Louise writes from North America

Louise has been awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship

BBC Scotland reporter Louise Stewart has been awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to travel in North America and study the historic links with Scotland.

She will be looking at the impact Scots migrants have had on the culture there and will be travelling to New York, North Carolina, Washington, Boston and Canada.

TORONTO

I travel by train from Montreal and arrive in Port Hope. It's a small town on the North Shore of Lake Ontario, about an hour and a half from Toronto. I spend the weekend with Harry MacGregor and his wife Bonnie. Harry left Glasgow in the 1960s and has since set up a successful commercial insurance brokers in the heart of Toronto.

Although he's proud to be Scottish and still has a lot of family there, including his daughter who has migrated in the opposite direction, married a Scot and now lives in Stirling, Canada is definitely home. He echoes what most of the ex-pats I have met during my travels have told me - that there are greater opportunities here and, if you want to start your own business, fewer barriers.

Like most Scots he's adapted easily to the way of life here, and like many of his fellow Canadians, he leaves town at the weekends and heads to the cottage. Because the winters here are so harsh it seems Canadians really make the most of their free time. So when the sun comes out they head straight for the countryside or beach.

The Macdonald Institute at the University of Guelph

After a relaxing weekend in Cottage Country, I arrive in the bustling downtown financial district of Toronto. There seems to be construction everywhere and one of the biggest new buildings is a Trump Tower - it seems Toronto has welcomed the property tycoon's development.

Toronto may not be the political capital of Canada, but the media here is full of politics. But it's not the Clinton/ Obama battle, which is still obsessing the US media; here it's a good old-fashioned sex scandal.

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier has been forced to resign after his ex-girlfriend, who was known to have links with notorious biker gangs, gave a TV interview saying the minister had left classified Government documents at her home while they were dating.

Newspaper columnists and editorials ponder how this affair is being viewed elsewhere, particularly by Bush in America and by Gordon Brown in Britain.

His predecessor is also making headlines. Tony Blair has been in town and his wife Cherie has been signing copies of her memoirs. Outside the signing two women are admiring their signed copies of her autobiography as another asks "Who is Cherie Blair?"

Some Torontonians may not be aware of who the former PM's wife is but there are strong Scottish political connections here. The first two Canadian Prime Ministers were Scots. I am invited along to the Albany Club which was founded by the country's first ever Prime Minister Sir John A MacDonald and his supporters back in 1882.

The club, which was formerly a gentlemen's only establishment, has changed a great deal since then but it's still a political club and celebrates its Scottish heritage with a room dedicated to Sir John as well as the other Canadian PM's, including the country's only female PM Kim Campbell, whose Grandfather was Scottish.

One Grandfather

It seems that Canadians are very aware of their Scottish roots and many can easily trace their Scottish ancestors. I meet up with Sandy Graham and her brother Don, who are proud of their Scottish heritage - one Grandfather was the Pipe Major of the WWII Black Watch of Canada and the other was sent from his home in Kirkintilloch to Canada, just one of more than 7000 orphans sent from the Quarrier Orphan homes in Scotland between 1870 and 1936 to be farm labourers.

They decided to launch the Celtic Festival five years ago to celebrate their Scottish heritage. The event, which is now held every September, now attracts Pipe Bands and musicians from all over the country as well as thousands of spectators.

Midweek, I travel to Guelph - which is a little over an hour from Toronto. There, I visit the University of Guelph where the Macdonald Institute was founded by Sir William MacDonald. Guelph began as an agricultural college and still specialises in agriculture and veterinary medicine but also offers a much wider curriculum.

It also boasts the only Scottish Studies course in North America and I meet with Dr Graeme Morton, who was formerly a lecturer at Edinburgh University, but is now the Chair of the Scottish Studies Department, which was established in 2004. It now attracts students from Canada as well as the US and the UK.

The following day I visit Hamilton, which is less than an hour from Toronto, and also has a rich agricultural history, which was undoubtedly one of the main attractions for the thousands of Scots who settled here. In the 1800s Hamilton was predominantly settled by Scots - many who were employed on the Toronto - Hamilton and Buffalo Railway, which was opened in 1889.

The Scottish influence is obvious in the architecture here, particularly at Dundurn Castle which was the home of Sir Allan Napier MacNab. He was a Canadian Premier, an MP for more than a quarter of a century as well as a railway magnate. But he never forgot his Scottish heritage and in 1835 built Dundurn Castle which he named after his family home in Perthshire.

Scots migrated here in the tens of thousands. By 1871 there were 550,000 people of Scottish origin living in Canada.

Even today, whether it's a shop selling Scottish produce in the beautiful setting of Niagara-on-the-Lake, the architecture, the Gaelic language, or the long line of US Presidents and Canadian Prime Ministers with Scottish heritage, there's no doubt the Scots helped shape North America.

They may not be migrating in huge waves today as they did in the 17th and 18th centuries but the Scots have had a long association here and Americans and Canadians are very proud of, and continue to celebrate, their Scottish heritage.