Co-author and Editor Gayle continues to feel bad that the pandemic has prevented her from having an in-person book launch for her late husband Ian Moore-Morrans’ second memoir, Came To Canada, Eh? Adventures of a Scottish Nomad.

However, today brought some boosts to her outlook. First of all a call from Charles H. Cameron, a fellow member of the Robert Burns Club of Winnipeg, that we perhaps can soon start planning a book launch once the Burns Club can meet again for their monthly luncheon meetings, as well as giving Gayle some ideas about further promoting the book.

Then later that day she returned to her apartment and found this nice note on her shelf from a fellow resident of her senior’s high rise, (a British-born immigrant, like Ian), who had recently bought a copy of the book from Gayle.

Dear Gayle,

I did enjoy reading Ian’s book “Came To Canada, Eh?” It was a hoot! But I was again struck by his unskeptical and unsuspecting manner as I earlier evidenced [in his first memoir] “From Poverty to Poverty: A Scotsman Encounters Canada.” As I had indicated [an alternate title might have been] – “Innocents Abroad.”
However, when I read the Epilogue and noted that Ian had chosen ‘honesty’ as (what he thought) his most important characteristic, it somehow all fell into place!
Because he was such a generous, trustworthy person, he trusted others to be as open and honest as himself. What a guy!

Regards, Pat

Gayle soon replied: Thanks , dear friend, for those words. You are the first one to give me feedback on my final contribution to the book. And you got the exact purpose of that Epilogue and why I originally chose Robert Burns’ poem, “A Man’s A Man For A’ That” as the book’s epigraph. You made my day!

The first part of the above-mentioned Epilogue is quoted below:

When choosing the epigraph from Scottish poet Robert Burns (“A Man’s A Man For A’ That”) at the beginning of this book, I recalled a conversation with Ian some years ago. While creating a program about writing one’s faith journey, I thought I’d try Ian out on one of the proposed exercises by asking him to choose one word to describe the characteristic he thought most important in living his life. I had used Christian for myself and was expecting that he would choose Scottish. He surprised me though, by choosing honesty. Of course, I thought, that was Ian in a nutshell–honest! He strove throughout his life to support or protest his view that the true worth of a person (himself and others alike) is defined by honesty and independent mind rather than by class or riches or position in life. And I think this book proves it! However, it also thoroughly demonstrates that he was intrinsically Scottish and nomadic as well.

From P. 331, Came To Canada, Eh? Adventures of a Scottish Nomad, by Ian Moore-Morrans with Gayle Moore-Morrans, First Edition, 2020.

The above-mentioned Epigraph (a poem or quote to introduce the theme of a book) is quoted below, along with Ian’s added underlining of portions from this favourite Robert Burns poem as found in his well-worn copy of The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, 1759-1796, Collins, London and Glasgow, and accompanying Glossary by James MacKenna. This underlining helped Gayle in choosing this particular poem as the book’s epigraph.