Dualchas is the Gaelic that refers to one’s belonging to a landscape. Scotland is the land of my birth and the landscape for which I have always longed.

When you’re Scottish, you can never fully be anything else. Yet, when you are taken out of Scotland as a child, you can never be fully Scots either. You are forevermore without a country, and when you are in one of those countries in the future, you inevitably feel homesick for the other place. You are destined to be an outsider in both places. You are forever without a home. 

I was born in Scotland in 1965. When we immigrated to Canada in 1966, I was sixteen months old. My Uncle Peter said I was dressed all in pink for the farewell to family at Prestwick Airport on April 25th, 1966. “You were not a happy bunny,” Uncle Peter said. “You cried and screamed and kicked in your mother’s arms. You did not want to go.”

I grew up a North American. A blonde, blue-eyed girl who liked to tan, swim like a fish, wear cut-offs and run barefoot through the hot Canadian summer. I longed to look like Farrah Fawcett, I cheered passionately for the Montreal Canadiens and loved David Cassidy, Bobby Sherman and Lee Majors. We went home to Scotland for one summer and two Christmases. Family in Scotland also came to Canada for summer holidays.

I went to teacher’s college in Glasgow in 1990. I was 25 and newly married to a Canadian. He remained in Canada teaching while I earned my teaching credential in Scotland though I asked him to come with me for the year to have an adventure as a young married couple. He wouldn’t. I often wished I was single then, free to meet a Scotsman, and free to remain in Scotland upon graduation to make a life in the country of my birth; however, I wasn’t. I had a commitment to return to in Canada so begrudgingly back I went. I returned to my husband and taught in Canada for the next 35 years.

Through a divorce, and many career transitions, I continued to long for Scotland and that Scotsman I dreamed of whispering sweet everything into my ear in his rugged brogue. I created vision boards, a dream box and prayed to God daily to lead me home to Scotland and to the Catholic Scotsman He had chosen as my husband.

I had been working as a principal in Canada since 2019. Still, returning to Scotland remained in my heart. Last summer, I interviewed for positions in Scotland from Canada. I rose at 4 AM to speak to different personnel in Scottish schools at 3 PM their time. I was offered work as a supply teacher in two different Scottish districts for August 2023. They advised me to start there and eventually I would find a full-time position in a school.

I was staying in Vancouver with a friend and her husband over the 2023 summer, interviewing for various positions in Canada as well as Scotland. I was offered a position as a supply teacher in Vancouver, BC. I interviewed for a principal’s position in Alberta. It was a Catholic School named for the patron saint of Scotland. I was offered the job. I decided it was a sign from God. It was a wink from heaven telling me that He had heard my prayers for Scotland. Scotland would happen but not yet. I did want to work as a Catholic school principal, just not in rural Alberta.

During the summer, as I prayed for direction, many little signs came to point me in the direction of Scotland. On one occasion, I went to Mass at a Catholic Church in Vancouver. They had a bazaar that day. I didn’t want anything but decided to poke about. I saw an old book of Psalms that fit in the palm of my hand and bought it for 50 cents. When I got back to my friend’s place, I saw that little book was published in Scotland.

As the summer drew to a close, I asked God for a specific sign. I asked Him if I was meant to go to Scotland to let me come across someone that day with a Scottish accent. I was teaching summer school in downtown in Vancouver. I took the Skye Train into the city and back home each day. After school that afternoon, two men sat next to me on the Skye Train and proceeded to speak to one another in thick Scottish accents. I told my friend that night and she dismissed it as a coincidence. I didn’t agree with her. The next day, the two Scotsmen were on the same train carriage with me again. That wasn’t a coincidence; it was a God-incidence.

The safer choice, in my opinion, was to take the principal’s position in Alberta and put off Scotland yet again. I was sick to my stomach at the thought of taking the position in Alberta. That is another sign from God. How you feel about a decision is God’s direction. When I left Canada’s north that 2023 summer, I swore I would never go back. Now I was returning to the north of Canada, to winters of -50 degree Celsius temperatures and to another small farming community. There were also no available houses in the rural Alberta town. I had to rent a basement suite for me and my small dog, Oona. I had lived my life in the basement of my parents’ house as a child and youth, and swore I’d never live in a basement again. I was desolate going there.

The day before I left British Columbia to drive to Alberta to prepare to begin the principal’s position, my friend told me that Rod Stewart was playing in Vancouver’s Roger’s Centre.

“Is that another sign?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

It was another sign for me to go to Scotland. Still, I ignored it and forced myself to go to Edmonton where I would stay the night before continuing further north to the small Alberta town where I was to work in a few weeks’ time. The night I was in Edmonton, Rod Stewart was playing in the stadium across the road from my Edmonton hotel. I bought a ticket for the show, dug out my Scotland t-shirt and went to see my sexy countryman perform. God was telling me to go home. I still didn’t.

The reason I didn’t was a simple one: money. I didn’t feel that I could afford to go to Scotland. Any decision that I have ever made based on money has always turned out to be the wrong one. I never seem to learn that lesson. Once I got to Alberta, it cost me $3500 to certify my car, and over $3000 to buy a bed and other necessities. I also treated my staff and students with my customary generosity as their school leader. Going to Alberta didn’t save me any money. I was also placed at the bottom of the Alberta teachers’ salary grid while Alberta TQS took six months to properly place me and pay me accordingly. That process wasn’t sorted until after I left Alberta on January 30th, 2024.

These too are signposts as God directs steps. There were those many obstacles establishing myself in Alberta. I was very unhappy living in the basement suite. The woman that I rented from had two dogs that barked constantly when she wasn’t home. When I complained about the non-stop barking, she told me to leave. By then I had a job offer in Scotland to teach English. I felt losing my living situation in a town with no other living options was another signpost. I needed to seize the opportunity and go. I felt dreadful leaving my school, my staff and the students, but I was very unhappy in Alberta and I needed to give myself this chance of living my dream and moving back home to Scotland and meeting my Scots’ Catholic husband. Time was ticking on. I wasn’t getting any prettier working in northern Alberta.

On January 31st, 2024, at the age of 59, after leaving my job as a Catholic principal in Alberta, Canada, I gave away all that I owned, sold my car, got on a plane in Calgary, Alberta and flew to London, Heathrow with my dog. We stayed the night in London before taking the Caledonian Sleeper overnight train to Scotland and arrived in Inverness on February 2nd, 2024. We were home.