page_title: Scottish Canadians
section_title: Scottish settlement of Canada
hierarchical_section_title: Scottish Canadians / Scottish settlement of Canada
caption_attribution_description: English: Map of the dominant self-identified ethnic origins of ancestors per census division. Actual physical origins of ancestors may be different.
context_page_description: Scottish Canadians are people of Scottish descent or heritage living in Canada. As the third-largest ethnic group in Canada and amongst the first Europeans to settle in the country, Scottish people have made a large impact on Canadian culture since colonial times. According to the 2016 Census of Canada, the number of Canadians claiming full or partial Scottish descent is 4,799,010, or 13.93% of the nation's total population. Prince Edward Island has the highest population of Scottish descendants at 41%.
  The Scots-Irish Canadians are a similar ethnic group. They descended from Lowland Scots people via Ulster and observe many of the same traditions as Scots.
context_section_description: Scottish people have a long history in Canada, dating back several centuries.
  Many towns, rivers and mountains have been named in honour of Scottish explorers and traders such as Mackenzie Bay in the Yukon (named for Sir Alexander Mackenzie), and others are named after locations in Scotland, such as Calgary (named after a Scottish beach), or Banff, Alberta named after Banff, Aberdeenshire. Most notably, the Atlantic province of Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". Once Scots formed the vanguard of the movement of Europeans across the continent. In more modern times, immigrants from Scotland have played a leading role in the social, political and economic history of Canada, being prominent in banking, labour unions, and politics.
  The first documented source of Scots in what would become Canada comes from the Saga of Eric the Red and the Viking expedition of 1010 AD to Vinland (literally, the land of meadows), which is believed to refer to the island of Newfoundland. The Viking prince Thorfinn Karlsefni took two Scottish slaves to Vinland. When the longships moored along the coast, they sent the slaves ashore to run along the waterfront to gauge whether it was safe for the rest of the crew to follow. After the Scots survived a day without being attacked, by either human or animal, the Vikings deemed it safe to spend the night ashore. The expedition was abandoned three years later; the original sagas were passed on in an oral tradition and then written down 250 years later.
  An apocryphal voyage in 1398 by a captain named Zichmni, believed to be Henry I Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, is also claimed to have reached Atlantic Canada as well as New England.
caption: Self-identified Scottish Canadians are a plurality in parts of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island (areas coloured in teal).
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