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Quote by Craig Smith

“As Smollett relates, Dumbarton has always sat on the edge of something. Historically, it has marked the line between the Romans and Picts, between the Picts and Britons, and between Highlands and Lowlands. The area has been a geographic, social, cultural, linguistic, agricultural and economic border zone for millennia. This liminal status seems to fascinate Smollett, and he returns to it again and again in his writing.”

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Craig Smith

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“If, instead of Wainwright's question, we ask 'What were the Picts?', the answer is very simple. They were a nation created by the union of a number of tribes. This union, formed initially as a military alliance against the common enemy, stood the test of time and long outlived the Roman invasion. For the last seventeen centuries the peoples of this union have been known collectively as the Picts, a name first recorded by the Romans. The name itself is a familiar part of the problem: did Picti really mean 'the painted men, or was it simply the Latin form of a long-forgotten native name? Puting this question on one side for the moment, we might refer to the Picts as 'The United Tribes of Caledonia', or UTC for short, a name which tells us just what they really were.”

“Do you realize you can buy an oceanfront house in Newfoundland for $10,000? Perched on granite cliffs rising several hundred feet in the air. In a small working fishing village equipped with high speed internet, a store, a school, a medical centre, a community hall, a ferry service, a bed and breakfast, and a church. With a surprisingly moderate winter climate and a pace of life unlike any you probably know. Where whales break the ocean's surface a short distance from your front door, while bald eagles soar overhead. And where, on a nice day, you can see France - St. Pierre and Miquelon - as you stroll the boardwalk.”

“Newfoundland is a country where wind and fire make vicious company, but truly the wind will always make the country one of the “Big Breath.” The wind never lets people off. It bends them double, sniffs at them like dogs tempted by a bone; it snatches at the fashionable hat and the new hair-do; and in pioneer days it is recorded that the settlers went out tied together. Once, it is told, that a wrestler came to Newfoundland, and he became so tormented by the wind, that he stopped in the street to fight it.”