Antigonish Highland Games

Scottish settlers held the first games at Antigonish in 1863 and they have run every year since, which makes them the longest continuously held highland games anywhere outside Scotland. The programme is the traditional one: heavy events including caber toss, hammer throw and weight for height, piping and drumming competitions, and Highland dancing, plus track events that were part of the original nineteenth-century meetings. Competitors come from across North America and Scotland. Antigonish sits in a part of Nova Scotia where Gaelic was spoken into the twentieth century and is now taught again in schools and at the local university.

History

A Mi'kmaq summer community stood here before the Europeans, and the first settlement came in 1784, when Lt. Colonel Timothy Hierlihy received a large land grant around the harbour and founded Dorchester, commonly called Antigonish by the late 1820s. St. Francis Xavier University moved here in 1855, the town became the seat of a Catholic diocese, and in the 1920s local priests and teachers launched the Antigonish Movement; the town also holds the oldest continuous Highland games outside Scotland (Wikipedia, Antigonish, Nova Scotia).

What to look for

• The heavy events - caber, hammer and weight throwing in traditional form.
• The piping competitions - solo and band contests over the games days.
• The Highland dancing - competitive dancing across age categories.
• The Gaelic context - a region where the language survived and is taught again.

When to go

Mid-July only, over the games weekend; there is nothing to see outside those dates. Accommodation in the town books out and people stay in Truro or New Glasgow.

Good to know

It runs a few days a year and the town is ordinary otherwise. Accommodation is scarce during the games. Weather can be wet and the events are outdoors.

Nearby

Pictou lies west; Cape Breton is east.

Key facts