Mission
The institution's mission is as follows:
"To promote, preserve and perpetuate through studies in all related areas: the culture, music, language, arts, crafts, customs and traditions of immigrants from the Highlands of Scotland."
The early years of the institution's history were dedicated to the instruction of the Scots Gaelic language which in the 1930s was under significant threat of dying out, having once been spoken by over 100,000 Nova Scotians, until the advent of modern transport and communications in the early 20th century began to force English assimilation in the agrarian economies of Cape Breton Island and Nova Scotia.
Today the Gaelic College has a broader mandate to preserve the culture of the Scottish Highlanders who settled in the area with McLeod. Thousands of students, old and young, come from all over North America and around the world to attend summer sessions and courses held throughout the year.
Read more about this topic: Nova Scotia Gaelic College
Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“Not in vain is Ireland pouring itself all over the earth. Divine Providence has a mission for her children to fulfill; though a mission unrecognized by political economists. There is ever a moral balance preserved in the universe, like the vibrations of the pendulum. The Irish, with their glowing hearts and reverent credulity, are needed in this cold age of intellect and skepticism.”
—Lydia M. Child (1802–1880)
“... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal “the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry].” He said he didn’t know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate’s coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“I cannot be a materialist—but Oh, how is it possible that a God who speaks to all hearts can let Belgravia go laughing to a vicious luxury, and Whitechapel cursing to a filthy debauchery—such suffering, such dreadful suffering—and shall the short years of Christ’s mission atone for it all?”
—D.H. (David Herbert)