Electric Scotland News
My Canadian Experience
Added more videos on topics such as coverage of the G20 where the USA was absent. Also Canada's new ties with Turkey, China and India and discussions on Aluminum shortages in the USA. Also added videos on Canada's protection of its Steel and Lumber industries and new agreements towards building pipe lines in Alberta.
You can see what's new at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/canada_add27.htm
--------
MyHeritage is doing a special promotion on their DNA memberships over this weekend so you might like to visit them to see what it is all about. I'd also point out that if you put in a first and last name in the banners we have on the site you can also get a free trial to test out the many facilities they offer.
Scottish News from this weeks newspapers
I am partly doing this to build an archive of modern news from and about Scotland and world news stories that can affect Scotland and as all the newsletters are archived and also indexed on search engines it becomes a good resource. I might also add that in a number of newspapers you will find many comments which can be just as interesting as the news story itself and of course you can also add your own comments if you wish which I do myself from time to time.
Here is what caught my eye this week...
Don't waste the Covid inquiry
This week saw the release of the Covid inquiry's second report. It was damning. The individuals and institutions who mismanaged our approach to the pandemic must be held to account, and the public needs to be told how any future response to a similar emergency will be improved.
Read more at:
https://capx.co/the-covid-inquiry-ca...ed-opportunity
This Budget was bad in every way
What a calamity. This Budget was terrible in terms of its fiscal consequences, economic impact and the incentives it embeds. Rather than economic growth, Rachel Reeves regards redistribution as what should drive fiscal policy. As long as this continues, we will remain a low-productivity, low-growth economy.
Read more at:
https://capx.co/this-budget-was-bad-...y-way-possible?
Extraordinary discovery at Orkney Neolithic site assault cases
Archaeologists are to resume digging at the Ness of Brodgar on Orkney after 3D radar technology led to an "extraordinary discovery". The dig team at the Ness, one of the most important Neolithic sites in the British Isles, are not revealing what they believe the find to be until more work is done.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7836wvx4q4o
Can Canada wait out the trade war with the US?
Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney appears in no rush to resume trade talks with the US. He dismissed a question over the weekend about when he last spoke to US President Donald Trump, responding: "Who cares? It's a detail. I'll speak to him again when it matters."
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17x025jj21o
Could you live on Second World War rations?
Our writer attempts the strict wartime diet
Read more at:
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/could-...iter-tried-it/
Electric Canadian
Wonders of Alberta
The Most Amazing Places in Alberta. Added this video to our Alberta page.
You can view this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...erta/index.htm
My Life with the Eskimo
By Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1913) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...kimo00stef.pdf
Hunters of the Great North
By Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1923) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...GreatNorth.pdf
The Friendly Arctic
The story of five years in Polar regions by Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1921) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...icst00stef.pdf
Rolf in the Woods
The adventures of a Boy Scout with Indian Quonab and Little Dog Skookum by Ernest Thompson Seton (1928) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...inthewoods.pdf
Thoughts on a Sunday Morning - the 23rd day of November 2025 - Year's End & Beginnings
By The Rev. Nola Crewe
You can watch this at:
http://www.electricscotland.org/foru...end-beginnings
German POWs Thought Canadian Winter Would Kill Them
Until Locals Showed Them How to Survive It. Two videos.
You can watch these at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/history/germanpows.htm
The Beaver Magazine
Added No. 3 Outfit 263 December 1932 (pdf)
You can read this issue at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/tran...cember1932.pdf
Electric Scotland
The Thirty-Fourth Division 1915-1919
The story of its career from Ripon to the Rhine by Lieut.-Colonel J. Shakespear, C.M.G., C.I.E. , D.S.O. (1921) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...on19151919.pdf
Sermons by the Late Rev. John Logan, F.R.S.
