THERE are hundreds of places around the world that take their name from Scotland, with cities, towns and villages across the globe all called after the original locations in Scotland. As far as I know, however, there is only one province known as Nova Scotia, the Latin for New Scotland. One of the Atlantic provinces, it is the second-smallest province of Canada and is about two-thirds the size of Scotland and home to just under a million people with its capital at Halifax.

Nova Scotia owes its name to a quite extraordinary Scotsman, Sir William Alexander, the 1st Earl of Stirling, who achieved great fame as a poet and author, a politician – he was Secretary of State for Scotland for 14 years – and courtier, a colonist who dreamed of a new Scotland in the Americas, an adventurer who risked his all to try and make his dream come true, and who then lost all his wealth and reputation and died so deeply in debt that his creditors crowded around his deathbed when he died in this week in 1640.

Some 380 years on from that ignominious death on September 12, 1640, Stirling’s reputation has been somewhat restored, not just because he was a more than passable poet but because the name he gave to his colony, Nova Scotia, has well and truly stuck while that most beautiful of Canadian provinces is still a place where Scottish culture and the Gaelic language is much appreciated. It also has a flag which is the reverse of the Saltire, a blue St Andrew’s Cross on a white background with a Lion Rampant shield in the centre. It was all Alexander’s doing, and the strong links between Nova Scotia and Scotland owe much to him to this day.

Born around 1567, Alexander started out as a member of a family which, while not part of the upper aristocracy, could claim some pretensions to nobility as the lairds of Menstrie in Clackmannanshire. Later he would extend and build most of the castle which still stands today and is well worth a visit in its location in the shadow of the Ochil Hills.

We know little of his early life but he was given an excellent education, most probably by Dr Thomas Buchanan, nephew of George Buchanan who was tutor to King James VI and wrote a history of Scotland. Alexander then became a student at Glasgow University, which has a striking image of him on its website as he was both an alumnus and benefactor to the university.

He did not graduate, probably because he didn’t need to as there was a job lined up for him. The Alexanders were kin to the mighty Campbell chiefs, the Earls of Argyll, and it was decided that Alexander would accompany Archibald Campbell, the 7th Earl later known as Archibald the Grim, on a grand tour of the Continent as his tutor. The earl repaid the compliment, introducing Alexander to the court of King James VI where he became a gentleman usher to the king’s second son and future king Prince Charles.

Poetry was already becoming Alexander’s passion, and over the years he would write many poems, elegies and sonnets, as well as longer works that were more histories than verses. He was very much a poet of his time, writing in classical fashion with many references to mythology and legend. His Tragedie of Darius published in 1603 established his reputation, and the timing was fortuitous because in that year King James succeeded to the throne of England and took Alexander with him to London.

His poetry was not bad at all. Here’s an example, Sonet 29.

I envie not Endimion now no more, Nor all the happinesse his sleepe did yeeld,

While as Diana straying through the field, Suck’d from his sleep-seal’d lippes balme for her sore:

Whil’st I embrac’d the shadow of my death, I dreaming did farre greater pleasure prove,

And quaff’d with Cupid sugared draughts of love, Then Jove-like feeding on a nectar’d breath:

Now judge which of vs two might be most prowd; He got a kisse yet not enioy’d it right,

And I got none, yet tasted that delight Which Venus on Adonis once bestow’d:

He only got the bodie of a kisse, And I the soule of it, which he did misse.

James VI and I promoted Alexander to be a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and Master of the Household, which gave him considerable political power. After he helped James translate The Psalms of King David, Alexander was knighted. James had already shown him favour, giving him an income from the lands around Menstrie, and in 1614 he was appointed to the Scottish Privy Council, effectively the Government of Scotland.

It was at that point that Alexander formulated a plan to make himself and the king very rich. James gave Alexander a huge grant of land in the American colonies which were then disputed between England and France. Alexander promptly named the land Nova Scotia and, with the king’s co-operation, from 1621 he began to sell off titles associated with the new territory – there are still aristocrats today whose ancestors bought their title at the time.

He raised £225,000 for the king with his plan, and it continued under Charles I, who wanted Nova Scotia to be incorporated into the Kingdom of Scotland – so we could have had our own colony long before the failure at Darien. But the French would not relinquish their claims on the territory and Nova Scotia was ceded to France and the few remaining colonists left.

Alexander had personally funded much of the failed colonial effort and was financially ruined, though Charles compensated him by making him the 1st Earl of Stirling before his death in 1640.

A century and a half later, boatloads of immigrants from Scotland began to arrive in Nova Scotia, the land that William Alexander named.