Many Canadians with a Scottish background still feel the pull of their Gaelic origins. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scots dominated Montreal and, by extension, the rest of the country. Their habits and attitudes influenced business, education, science and medicine, the military, and even the way Canadians imagined themselves.

In A Kingdom of the Mind ethnographers, material culture specialists, and contributors from a wide variety of disciplines explore the impact of the Scots on Canadian life, showing how the Scots' image of their homeland and themselves played an important role in the emerging definition of what it meant to be Canadian.

Contributors include J. M. Bumsted (Manitoba), Edward J. Cowan (Glasgow), George Dalgleish (National Museums of Scotland), Marjory Harper (Aberdeen), H.P. Klepak ( Royal Military College of Canada), Gillian I. Leitch (Montréal), Roderick MacLeod (McGill University), Douglas McCalla (Guelph), Heather McNabb (McCord Museum of Canadian History), Irena Murray (Royal Institute of British Architects), Jock Murray (Dalhousie), Cath Oberholtzer (Trent University), Eileen Stack (McCord Museum of Canadian History), René Villeneuve (National Gallery of Canada), and Suzanne Zeller (Wilfrid Laurier).