of the homeland's rural, masculinist, resistant past.

The Comhairle na Gàidhlig is an organization devoted to "creating an environment that makes Nova Scotia a place where Gaelic language, culture, and communities thrive.

Another Scot, William Lyon Mackenzie, who led the revolt in Upper Canada against the colonial government in 1838, became a symbol of Canadian radicalism.

Another Scot, William McDougall, was known as one of the fathers of the Confederation; Sir Richard McBride (1870–1917) was from 1903 to 1915 the Premier of British Columbia, where his was the first government under the new system of political parties.

McBride was also known for his tireless work on behalf of the extension of the Pacific Great Eastern Railroad, which was to bind British Columbia together the way the CPR had Canada..

In the 20th century, perhaps the most well-known Canadian politician, particularly revered in Britain for his contribution to the allied cause in World War II, was William Lyon Mackenzie King (1874–1950), who was very proud of his Scots background.

The Scots had a long tradition of struggle to maintain a separate identity in the face of a simultaneous pressure to integrate into a foreign society.