One of the Ministers of Leith including a complete detail of the service of a Communion Sunday according to the usage of the Church of Scotland in two volumes (New Edition)
You can read these volumes at:
https://electricscotland.com/bible/John-Logan.htm
Scottish Market Crosses
By James Drummond, R.S.A., FSAScot. (1861) (pdf)
You can read this article at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...et_crosses.pdf
The Seaforth Mackenzie Tartan of 1816 (pdf)
You can read this article at:
https://electricscotland.com/webclan...nzieTartan.pdf
Scenes and Adventures in the Army
Or, Romance of Military Life by P. St. G. Cooke, Colonel Second Dragoons, U.S.A. (1859) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...n_the_Army.pdf
Fifth Report of The Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts
Published in 1876 Part 2 (pdf)
You can read this report at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...lcom05grea.pdf
Thirteenth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts
Published in 1892 (pdf)
You can read this report at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...com_13grea.pdf
Twelvth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts
Published in 1890 (pdf)
You can read this report at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...com_12grea.pdf
Autobiography of the late Donald Fraser, D.D.
And a Selection from his Sermons with a Preface by J. Oswald Dykes, D.D. (1892) (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/canada/...ald_Fraser.pdf
The Sermons and Other Practical Works of the Late Reverend Ralph Erskine, A.M., Dunfermline
Consisting of above one hundred and fifty sermons, besides poetical pieces, also, fourteen sermons on prayer to which is prefixed, an account of the Author's life and writings, a new edition in 7 volumes (1865)
You can read these volumes at:
https://electricscotland.com/bible/Ralph-Erskine.htm
Story
GIRLS AND BOYS
Proverbially, the looker-on sees most of the game, and perhaps that is why the woman who has been denied the wonder of motherhood cannot understand why "sure-enough" mothers seem so blind to the pleasures, the privilege and the responsibility of parentage.
Child-Welfare Associations, Montessori methods and kindergartens are providing numerous educational centres for the mothers of young children, but no one seems to have much to say to the parents of children from sixteen to twenty, children who are at that most difficult of all ages, the period of adolescence, the period when they are in need of the wisest advice, the most careful attention and the sanest of standards for living, if they are not to make shipwreck of the golden youth which should be their happiest memory.
Many of these girls and boys write to this page for advice and it often makes my heart ache to think of the mothers and daughters, the fathers and sons who look at each other with unseeing eyes, and uncomprehending hearts, with that errible surface knowledge of your many faults (which only your family can have) and with no comprehension of the deeper feelings which you are too shy to confide for fear of ridicule.
Not long ago a charming youth of eighteen confided the glowing story of his latest love affair to me. She was, it is needless to say, the sweetest, the most wonderful, the most admirable thing in the world.
One look at the photograph he carried over his heart showed me that she was too old, too sophisticated, altogether too worldly-wise for the ingenuous boy beside me.
"Have you told your father?"' I asked.
"Gee! No!" he exploded. "Dog-gone it, I'm afraid of father. I wish I weren't," he added, wistfully, "I wish we could be good friends, but he's always nagging at a fellow."
Can you imagine anything worse than that? Yet probably that father would feel terribly injured if he were presented with that sophisticated young person as a daughter-in-law, and would wonder what he had ever done to be cursed with such an undutiful son.
Here is a letter I received from a girl recently which explains itself:
"I am seventeen and I am not allowed to have any boy friends at all. Mother will not allow me to have any up to the house or to go to the show with one or anything. Do you think that is right? I know lots of girls of my age who are allowed to have a boy call and take them to a show, and they are also allowed to go to the rink, and if they are going out to spend the evening with a girl friend, boys always take them.
"Mother says she would rather have me go and come alone, provided it is not late, than have a boy accompany me on the street at night. Don't you think that is a crazy idea? She always says: "Next winter will be plenty of time. Even at eighteen, you are old enough to begin." I say that is old fashioned and that only leads a girl to meet her friend outside, because no matter how strict parents are, every girl knows a few boys, and there is always a favorite one among them, and if he asks her out I am sure she will find a way to meet him. I know I have gone a few times with my friend to a show unknown, and I do not think I will do so again as I have an uncomfortable feeling for about a week after. But don't you think it would be better to be allowed to go, as I am sure there is no harm in it?"
"SEVENTEEN"
And that mother would weep and wail and tear her hair and wonder why God had cursed her beyond her sister women if her girl should "go wrong" not recognizing her own culpability and criminal carelessness.
