Up With Gaelic
When Abby and Ella Hanson sat down with Arts East at the beginning of May, it was the start of Gaelic Nova Scotia Month and the siblings had just wrapped up a presentation at the Halifax Central Library. Although young (Abby 16, Ella 14), the sisters are having an important impact on Gaelic education in their home province. As the founders of Up With Gaelic, the pair visit schools around mainland Nova Scotia, promoting the preservation of Scottish Gaelic culture and tradition. “Both our parents are in the education system,” says Abby. “We had heard a lot about how Gaelic culture was on the social studies curriculum in grade schools, but there were almost no resources to actually teach it. So, with the help of our mom and what we had learned from our Gaelic teachers, we put the presentation together.” At first, one of the biggest challenges was getting people to take them seriously. “A couple of times in the beginning we would go into classes and people would say, ‘...