Azizi,
Thanks for the thread links. I'd already seen them and, although I used to play for Morris in the past and my younger daughter has taken up Scottish Highland dancing (with its sharp version of broom dancing) I thought I'd leave those discussions to the experts.

Bunnahabhain,
My experience of social dances in Australia is that dance names are subjected to the same forces as tune names and song names, providing endless material for thesis writers. I don't pretend to know where (what Australians call) the barn dance originated nor under which name but I'm sure various 'catters will have some excellent information to throw into the ring. With a bit of an academic background I used to maintain quite a reference collection of relevant material but it got nicked (= half-hinched, ie stolen; tugging the forelock to various other current threads) and since then I try to research facts when I have the time but I'm on surer ground when trotting out stuff from my personal experiences.

There were several phases when American material came into Australians' experience in force. There were Americans (now called AfroAmericans) in the First Fleet, there was a vast influx of them during the goldrushes starting in the 1850s, minstrel shows toured Australia after the Civil War, one future US President worked at Kalgoorlie in the 30s and there were great mobs of US servicemen ("Over paid, over sexed and over here") during WWII. With the exception of the future US President all had some influence on Australian culture at the time. I can't say there was huge Canadian influence but you never know; we were both part of the British Empire and are still both part of the Commonwealth of Nations so bits of transference would have occurred.

Cheers, Rowan