When I was a little girl I loved to hear the stories my Scottish granny, Alice Gordon, would share of her parents swapping the civilized life of gentry in Glasgow for the pioneering life of the wilds of northern Alberta.

My great grandfather, William Alexander Gordon, had served as a member of the Black Watch for many years, and when he retired was eligible to take advantage of the Canadian Soldier Settlement Act which provided returned WWI veterans who wished to farm with loans to purchase land, stock and equipment. And so, in the early 1920s, this man of middle age with his wife, Jane, and seven of their 13 children (six had died in childhood) abandoned everything they knew of their life in Glasgow and traveled by boat and train into a great new adventure.

Little did they know what that entailed. Their 200-acre parcel was situated about 100…