A few years back, I hosted Dougie Mackay at my home on Vancouver Island for some pizza and a televised hockey game.
I’d just caught his show in town and was struck by how he illuminated the wingspan of a story - the way it could carry an audience across centuries and landscapes with each sentence.
Raised in the Scottish Highlands where storytelling is still in the water, Dougie has sold out shows at the Edinburgh Fringe and the Scottish International Storytelling Festival. He even holds a Guinness World Record as part of the longest continuous storytelling session (74 hours, set in the central square of Marrakesh, where storytelling is also heritage). He describes his own work as firing on the edge of the wild.
In this episode of The Crow’s Nest, Dougie joins me to explore the medicine of story for these times - and for men in particular.
We speak in support of the upcoming Cascadia Men’s Conference, happening August 6-9 in the Squamish Valley just north of Vancouver. The conference draws its DNA from the Minnesota Men’s Conference, now forty years strong, and we’re gathering elders and younger men alike to light a fire we hope will burn yearly.
Dougie won’t be with us in person this August (he’ll be at the Edinburgh Fringe with his show A Wolf Shall Devour the Sun), but his spirit is woven into what we’re building.
At the heart of our conversation, he tells the old Gaelic tale of Finn McCool and the Salmon of Wisdom - a story from the Fianna cycle about a boy raised by wild aunties in the forest, who must learn not just to hunt and fight, but to see truly.
What emerges is a conversation about masculine leadership, the necessary relationship between youth and elders, and what it means to be mentored by both the feminine and the wild.
"I think there's lots of people seeking belonging, and the salmon has something to say about that."
Dougie offers a particular tonic: the idea that in our broken culture, many of us in midlife and beyond may find ourselves in the role of Finnegus - the old poet who sits by the pool for seven years, preparing the ground so that someone younger might receive the gift we never will.
If you’re drawn to the work, you can find Dougie writing on Substack at Rekindling the Hearth. He’s also launching a nine-month storytelling mentorship cohort called The Storyteller’s Journey this September.
The Cascadia Men’s Conference runs August 6-9. Details and tickets at cascadiamensconference.com
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