The Baron Wants to Buy

In Halifax one day last week, a tall, grey-eyed Scottish stranger called on Nova Scotia Premier A. Stirling MacMillan. The stranger announced that he was "glad to be home." He would, he said, like to buy part of Nova Scotia.

The idea was not so dizzy as it seemed. The Scot was William Francis Forbes-Sempill, 50, Colonel the Baron Sempill, and also possessor of a title many Nova Scotians had not known existed: Baronet of Nova Scotia. An ancestor, one Sir William Forbes, served King James I in England's 17th-Century civil wars, had been rewarded with the baronetcy and 16,000 acres in "New Scotland." When "New Scotland" was ceded to the French in 1632, Sir William lost the land but kept the title.

Lord Sempill fought with the Royal Flying Corps in World War I, later served in the British Air Ministry and as aeronautical adviser to the Greek and Japanese Governments. He sits in Britain's House of Lords, owns a country seat in Scotland's Aberdeenshire.

His lordship (a Roman Catholic) was in Canada on wartime business for the Knights of Columbus. Looking at Nova Scotia had given him his great idea. He would purchase a chunk of provincial acreage, after war's end transplant Scots from his own bleak estate. A new link between old and new Scotland would be forged, his hereditary holdings would in a sense be reclaimed, everyone would be happy.

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