The Isle of Canna was left to the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) by their previous owner, the Gaelic folklorist and scholar John Lorne Campbell in 1981. Canna House, one of two big houses on the island (the other being Tighard), contains John Campbell's important archives of Gaelic materials that were donated with the islands to the nation. Campbell's widow, the American musician Margaret Fay Shaw, continued to live on Canna until her death in 2004 aged 101

The climate is mild, the sun does put in an appearance very often and the midge count much lower than a lot other parts of west coast Scotland..