Come together

With VisitScotland's Homecoming Scotland initiative running throughout 2009, there is one invitation-only event in particular that to my mind stands out as totally unique. That is the seminar being hosted in the Debating Chamber of the Scottish Parliament on Friday 24th July.

Entitled The Clan Convention, and orchestrated by the Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs in partnership with the Scottish Parliament Corporate Body and The Gathering 2009, it brings together no less than 120 of Scotland's Chiefs of Whole Names and Clans for the first time in recorded history. It is a genealogist's dream. Never before in Scotland's long and colourful history have the senior representatives of so many Highland and Lowland Scottish surnames been assembled together in one place, not even in the run up to the battles of Bannockburn, Flodden or Culloden Moor.

And underlying the discussion which will be chaired by Alex Fergusson MSP, Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, is a simple theme which has also never before been successfully addressed by the powers that be. In today's global village, Scotland is not just a country of five million people. By harnessing its worldwide kith and kin, it becomes a community of 40 million people.

It seems extraordinary, but in the first decade of the third millennium, there are now more 500 Scottish clan and family associations registered throughout the world. With such a proactive international bloodline of goodwill and affection already in place...

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• By : Roddy Martine
• In : Roddy Martine's World
• Issue : 45
• Page : 7
• Words : 768