-by Paul Fraser Armstrong, Member, Gaelic College Foundation
A lot of the public discussion recently about the Gaelic College, in the Inverness Oran and elsewhere, has concerned details about a conflict between the Mabou community and the Gaelic College administration. While the reports from the battlefront are clear enough, it has been hard to understand the underlying source of the conflict. I have come to believe that we are witnessing a generational conflict.
The rebuilding that began with the formation of the Gaelic College and Father MacDonald’s Mabou Pioneers in the mid-20th century, exploded as Alistair MacLeod’s literature and the music of John Allen Cameron and Buddy MacMaster were taken seriously by the generation that grew up under their influences. It was this early cultural movement into which Rodney MacDonald was born and grew up, one which uncovered the genealogical lines which had emerged, developed archives at the Beaton, assessed the cultural decline which had happened, and recovered and explored the potentials of the arts. MacDonald became both a participant and advocate.
The addition of a Gaelic language program to the Mabou schools, however, added depth and historical continuity at a wholly different level. This deepening was recognized and extended with the establishment of Beinn Mhàbu in the former Congregation of Notre Dame training school. The importance of this institutionalization and the linkage with CBU for undergraduate education represented a fundamental break with the adult education model of St. Ann’s Gaelic College. And the generation that grew up with the Gaelic language adopted a cultural mission that was consistent with a much deeper understanding of the tradition than the preceding generation had.
This generational difference is exhibited precisely in the attitude to tourism. For Rodney MacDonald’s generation, tourism was a fundamental economic driver that could make a difference in people’s lives. Was Mabou’s Red Shoe restaurant not built on an arts movement that is only viable because of tourism? And was Cabot’s Inverness Golf Course not a major deal for capital investment and income development?
Not so for the following generation, though, who were learning Gaelic with their mother’s milk. Language is not just a vocabulary and particular linguistic forms, but embodies ideas about how the world is ordered and where you find meaning. In this Gaelic world, tourism is, at best, marginal income derived from the community’s own activities. And the idea that you would sacrifice sacred space for tourism is anathema. Of course, the new generation does not yet have an economic strategy, but it is almost certainly going to be built around data, not tourism.
Rodney MacDonald has another ten years of high energy, influence, and power available to him. He can either frustrate this generational movement or help its birth. The job of the Gaelic College Foundation is considerably different. It is to determine whether Mr. MacDonald is a suitable chief executive to lead a profoundly different cultural movement than he has imagined it to be.