Probably the mother thinks she is safeguarding her daughter by refusing to allow her to have boys at the house or to go out with boys, but who can dam the ocean?
Youth is the time for love and laughter, and you can't cheat your daughter of her heritage.
If she can't have her fun at home, she can, and will, have it outside. There are plenty of places where a man may rent a room in which to entertain your young daughter. Does that prospect please you?
You may think that a careful training will protect her from all harm, but the hospitals and the police courts are full of girls who originally belonged to "good" families.
Encourage your daughter's confidence and don't betray it.
Don't tell her secrets to the married sister or the older brother. One girl said to me: "I told my mother something and the next day my sister teased me about it and the day after my brother started. You can bet it will be a long time before my mother hears another of my secrets."
If you have boys and girls, make your house a home to all of them and all of their friends. Keep "open house" and let them have all the fun and make all the noise (within reason) they want. Let them sing the latest "rag" and don't make slighting remarks about their taste in music, even if you do prefer classical music yourself. Let them dance, play cards, tell fortunes, make fudge, pull taffy, do any old thing they please, so long as it is innocent fun. Let the boys smoke and have cheap ash-trays all over the place.
Stay in the room yourself but don't be a spoil- sport. Join in the fun. If you can play the piano, practice up on one-steps and fox-trots, and learn to dance them, as well as play them. Grow young with your daughter. Don't expect her to grow old with you. You can never put an old head on young shoulders, but you can cultivate a young heart within yourself.
If you see something of which you disapprove, don't speak about it then. Wait until you find your daughter in a receptive mood, and then tell her quietly that you think perhaps she was a little indiscreet, that men don't like the girl who cheapens herself, to have all the wholesome fun she wants, but to always retain her dignity.
It will pay you mothers, pay a thousand fold for the extra work, the loss of the quiet evenings with your book or over the bridge-table; pay in the love of your daughter and her friends, pay in your own peace of mind and it will pay when your daughter is safe and happy in a home of her own.
END.
Weekend is almost here and hope it's a good one for you.
Alastair
My Canadian Experience
Added more videos on topics such as coverage of the G20 where the USA was absent. Also Canada's new ties with Turkey, China and India and discussions on Aluminum shortages in the USA. Also added videos on Canada's protection of its Steel and Lumber industries and new agreements towards building pipe lines in Alberta.
You can see what's new at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/canada_add27.htm
--------
MyHeritage is doing a special promotion on their DNA memberships over this weekend so you might like to visit them to see what it is all about. I'd also point out that if you put in a first and last name in the banners we have on the site you can also get a free trial to test out the many facilities they offer.
Scottish News from this weeks newspapers
I am partly doing this to build an archive of modern news from and about Scotland and world news stories that can affect Scotland and as all the newsletters are archived and also indexed on search engines it becomes a good resource. I might also add that in a number of newspapers you will find many comments which can be just as interesting as the news story itself and of course you can also add your own comments if you wish which I do myself from time to time.
Here is what caught my eye this week...
Don't waste the Covid inquiry
This week saw the release of the Covid inquiry's second report. It was damning. The individuals and institutions who mismanaged our approach to the pandemic must be held to account, and the public needs to be told how any future response to a similar emergency will be improved.
Read more at:
https://capx.co/the-covid-inquiry-ca...ed-opportunity
This Budget was bad in every way
What a calamity. This Budget was terrible in terms of its fiscal consequences, economic impact and the incentives it embeds. Rather than economic growth, Rachel Reeves regards redistribution as what should drive fiscal policy. As long as this continues, we will remain a low-productivity, low-growth economy.
Read more at:
https://capx.co/this-budget-was-bad-...y-way-possible?
Extraordinary discovery at Orkney Neolithic site assault cases
Archaeologists are to resume digging at the Ness of Brodgar on Orkney after 3D radar technology led to an "extraordinary discovery". The dig team at the Ness, one of the most important Neolithic sites in the British Isles, are not revealing what they believe the find to be until more work is done.
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7836wvx4q4o
Can Canada wait out the trade war with the US?
Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney appears in no rush to resume trade talks with the US. He dismissed a question over the weekend about when he last spoke to US President Donald Trump, responding: "Who cares? It's a detail. I'll speak to him again when it matters."
