Scottish Thistle Monument - Winnipeg, MB





CAIRN OF TEARS

An so they came on a far off evening up to the hilltop,
Child, and man, and woman,
Each with a stone wetted by their tears
And every stone they placed and made themselves a cairn
And called it Cairn An Dorin.
Here was their hill, a hill of sorrow
And they stood around in silence
For each stone held each their lives,
To be left here and seen from far upon this hill,
To be known to all the waters, and the far off islands,
To all the winds, the calm and the storm,
To the great cast shadows of the clouds,
The rain, and the salt sweet mist,
The sun, and the shade of the season
Until the time each stone should fall away
As brittle lichen falls, finding no life within the dying tree.
Silent they stood looking round and round
And then went down the dark pathways to the sea.

Author Unknown

(This poem describes the departure of scottish settlers on their journey to Canada. The original Cairn An Dorin can still be seen in Scotland to this day.)

This monument was unveiled by the right reverend Hugh Wyllie, Moderator of the General Assembly of The Church of Scotland, on June 19th, 1993. This cairn commemorates the 175th anniversary of the arrival on the Red River of Thomas Douglas, Fifth Earl of Selkirk, and his settlers. His first group of settlers arrived here in 1812 and so began the great City of Winnipeg.

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Parish names listed in the Ross Area (on the Thistle Monument) are --- Alness, Avoch, Contin, Cromarty, Dingwall, Fearn/Nigg, Ferintosh, Fodderty/Strathpeffer, Fortrose/Rosemarkie, Invergordon, Killearnan, Kilmuir/Logie Easter, Kiltearn, Knockbain, Lochbroom/Ullapool, Resolis/Urquhart, Rosskeen, Tain, Tarbat and Urray/Kilchrist.

CRA-Canada Newsletter: August 1, 1994.