Hello, Mr. McKinlay, and welcome to DivineCaroline.
Hi, I’m Neil Cullan McKinlay the author of From Mason To Minister: Through the Lattice. I’ve been happily married to Dorothy for thirty years. We have three children, all girls. They are all married now and I had the honor and pleasure of walking each one down the aisle and then marrying them to their respective husbands! I have one grandchild, a boy of almost two years, and another grandchild on the way. I am the proud owner of (actually Dorothy is the proud owner of) a West Highland Terrier called Bella. She’s an adorable and affectionate wee thing. I’m an ordained Presbyterian Minister and, when I’m not writing, I work three days a week as an Army Chaplain. Dorothy and I have made our home in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
To say that you have done a bit of travelling seems like an understatement. You’ve been so many places. What brought you to travel around the world?
My travelling first started when my parents went home from Canada to their native Scotland. My mother couldn’t handle the severe winters. I think I’ve inherited her aversion to the cold! Mind you, Scotland isn’t exactly in the tropics! Anyway, I moved back to Canada I guess as a sense of adventure. I had heard so much about the place of my birth from my parents when I was growing up. I just had to see it. There is a little bit of romance involved in the whole thing. I had met a Canadian girl when she was on holiday in Scotland. The plan was that she would help me get set up when I arrived in Canada. Basically she ditched me at the airport! End of any hope of romance!
However, her parents helped me get settled. I ventured “out west” to Calgary, Alberta on account of landing a job installing plumbing in portable cabins. Again, this journey was mainly due to my sense of adventure. It was October and it was starting to get cold in Alberta. So I returned to Toronto. From there I went back to my parents on Loch Lomondside, Scotland to convalesce. My right lung had collapsed for no apparent reason and was operated upon. I was stuck in a North York hospital for a month with that one. (I won’t tell you about the other one collapsing ten years later…) Anyway, after a few months in Scotland it was back to Canada. And then after another few more months it was back to Scotland. This time it was for six months. If you’re still with me, I returned to Canada after having met Dorothy in Scotland. We were married in Winnipeg, Manitoba where I had started work as a railway pipefitter. Talk about cold winters! Dorothy’s brother had migrated to Queensland and sent us some photos of the place, sun, surf, sand and all of that. So, the Wanderlust was on me (reference to an old Scottish song) and we were flying to sunnier climes!
While in Australia I, after being trained as a Minister, was posted to a country parish, a place in the Queensland Outback called Springsure. From there I managed to land a parish in the City of Brisbane where I worked for five years before moving to Tasmania to look after a parish there. After almost five years Dorothy and I were so sick of jetting back and forth to see the kids in Brisbane that we decided it would be best for us to move back. Here we are and here we are planning to remain. Brisbane is our island in the sun! And we all lived happily ever after …
What are your favorite locations?
That’s a really great question! I wish that I could somehow amalgamate the best of all the places I’ve been. I love the social and folk culture of Scotland, the mountains and the rivers, and the singsongs at social gatherings. I can just grunt in Scotland and Scots understand what I’m saying. Everywhere else it’s hard work speaking in order to be understood! Then there’s the Canadian lifestyle with its back bacon and maple syrup laidback-ness. Its smash-em-against-the-boards ice hockey! Unlike Australian cities or Scottish cities, Canadian cities have rhyme and reason to them. Then there’s the consistently good weather of Queensland, Australia (well maybe not so much this year…)
