Bothan air a’ Phrèiridh on BBC ALBA, 25th Dec at 9pm

Bothan air a’ Phrèiridh (Cabin on the Prairies) is a fascinating new documentary, a Gaelic road trip going back to the mid 20th century yet firmly rooted in the 21st century.

It’s a journey of discovery on an emigrant’s road to the ‘Far West’ of Canada and back again, portraying family stories and separations both overseas and at home.

The hour-long documentary on BBC ALBA, from the writer’s personal perspective, follows the return of a Benbecula-born Gael, Ewen MacKay (Isle of Skye-based joiner and father of six), to the Canadian prairie homestead where his mother, Bealag MacKay was born at the beginning of the ‘Dirty Thirties’ out in the Canadian West.

Bealag’s father, Seonaidh Paterson, had emigrated in 1924 to the Canadian province of Alberta, a year after the Marloch had sailed from Lochboisdale, South Uist, with hundreds bound for the same destination.

Once set up on his prairie homestead, Seonaidh married Flora MacLellan, also from South Uist, who later died when Bealag was only an infant. So Bealag grew up in Alberta, on the farm of her mother’s sister’s family in Clandonald. Her father was mostly absent during this time, turning his hand to various odd jobs to make ends meet from farming his own land, to working as a lumberman, to winning medals and prize money in local rodeo events as a ‘steer wrestling’ (bulldogging) Gaelic Cowboy.

By the end of the 1930s though, the Gaelic Cowboy suddenly left and brought his daughter back across the North Atlantic to live with relatives in Benbecula, a distant homeland she had never seen.

A young girl with little Gaelic at first, Bealag remained in Benbecula throughout the 1940s and beyond, marrying a local man, Iain MacKay, and going on to raise a family of five of whom Ewen is the youngest. Seonaidh also remained on the Islands and in his remaining days, stayed in the house of his daughter Bealag and her husband Iain. In his last conscious hours, he called out in Gaelic that his beloved prairie horses were escaping from his failing grasp.

Iain MacPherson, a friend of Ewen MacKay from his years living in the Isle of Skye, first met Ewen’s mother Bealag on a New Year trip to Benbecula. Pulling out her Alberta birth certificate and her father’s rodeo cup, she had told him part of her life story of coming and going.

In the documentary, Ewen along with Iain (an Alberta native like Bealag) set off in search of both the final and initial threads of the tale from the Western Isles and the Isle of Skye to the endless prairie of Red Deer and the dusty hills of Clandonald.

Bothan air a’ Phrèiridh has been produced for BBC ALBA by Pelicula Films, written and presented by Iain S MacPherson and directed by Mark Littlewood. The hour long documentary will be transmitted on BBC ALBA on Friday 25 December at 9pm.