Away: Maritimers in Massachusetts, Ontario, and Alberta

Richard Wilbur is Supervisor of the Legislative Research Service at the
New Brunswick Legislature and author of The Rise of French New
Brunswick.

Most Maritimers will relate to the experience outlined in this excellent
oral history. Author/editor Gary Burrill interviewed people he either
knew personally or met through common friends. The resulting personal
reminiscences tell us as much about the Maritimes as they do about why
and how these people spent their lives far from home. Despite the
varying experiences of the subjects, several common traits emerge in
these accounts. All accounts show the importance of the Maritime
network: these Maritimers invariably found jobs and accommodations
through other former Maritimers. And almost all left home for one basic
reason: to find work and a more secure economic future.

Judging by these accounts, transplanted Maritimers seem to socialize
exclusively with—and often marry—other Maritimers. And while the
oldest group interviewed, mostly in the Boston area, became U.S.
citizens, they remained Maritimers at heart, and make frequent trips
back home. Whether by coincidence or selection, the women interviewees
(and they were far fewer) seemed less nostalgic.

Not surprisingly, those currently working in Alberta and the
Territories have sharper and often less romanticized views of the
Maritimes they left. A P.E.I. native who operates a taxi business in
Fort McMurray (he estimates that a third of the population there is from
the Maritimes) put it succinctly: “They haven’t looked after their
people. . . . They’ve been paying them peanuts. ...The old families
have the money; they have the land; they have it tied up.”

Away is a useful and at times powerful look at a transplanted people.