Read more at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17x025jj21o
Could you live on Second World War rations?
Our writer attempts the strict wartime diet
Read more at:
https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/could-...iter-tried-it/
Electric Canadian
Wonders of Alberta
The Most Amazing Places in Alberta. Added this video to our Alberta page.
You can view this at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...erta/index.htm
My Life with the Eskimo
By Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1913) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...kimo00stef.pdf
Hunters of the Great North
By Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1923) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...GreatNorth.pdf
The Friendly Arctic
The story of five years in Polar regions by Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1921) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...icst00stef.pdf
Rolf in the Woods
The adventures of a Boy Scout with Indian Quonab and Little Dog Skookum by Ernest Thompson Seton (1928) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/hist...inthewoods.pdf
Thoughts on a Sunday Morning - the 23rd day of November 2025 - Year's End & Beginnings
By The Rev. Nola Crewe
You can watch this at:
http://www.electricscotland.org/foru...end-beginnings
German POWs Thought Canadian Winter Would Kill Them
Until Locals Showed Them How to Survive It. Two videos.
You can watch these at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/history/germanpows.htm
The Beaver Magazine
Added No. 3 Outfit 263 December 1932 (pdf)
You can read this issue at:
http://www.electriccanadian.com/tran...cember1932.pdf
Electric Scotland
The Thirty-Fourth Division 1915-1919
The story of its career from Ripon to the Rhine by Lieut.-Colonel J. Shakespear, C.M.G., C.I.E. , D.S.O. (1921) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...on19151919.pdf
Sermons by the Late Rev. John Logan, F.R.S.
One of the Ministers of Leith including a complete detail of the service of a Communion Sunday according to the usage of the Church of Scotland in two volumes (New Edition)
You can read these volumes at:
https://electricscotland.com/bible/John-Logan.htm
Scottish Market Crosses
By James Drummond, R.S.A., FSAScot. (1861) (pdf)
You can read this article at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...et_crosses.pdf
The Seaforth Mackenzie Tartan of 1816 (pdf)
You can read this article at:
https://electricscotland.com/webclan...nzieTartan.pdf
Scenes and Adventures in the Army
Or, Romance of Military Life by P. St. G. Cooke, Colonel Second Dragoons, U.S.A. (1859) (pdf)
You can read this book at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...n_the_Army.pdf
Fifth Report of The Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts
Published in 1876 Part 2 (pdf)
You can read this report at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...lcom05grea.pdf
Thirteenth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts
Published in 1892 (pdf)
You can read this report at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...com_13grea.pdf
Twelvth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts
Published in 1890 (pdf)
You can read this report at:
https://electricscotland.com/history...com_12grea.pdf
Autobiography of the late Donald Fraser, D.D.
And a Selection from his Sermons with a Preface by J. Oswald Dykes, D.D. (1892) (pdf)
You can read this at:
https://electricscotland.com/canada/...ald_Fraser.pdf
The Sermons and Other Practical Works of the Late Reverend Ralph Erskine, A.M., Dunfermline
Consisting of above one hundred and fifty sermons, besides poetical pieces, also, fourteen sermons on prayer to which is prefixed, an account of the Author's life and writings, a new edition in 7 volumes (1865)
You can read these volumes at:
https://electricscotland.com/bible/Ralph-Erskine.htm
Story
GIRLS AND BOYS
Proverbially, the looker-on sees most of the game, and perhaps that is why the woman who has been denied the wonder of motherhood cannot understand why "sure-enough" mothers seem so blind to the pleasures, the privilege and the responsibility of parentage.
Child-Welfare Associations, Montessori methods and kindergartens are providing numerous educational centres for the mothers of young children, but no one seems to have much to say to the parents of children from sixteen to twenty, children who are at that most difficult of all ages, the period of adolescence, the period when they are in need of the wisest advice, the most careful attention and the sanest of standards for living, if they are not to make shipwreck of the golden youth which should be their happiest memory.
