Native Scots vs the scottish diaspora

[ThistleDown]

I speak from talking to a couple of people from Canada holidaying in Florida whose parents had immigrated from Scotland. We dropped a few Scots words, expecting them to recognise them but the reaction was strange, almost hostile as if we had said something obscene and so we dropped it.
I wonder if the fact that the 'colonies' as they then were were dominated by Episcopalian English people meant that anyone of another religious persuasion and background was discriminated against. After all, this was the reason many left their homes in Ulster to escape the institutionalised persecution so prevalent there. It was not only Catholics who suffered, Presbyterians were equally discriminated against.

Yes, I understand. Media in Canada is influenced by its large and powerful southern neighbour. A little like Scotland. There are times when words I use or my form of speech produce blank or confused looks, as careful as I am about that.

Once again I can't speak of other parts of the world (the 'colonies', if you like) and would leave it to Father Bill to tell us about the eastern part of Canada; but I will say that in western Canada there appears to have been little or no discrimination between Christian sects in the latter half of the 19th and throughout the 20th centuries. Highlanders and Lowlanders alike. Perhaps there was a sense of relief in that, I don't know.

Western Canada did not receive the huge numbers of Ulstermen as did the Eastern US, but those who did settle here considered themselves to be Irish, not Scotch-Irish.