State of the Clans: William Petrie

Credit: Celtic Life International Magazine

The Summer 2025 edition of Celtic Life International included an article on “State of the Clans 2025.” Prominently featured was William Petrie, Chair of Scots of Canada, COSCA’s sister organization to the north. Here are some excerpts of his comments, reprinted by permission.

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William Petrie. Credit: Celtic Life International Magazine

“You can look at clans as being lineage-based, and that's typically how it works,” explains William Petrie, chair of Scots of Canada. “But also remember, clans are tribal organizations. If you move into an area or you marry into that area, you become part of it. It's not because of genealogy - it's because of community. You'd swear allegiance to the clan chief if there is one, but a good number of them didn't have one. When you moved into a MacGregor area, you became a MacGregor, that's it.”

“I took over as chair, and I started solving problems by first finding out what the real problem was. In the case of clans and Scottish societies of Canada, membership was down to about 49 members, from a high of about 75-80 in the heyday. People were leaving, saying they don't see any value in it, that it was not doing anything. And if you don't do anything, nothing happens. If you're not out there in front of people or doing things, then you're going to reap the rewards of that, which is nothing.”

“I delved a little bit deeper into that, and what I discovered was that there were a lot of organizations that were initially formed because of that need for community, for helping each other,” Petrie elaborates. “For instance, the Clan Gregor Society was the second or third clan organization that was formed in Scotland, and it was formed to actually help young Clan Gregor members – young MacGregors - because they were still being extremely impoverished and discriminated against back in the early 1800s.”

“Some of those had lasted quite some time, but the reasons for them to exist in terms of helping each other faded away, and as a result so did they. When they lost the reasons why their clans were formed, it poses a little bit of problem for them, since that need is not 100% there anymore.”

“You have to think pipeline, succession. We want people to get engaged as kids and be part of it, to be there even as they go through the part of their life where they're busy with the career and the kids. But then they will come back and bring their kids with them.”

“The worst thing for any clan organization is to just say you get to belong, and then not let people know what's coming or what they are going to be doing. The number one reason you're going to lose clan members is they forget about you, or they don't see value in what you are doing. That value just has to apply to that sense of belonging, to a sense of hope.”