Many of these girls and boys write to this page for advice and it often makes my heart ache to think of the mothers and daughters, the fathers and sons who look at each other with unseeing eyes, and uncomprehending hearts, with that errible surface knowledge of your many faults (which only your family can have) and with no comprehension of the deeper feelings which you are too shy to confide for fear of ridicule.
Not long ago a charming youth of eighteen confided the glowing story of his latest love affair to me. She was, it is needless to say, the sweetest, the most wonderful, the most admirable thing in the world.
One look at the photograph he carried over his heart showed me that she was too old, too sophisticated, altogether too worldly-wise for the ingenuous boy beside me.
"Have you told your father?"' I asked.
"Gee! No!" he exploded. "Dog-gone it, I'm afraid of father. I wish I weren't," he added, wistfully, "I wish we could be good friends, but he's always nagging at a fellow."
Can you imagine anything worse than that? Yet probably that father would feel terribly injured if he were presented with that sophisticated young person as a daughter-in-law, and would wonder what he had ever done to be cursed with such an undutiful son.
Here is a letter I received from a girl recently which explains itself:
"I am seventeen and I am not allowed to have any boy friends at all. Mother will not allow me to have any up to the house or to go to the show with one or anything. Do you think that is right? I know lots of girls of my age who are allowed to have a boy call and take them to a show, and they are also allowed to go to the rink, and if they are going out to spend the evening with a girl friend, boys always take them.
"Mother says she would rather have me go and come alone, provided it is not late, than have a boy accompany me on the street at night. Don't you think that is a crazy idea? She always says: "Next winter will be plenty of time. Even at eighteen, you are old enough to begin." I say that is old fashioned and that only leads a girl to meet her friend outside, because no matter how strict parents are, every girl knows a few boys, and there is always a favorite one among them, and if he asks her out I am sure she will find a way to meet him. I know I have gone a few times with my friend to a show unknown, and I do not think I will do so again as I have an uncomfortable feeling for about a week after. But don't you think it would be better to be allowed to go, as I am sure there is no harm in it?"
"SEVENTEEN"
And that mother would weep and wail and tear her hair and wonder why God had cursed her beyond her sister women if her girl should "go wrong" not recognizing her own culpability and criminal carelessness.
Probably the mother thinks she is safeguarding her daughter by refusing to allow her to have boys at the house or to go out with boys, but who can dam the ocean?
Youth is the time for love and laughter, and you can't cheat your daughter of her heritage.
If she can't have her fun at home, she can, and will, have it outside. There are plenty of places where a man may rent a room in which to entertain your young daughter. Does that prospect please you?
You may think that a careful training will protect her from all harm, but the hospitals and the police courts are full of girls who originally belonged to "good" families.
Encourage your daughter's confidence and don't betray it.
Don't tell her secrets to the married sister or the older brother. One girl said to me: "I told my mother something and the next day my sister teased me about it and the day after my brother started. You can bet it will be a long time before my mother hears another of my secrets."
If you have boys and girls, make your house a home to all of them and all of their friends. Keep "open house" and let them have all the fun and make all the noise (within reason) they want. Let them sing the latest "rag" and don't make slighting remarks about their taste in music, even if you do prefer classical music yourself. Let them dance, play cards, tell fortunes, make fudge, pull taffy, do any old thing they please, so long as it is innocent fun. Let the boys smoke and have cheap ash-trays all over the place.
Stay in the room yourself but don't be a spoil- sport. Join in the fun. If you can play the piano, practice up on one-steps and fox-trots, and learn to dance them, as well as play them. Grow young with your daughter. Don't expect her to grow old with you. You can never put an old head on young shoulders, but you can cultivate a young heart within yourself.
If you see something of which you disapprove, don't speak about it then. Wait until you find your daughter in a receptive mood, and then tell her quietly that you think perhaps she was a little indiscreet, that men don't like the girl who cheapens herself, to have all the wholesome fun she wants, but to always retain her dignity.
It will pay you mothers, pay a thousand fold for the extra work, the loss of the quiet evenings with your book or over the bridge-table; pay in the love of your daughter and her friends, pay in your own peace of mind and it will pay when your daughter is safe and happy in a home of her own.
END.
Weekend is almost here and hope it's a good one for you.
Alastair