Well of course I was speaking about the number of Gaelic speakers in Scotland as however many there are elsewhere in the world is pretty irrlevant to what was being discussed. If we look at that though then there may be many Nova Scotians who had Gaelic speaking forbears but the truth of the matter is that there are now very few Gaelic speakers in Nova Scotia. Latest estimates put it at something under 500 - and many of these are quite elderly. In other words it is pretty comparable with the parts of Scotland one wouldn't normally associate with Gaelic speaking.

http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/gaelic/

I did read that the 1991 Canadian census identified only 4000 Gaelic speakers in the whole of Canada. That in itslef is only a tiny fraction of the number of speakers in Scotland. But it is actually exaggerated as it seems that this 4000 figure does not even differentiate between Scottish and Irish Gaelic. It is pretty self evident that if Gaelic (ie and we are talking Scottish Gaelic) is going to be preserved as a community language (rather than a hobby language) then it is going to be preserved in Scotland - and my point was that it needs to be in its heartland.