Six generations ago, Rory “Gus” Sinclair’s kilt-clad forebears came to Canada, emigrants from their Scottish homeland.

Though separated by time and distance from the moors and glens of his ancestral country, 68-year-old Sinclair remains a proud and conspicuous Scot. He’s an avid bagpiper who gives toasts at Robbie Burns dinners and frequents clan meetings on annual trips to the home country.

But with his attention fixed across the Atlantic at this pivotal juncture in Scottish history, the long-awaited independence referendum ready to get underway, this passionate Scot can’t bring himself to support sovereignty for his familial patrie—because he’s Canadian. To approve of Scottish separation, in light of this country’s unity woes, would be sacrilege.

“I’d be a blinking hypocrite,” said Sinclair, an HVAC contractor in Toronto.

“I firmly believe that Canada’s better off having Quebec inside it … You can’t say, ‘Oh boy, let’s have freedom for Scotland and not freedom for Quebec.’”

It’s a distinctly Canadian perspective on a historic and pressing — not to mention clearly worded — question facing Scottish voters this week: “Should Scotland be an independent country?”

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For many in the Scottish diaspora in Toronto, which includes long-time and recent Canadians, the importance of the referendum is top of mind. And even if they can’t cast ballots in the vote on Thursday, you can bet they’ll be watching closely as the results pour in on the future of the United Kingdom.

“It’s not visceral. But it’s important,” said Sinclair, of his emotions before the vote here in Toronto. “I don’t have any skin in the game, but I’m intensely interested in the outcome.”

John Clark moved to Toronto from his native Glasgow seven years ago and is set to gain Canadian citizenship this year. He said, if he were allowed to vote in the referendum, he’d say “yes” to breaking away from the UK.

“It’s time for us to start doing things on our own. We have it in us. We’re good enough,” said Clark, a 31-year-old staffing consultant.

Growing up as a Catholic Scot in a family that voted Labour, Clark said he always felt different from his conception of “Britishness,” which he saw as Protestant and London-centric. Echoing many pre-referendum analysts, Clark added that people in Scotland have resented living under Tory regimes when most in their region tend to vote Labour, while also worrying that anti-European Union sentiment in England could force Britain to cut ties with the continent even while prevailing Scottish sentiment supports continued EU membership.

“Quite honestly, that’s just not democratic. You vote for a government that you don’t get,” said Clark.

Writing recently for the BBC, journalist Allan Little traced how a Scottish sense of being British was once tied to heavy participation in the island kingdom’s imperial enterprise, shared struggle through World War II, the postwar rise of the welfare state and cross-border ties of the Scottish, Welsh and English working classes.

But through the economic doldrums of the 1970s, and subsequent flight of industry to the low-wage havens of the developing world during the Thatcher years, this shared identity has taken a hit in favour of the flavour of resentment Clark described, Little wrote.

As he put it in his article: “The market is not British; it is global.”

This has left room for the pro-secession Scottish National Party to focus on pragmatic, economic arguments for independence — a key difference from how Quebec separatists fought their narrowly failed 1995 campaign to break out of Canada, argued David Hunter, director of the Scottish Studies Foundation in Toronto.

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“The situation is completely different. The big issue in Quebec was the language issue. And there’s no language issue in Scotland,” he said.

Having moved to Canada from Glasgow in the late ’60s, Hunter said he has grown to feel British and Scottish in equal measure.

“We would consider ourselves here in Canada to be North American and also Canadian. It’s something like that,” he said, adding that the cultural links that tie Scotland to the wider United Kingdom go back to the time of King James VI of Scotland, who succeeded Elizabeth I on the English throne and ruled both as James I, the first Stuart monarch.

Either way the vote goes, Hunter said he’s confident there will be no cataclysm. As for his own hopes, that’s more complicated.

“We all have mixed thoughts,” Hunter said. “My heart would say yes, and my head would say no.”

Thursday night will tell which will prevail in Scotland.

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