Scottish Emigration to Canada
Pictou, the Miramichi and Charlottetown provided the focus of timber trade between Scotland and Canada. The fact that so many Scottish Highlanders settled in eastern Canada during the late 1700s and early 1800s is largely attributable to the relative ease with which they could be collected by the many timber ships which were then leaving the Clyde.
The British government's policy of encouraging loyal Scottish settlers to settle in boundary areas considered vulnerable to attack from the United States helped to create the great concentrations of Scots in eastern Upper Canada. Communities were founded by Loyalist Scots from 1784, and the government-sponsored Rideau Valley settlements which were founded in 1815. Upper Canada's good land and climate made it highly desirable to Scottish immigrants who flocked to it in great numbers once internal water and road communications were improved from the 1820s.