Bothan air a' Phrèiridh / Cabin on the Prairies

A 58-minute documentary film in Scottish Gaelic produced, researched, written, presented and translated by Iain S MacPherson with PELICULA FILMS LTD. for a commission from MG ALBA for broadcast on BBC ALBA / BBC 2 SCOTLAND. The film tells the story of multiple emigrations/immigrations from the Outer and Inner Hebrides of Scotland to the prairies of Western Canada taking place from the late nineteenth century through to the 1920s, 1930s and up to the present twenty-first century. The writer/presenter takes a friend from Benbecula, Outer Hebrides, back on the road of emigration followed by the friend's grandparents and greatgrandparents in 1923, to the prairie homestead where the friend's mother was born and from whence she was taken back before WWII after the death of her mother to be raised by a paternal great-uncle and his wife in the Gaelic-speaking islands: a prairie girl with little or no Gaelic. She never left the islands and went on to marry and raise a family of five Gaelic-speaking children of whom the youngest is the friend in question. Her story is recounted movingly by herself at home in Benbecula before the writer/presenter and her son retrace the steps of dislocation from the Outer Hebrides to the Canadian province of Alberta where they find traces of this family story, these two family stories, the writer's intersecting with his friend's, of separation and problematic new beginnings.