It Came From Away: serious business in Atlantic Canada

You're not from here: you're from away. Tourism Nova Scotia

Winnipeg Free Press

March 7, 1989

By Douglas MacKay

HALIFAX — It Came From Away, a light Cape Breton comedy at the Cunard St. Theatre here, convulsed packed houses for two weeks before closing Tuesday.

It had no particular message; the play was just a send-up of two Sydney waitresses and a male dullard, dependent almost entirely on the sublime talents of the three people who wrote and performed it. What "came from away" in the play was a visitor from outer space who landed in Odette Piercey's backyard, encased in a large egg.

The quirky notion of "from away," however, is a serious business in Atlantic Canada. And part of the humour in the title is that in some circles, a Torontonian or a Sri Lankan Tamil is just as "from away" as someone from another galaxy.

("Hey!" says one of the characters, leafing through a phone book, "Guess how you spell Kowalchuk." The others give up.

"Guess what the area code is for T'under Bay."

"Eight-oh-seven."

"No s---!")

Family ties

Like Newfoundlanders, Nova Scotians have a deep sense of place. Kinship has a lot to do with it. Get two together, and there's a good chance they'll start matching clans and acquaintances. If a politician is involved, this pleasant exchange is raised to an art.

Especially outside metropolitan Halifax-Dartmouth, family ties are important. It's a province of small towns where everyone knew your father, and his father, and most of your relatives. (And if they didn't, there's room for suspicion.) The "clannishness" of Scotland persists. (It Came From Away was produced by Stephen MacDonald and performed by Bette MacDonald, Ed Macdonald, and Kathy MacGuire.)

The landscape and the ocean — and all the fabled attractions that are pitched to tourists — tend to keep people here, or draw them back after a few years in Toronto or Montreal.

A line from W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joe would have special meaning for Nova Scotians: "Once the land touches you, the wind never blows so cold again .... When that happens to you, you can't be bought."

A Halifax newspaper columnist recalls having lived away from Nova Scotia for a couple of years. One day in a Toronto shopping mall, he caught himself staring wistfully at a painting of the schooner Bluenose in a store window. After a minute or two, he snapped out of it. "But I realized how important it is to me just to be here. How many people get homesick staring at a placemat?"

Being in the right place

For some people who come here, Halifax is a "lifestyle posting." It is, after all, a sophisticated seaport metropolis, Canada's San Francisco, yet a place where you can live in a fishing village by the sea and be less than 20 minutes from downtown.

If Canadians tend to define themselves as not Americans, Nova Scotians see themselves as not central Canadians. To the rest of the country, the term "Upper Canada" is a history-book relic from another age, no more current than "Lower Canada" (Quebec). Here it's as likely to come up in conversation as the word "Ontario." In a recent poll, 32 per cent of the respondents weren't so sure that joining Confederation was, on balance, a good thing for Nova Scotia.

That strong feeling of being in the right place, combined with a mild sense of grievance against Upper Canada, creates a kind of unity among Nova Scotians.

It's most evident in the province's smaller cities and towns, but also in Halifax. As the provincial capital, this city's metropolitan area draws people like a magnet from the area around it. They come to go to one of the five major universities, to find work, or to enjoy the amenities. And with them, over the years, have come some deeply ingrained attitudes.

The idea of being "from away" or "not from away" is no particular joy to Upper Canadians who settle here. You're a "come-from-away," or, more pejoratively, "a CFA." And that's all there is to it.

CFA opponent

In Halifax, the effect is minimal. There are suburbs loaded with yuppies from Upper Canada and farther away, and the military brings in a steady supply of people from elsewhere.

In last fall's Dartmouth mayoralty campaign, Charlie Keating ran on the slogan "Dartmouth roots, Dartmouth concerns," a not-too-subtle slam against his CFA opponent, a Welsh doctor. Underestimating the CFAs, Keating was trounced.

Outside metro, the story is different. A publishing executive who moved to Kentville, N.S., from southern Ontario says that in four years there he was never really accepted, despite going through the motions at the local Rotary Club, and with neighbours. Four years, no invitations. He and his wife struck up friendships with other CFAs in a nearby university town.

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia's northern island of lakes and beautiful, rolling hills, is a special case in from-awayness. There, if you're from off the island you're from away. A city slicker from Halifax has no better chance of selling door-to-door than an Upper Canadian.

In politics, from-awayness is a godsend. Last December, federal Auditor General Kenneth Dye upbraided the Nova Scotia government for the way it spent more than $100 million in federal money that had been allotted to "infrastructure" for offshore oil development.

The offshore never came to be, but Nova Scotia spent the money anyway on things like a new ferry across Halifax Harbour, a suburban sewer line, vocational school salaries, and an infamous "road to nowhere" between two towns.

No problem

Dye said he couldn't imagine what these things had to do with offshore oil. "I'm sure the ministers had a rationale for what they did, but it's just a mystery to me."

For Premier John Buchanan, the harsh censure of the federal auditor was no problem.

"It's rather interesting for someone to sit in an armchair in Ottawa and tell us what our priorities are in Nova Scotia," the premier said.

The specifics and the source of the money were never addressed, nor did they have to be. Even Dye's criticism of the road to nowhere could be parried. "Oh is that right?" the premier said. "Has he ever travelled on the road between Sheet Harbour and Pictou?"

Case closed.