Norma Marr in Canada recently sent me a heads up about an interesting Canadian man, who was born in High Blantyre. She found a brief record on a Canadian ancestry website and copied it across to me, writing William John Gourley, 1880-1956, was born in High Blantyre, Lanarkshire, Scotland, and moved to Calgary, Alberta where he […]
This is John McGauley, a Blantyre man who left along with 16 other miners for Nova Scotia in 1927. However, he soon returned home with his young family, when he, and the other miners found that the conditions in the Nova Scotia mines, were much worse and more unsafe than conditions in Blantyre. On […]
I have uncovered a story of unemployed men and their families being returned back to Blantyre, from Canada. Under a headline, “Dumped in Scotland from Canada”, local newspapers of 2nd March 1933, reported that strong objection had been made by the Public Assistance Officer for Lanarkshire due to the methods adopted the Canadian Government in […]
On Saturday 27th July 1935, Mrs Johnstone of 25 Station Road, Blantyre, received a letter that brought some very unwelcome and tragic news. The postman delivered an international intimation that her son-in-law, Mr John Collison Martin, had been killed in an accident when at work as a miner in the Reserve Mines at Cape Breton, Nova […]