Away: Maritimers in Massachusetts, Ontario, and Alberta

In Away, Gary Burrill presents the voices of Maritimers in exile as they talk about their decisions to leave home, their experiences moving to and establishing themselves in new areas, and the way their exile from the Maritime provinces of Canada has shaped their views of themselves, their adopted communities, and their native homes.

"These accounts are not `interviews' in the sense of structured sets of questions and answers. Rather, time and time again, as I introduced myself and my subject by explaining something about the theme of leaving home in Maritime history, some kind of chord was struck in the self-understanding of those I spoke with, and we then spent an hour, an afternoon, or a day recording a conversation about the place of leaving home in their lives and in their thinking." from the Preface

Each of the book's three sections deals largely with the experiences of a generation. From the turn of the century to the 1920s and 1930s, Maritimers looked primarily to Boston for work when they made their decision to leave home; during the economic expansion that followed the Second World War, southern Ontario was the destination of choice; when western Canada experienced an "oil boom" in the 1970s and early 1980s, a younger generation of Maritimers was drawn to Alberta.

Taken together, the reflections and autobiographical reminiscences of these Maritimers provide a broad geographical and generational picture of the experience at the centre of post-Confederation life in the Maritimes -- exile, out-migration, going away.