Dedication to Scotland
Word - Painting - Music
Written and Composed by
E. Laurence Bake & The Band of Golden Light
Scotland
Heritage and Return
E. Laurence Bake was born in Canada. At the age of five, in 1955, he crossed the Atlantic alone on the *RMS "Queen Mary" (the famous Cunard ocean liner.) to live with his grandmother in *Glasgow, Scotland. She was of the *Kennedy clan, and the years that followed were spent among that family, cousins and friends, jumping the dikes and playing in the streets of the city. He remained there until 1960, an ordinary Scottish childhood lived far from the country of his birth.
He returned to Canada by plane, still a boy, travelling alone and dressed in full Scottish attire: kilt, sporran, and dagger. The timing of the journey was not yet known to his mother. In the era of telegrams and wires, the message of his arrival had not reached her. She was on her way to work when the radio announced that “Canada was being invaded by Scotland,” reporting a small boy in full Scottish dress at the airport. That was how she learned her son had come home.
In the 1970s he returned again, this time to visit friends and relatives. By the 1980s Scotland had become the setting of his daily life. He lived in a flat in Edinburgh from which Edinburgh Castle was framed perfectly in the window. An everyday view of the city’s most enduring landmark. During those years he worked closely with Elizabeth Hamilton Wordy, who managed a private art group connected with the Burns Agency of Scottish Arts. The association recognized his poetry with the informal title of Poet Laureate of Scotland.
In Edinburgh he produced music albums and spoken-word poetry, collaborating with many talented artists and musicians. From the childhood crossing and the unexpected homecoming to the years lived under the castle’s gaze. Laurence’s life has always been full of adventure. The city’s literary tradition, the Kennedy family roots, and the working life among Scottish arts circles all formed part of the long conversation between place and voice that continues in his work.
The Scottish Painted Poems and music are dedicated to his country of heritage, Scotland.
Kennedy Shield & Tartan
*FOOTNOTES:
*Queen Mary Ocean Liner: It began as the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company and became one of the leading operators of transatlantic ocean liners. For more than a century it ran the main passenger and mail service between Britain and North America. Its most famous ships included the Mauretania, Lusitania, Aquitania, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth. In the 1950s, when Laurence Bake crossed on the Queen Mary, Cunard was still the dominant name in luxury Atlantic passenger travel. Today Cunard is a luxury cruise line (owned by Carnival Corporation) and still operates the only regularly scheduled ocean-liner service across the Atlantic, with Queen Mary 2. (Britannica)
*Glasgow, Scotland in the 1960s was a working-class industrial city still dense with tenement life, strong neighbourhood ties, and heavy industry, yet already being reshaped by slum clearance, high-rise housing, and the early stages of deindustrialisation. For a child arriving or living there around 1955–1960, it would have been a lively, tightly knit, often tough urban environment just before the biggest physical changes accelerated.
*Kennedy Clan: The name appears in records from the 12th century (as MacKenedi / Kennedy). The family became dominant in Carrick and claimed ties to the old Earls of Carrick. They supported Robert the Bruce during the Wars of Independence and were rewarded with land and status. By the 14th–15th centuries the Kennedys of Dunure were recognised as chiefs of the name. In the mid-15th century Gilbert Kennedy was created Lord Kennedy; the title of Earl of Cassillis followed in the early 16th century. Clan Kennedy was one of the leading families of south-west Scotland for several centuries. Powerful local lords who rose to national influence, left a lasting architectural mark at Culzean, and are still remembered as a historic Lowland clan.