A bitter dispute has re-opened centuries old wounds, pitting some Nova Scotians of Scottish ancestry against each other.
The chairman of the Canadian province's newly renamed Royal Gaelic College stepped down because of a backlash against the school gaining its royal prefix from the Queen, according to local media reports.
The Cape Breton college was founded in 1938 by a Presbyterian minister from Skye. It claims to be the most important school of Gaelic language and culture in North America and the change was to have marked its 75th anniversary. Alex Morrison, who has resigned, had announced that the Queen had allowed it to be called Colaisde Rioghail na Gàidhlig - The Royal Gaelic College.
The office of Allan MacMaster, the Conservative Member of the Legislative Assembly of Nova Scotia for the Inverness constituency, said he had received scores of e-mails, calls and letters complaining about the college's new name. The opposition stems from claims Britain once suppressed Scottish Gaelic culture, pushing many Scots to emigrate to lands including Canada.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article