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St. Andrews Day. Winnipeg. 1936.

I am honoured to be here tonight as the guest of this
Society, and to be entrusted with the toast of this day, and all the
memories which it evokes. In most of the British Dominions the St. Andrews
Day banquet is the most important function of the year, for, like the
Guildhall banquet in London, it is the occasion on which statesmen
declare their policy. Here in Canada it has a special meaning.
It is the praiseworthy custom of our race, by whatever waters of
Babylon their tents may be pitched, to form a Society to remind them
of the rock whence they were hewn. But I doubt if the Red river and
the Assiniboine can be called the waters of Babylon, for Canada, in
one sense, is simply Scotland writ large. Since I came here a year
ago I have never suffered for one moment from homesickness. I find
pine forests and swift streams, and trout, and salmon, and mountains
which are Scotland on a grander scale; and I find in parts of the
Prairies green rolling hills like my own Borders. I find everywhere
often men and women of Scots descent who still, after several generations,
often retain the soft Highland voice or the broad Lowland speech.
I have now been a good deal up and down Canada, and everywhere I go
I am greeted by the sound of the pipes. You need only the heather and
a Scots mist to make the resemblance complete.

Nevertheless tonight I am addressing a gathering of exiles
- contented exiles - and some whose exile now dates back over many
generations; but exiles all the same. For any man who has Scottish
blood in his veins is an exile away from Scotland. Now, in a sense
it is the genius of the Scot to be an exile. He is extraordinarily
good at pitching his tent in faraway places and prospering. But he
always keeps one eye and a considerable part of his mind on the lit-