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Perhaps the best-known book about the Baldoon settlement was published in 1978, called Baldoon: Lord Selkirk’s Settlement in Upper Canada.
Published Jul 25, 2025  • Last updated 43 minutes ago  • 3 minute read
The book Baldoon: Lord Selkirk’s Settlement in Upper Canada, written by A.E.D. MacKenzie and published in 1978, is perhaps the best-known book about that settlement. (Supplied)Article content
Perhaps the best-known book about the Baldoon settlement was published in 1978 and written by A.E.D MacKenzie, called Baldoon: Lord Selkirk’s Settlement in Upper Canada.
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The only information I have found about the author, A.E.D. MacKenzie, is what’s written on the back cover of the book. MacKenzie is from Wallaceburg. After graduating from the University of Western Ontario in 1959, he played football for the Saskatchewan Roughriders for three years, while also teaching high school.
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After that MacKenzie moved back to London, Ont., where he taught high school and completed his master’s degree in history. This book is a continuation of his master’s thesis.
I highly recommend this well-researched, readable account. At little more than 80 pages, it’s an excellent way to get into this story.
Another book I read is The Silver Chief: Lord Selkirk and the Scottish Pioneers of Belfast, Baldoon and Red River by Lucille H. Campey. This book talks about all three of Selkirk’s Canadian experiments in immigration and settlement. Belfast was Selkirk’s first attempt, a community on the south shore of Prince Edward Island, east of Charlottetown. If you’re interested in knowing more about the whole of Selkirk’s endeavours in Canada, this is another well-researched, readable book. It makes me want to go to Prince Edward Island, to visit another Selkirk site.
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Campey is a Canadian, but has lived in Britain for most of her life. She originally was a science major but after she met her English husband and moved there, she worked as an advisor to Prime Minister John Major, and later got involved in history and completed a master’s in philosophy and a doctorate in history at universities in the U.K.
Campey is mainly interested in early immigration from Scotland, England and Ireland to Canada. She has written more 20 books, mainly on these topics. She was awarded the Prix du Quebec in 2016, in recognition of her contribution to Canadian immigration studies.
There are many other books that have been published about Lord Selkirk, but most of them concentrate only on the Red River settlement. I can understand why this has become such a popular episode of Canadian history. It not only deals with European immigration, but also its conflicts with the fur trade, and with the Indigenous people who already were settled there when the Scottish settlers arrived. But that doesn’t negate the importance of Selkirk’s other settlements and indeed they too contributed to Canada’s immigration history.
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The most recent book about Baldoon I wish to discuss is a work of fiction, Anangokaa, a first book by Cameron Alam published in 2023. Targetted to young adult readers, it is an interesting read for anyone.
The story of Anangokaa centres on the MacCallum family, and 14-year-old Flora. This family actually did come, with the others, to Baldoon on the Oughton and Flora lost her mother, father and a sister in the first months of the settlement. Flora’s brother Hugh was the schoolteacher of the settlement and he later became one of the first settlers of Wallaceburg. It was Hugh MacCallum who suggested the name Wallaceburg, in honour of the great Scottish warrior William Wallace.
In this book, Flora meets Niigaani, the son of a Chippewa chief who lives on Walpole Island. This is the story of their blossoming, but forbidden relationship. It is a completely fictitious story; I don’t believe the kind of interaction described in this book could have happened in 1804. But it is a well-written, intriguing story.
The Gilberts are award-winning historians with a passion for telling the stories of Chatham-Kent’s fascinating past.
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