Last updated at 11:16 PM on 29/04/07

An important year in shared history

RANNIE GILLIS
The Cape Breton Post

The year 1899 was an important year for the approximately 2,500 inhabitants of the small village of Sydney, Nova Scotia. For in early spring of that year construction started on a brand new steel plant, a large-scale industrial project that when completed three years later would be the largest and most modern steel making facility in the Dominion of Canada.

The year 1899 was also an important year for the approximately 25 inhabitants of the Isle of Rhum, a small island in the Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland. For in early spring of that year construction started on a rather unique castle (Kinloch Castle), a small-scale architectural project that when completed three years later would rank as one of the most extravagant and ostentatious mansions in the British Isles.

During the three years of construction on Rhum, the population of the island increased by about 100 individuals, skilled and unskilled labourers who arrived from other islands in the Hebrides, as well as from adjacent areas on the mainland of Scotland.

During the three years of construction at Sydney Steel, the city also experienced a rapid increase in population, with the arrival of skilled and unskilled labourers from other parts of Cape Breton and Newfoundland, as well as several thousand immigrants from Europe and the Middle East.

Many of these new workers at the steel plant were Gaelic speaking Scots from rural Cape Breton. Some of these people were more than likely second and third generation descendants of the original 350 inhabitants of the Isle of Rhum, whose ancestors came to Port Hawkesbury in 1826, after being evicted from their little island during the infamous “Highland Clearances”.

When the steel plant in Sydney closed in 2001, Cape Breton had experienced exactly 100 years of good times and bad, with regard to the operation of a major steel making facility in the city.

During the First World War Sydney Steel produced almost half of all the steel made in Canada, while during the Second World War it produced almost one-third. For the better part of eight decades, it remained the most important steel making centre in Eastern Canada. Today, however, nothing remains, except for the environmental hazards of our own infamous “Sydney Tar Ponds”.

By the year 2001 Kinloch Castle on Rhum had also experienced exactly 100 years of good times and bad. It too, even before it was completely finished, had a role to play in wartime. During the Boer War in South Africa (1899-1901), and for several years thereafter, it served as a convalescent hospital for wounded officers from the British and Canadian armies.

The castle’s new owner, the young and fabulously wealthy George Bullogh, could not move in until about 1904. For the next 33 years, however, he used Kinloch Castle as the centre for his increasingly elaborate and extravagant lifestyle. Following his death in 1937, his widow continued to live there, until she sold the Isle of Rhum to the Nature Conservancy Council of Scotland in 1957 .

Today, the castle and the island are owned by Scottish Natural Heritage, a non-profit society dedicated to the preservation of historic properties.

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Rannie Gillis is an author and avid Celtic historian whose column appears every week in the Cape Breton Post. We welcome your comments on this column or any other material appearing in the Post. You can write c/o Letters to the Editor; Cape Breton Post, 255 George St., PO Box 1500, Sydney N.S., BIP 6K6 or Fax to (902) 562-7077 or e-mail ranniegillis@ns.sympatico.ca

30/04/07