Robert Burcher tries out a hand made leather Coracle boat on the Beaver River near his home in Slabtown. This was one of many experiments to test the possibility that his theory that Celts arrived in Canada in the Bronze Age.
A local man is out to change history.
Or, more specifically, suggest that there might be some changes required in Canada’s history books, and give us more reason to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.
Robert Burcher, a photographer and enquiring mind living in Slabtown, has recently finished the manuscript for a book that represents 16 years of research, a basement full of resources and several trips around Ontario and Ireland.
His research was born in the Peterborough Petroglyphs. A vast expanse of rock carvings surrounded by conflicting interpretations and curious spectators.
Burcher was most intrigued by what looked like the image of a sailboat. He didn’t think the natives ever used sailboats and wondered how they’d know to carve an image of one. Burcher said the sailboat image matched a Celtic ship used in the Bronze Age, made of leather and propelled by two sails.
Also at the Peterborough site he found an image of what looked like a person with a long skinny neck and a face made out of a sun. A fresh pair of eyes suggested that maybe it was someone playing a horn. Burcher found such a horn in Ireland, the Trumpa Creda, and the only man to play that horn in 300 years, Simon O’Dwyer.
Other glyphs, resembling upside down triangles with knobs on top, were passed off as images of Native gods, but Burcher suggests they are Amphorae – sealed clay pots that hung or were wedged in frames to keep liquids from spilling or pots from breaking open.
"It’s all speculation," said Burcher, also referring to his ideas as "circumstantial evidence."
His theory is that the Celts came here from Ireland to Iceland and then to the Hudson Bay in search of Copper to make Bronze – an important commodity in the Bronze Age.
Not being a professional scientist or archaeologist, Burcher said his research wasn’t limited to acceptable scientific method, which was freeing and damning at the same time.
He said he sometimes acted like a lawyer building a case or a police officer investigating a crime scene.
He did have some disappointments along the way. His self-led dig into the legendary Thornbury Mound – a site he believed was a Celtic burial ground – revealed that the unusually precise round hill was just dirt, and the dirt had never been touched.
He’s kept going, though.
He said his researched sparked curiosity and interest. And his Celtic roots made it personal.
He said he’s faced negative criticism from some professional archaeologists, but he still believes he has a story.
"I want to validate it," he said. "It’s a sort of justice for ancient, perceived injustices … the victors always write the history."
Burcher said there’s more truths in Native stories than are credited to them, and he wants more people to take a second look at this history of the land.
"I hope the book gets published," said Burcher, adding that he may self-publish it. "I’ll throw it out there and watch what comes back."
His dream is too the book picked up by the History or Discovery channel as a speculative series.
Gnostalgia 
I am a senior and I remember reading a book around 1947 telling of a group of troublesome clans in Clare Ireland being exiled to Iceland (Utima Thule I believe) in the 600’s AD. In fact in later years the story struck me as being very similar to the Iceland Sagas but with different names. I wish I could find that book, but it is probably out of print. The author went on to write that a large group of families sailed down the west coast of Ireland about one hundred years later and then inland on the Shannon River. He wrote some of the mariners identified themselves as the exiled families but they now had Scandinavian families and friends with them. Indeed American William Shannon and Winston Churchill told of this influx of Scandinavians at that time. Oddly enough my father from that area in Ireland told us his family were originally Danes which the people called themselves. However we were too young to ask what he meant.
DNA now proves a signicant Irish input into the population of Iceland. Another mysterious sailing people were the Basques who many contend were mixed on the West Coast of Ireland with the Celts. DNA proves many of the Welch and some English have Basque DNA. The Basques have been sailing the Atlantic from time immemorial and speak a language not connected to any known language. I have always wondered if they might be Native Americans. Anyway I find your research very intriguing and wish you much success with it. For many years the powers that be denied emphatically the possibility of Icelanders being part Irish, even though the Icelanders themselves said they were. DNA now proves the people of Iceland were right.
I think that we will discover that our early ancestors traveled much more than previously thought.