Armed with the same
personable, candid style found in his first book, Alan Doyle turns his
perspective outward from Petty Harbour toward mainland Canada, reflecting on
what it was like to venture away from the comforts of home and the familiarity
of the island.
Often in a van, sometimes in a bus, occasionally in a car
with broken wipers "using Bob's belt and a rope found by Paddy's
Pond" to pull them back and forth, Alan and his bandmates charted new
territory, and he constantly measured what he saw of the vast country against
what his forefathers once called the Daemon Canada. In a period punctuated by
triumphant leaps forward for the band, deflating steps backward and everything
in between—opening for Barney the Dinosaur at an outdoor music festival, being
propositioned at a gas station mail-order bride service in Alberta, drinking
moonshine with an elderly church-goer on a Sunday morning in PEI—Alan's few
established notions about Canada were often debunked and his own identity as a
Newfoundlander was constantly challenged. Touring the country, he also
discovered how others view Newfoundlanders and how skewed these images can
sometimes be. Asked to play in front of the Queen at a massive Canada Day
festival on Parliament Hill, the concert organizers assured Alan and his
bandmates that the best way to showcase Newfoundland culture was for them to be
towed onto stage in a dory and introduced not as Newfoundlanders but as "Newfies."
The boys were not amused.
Heartfelt, funny and always insightful, these stories tap
into the complexities of community and Canadianness, forming the portrait of a
young man from a tiny fishing village trying to define and hold on to his sense
of home while navigating a vast and diverse and wonder-filled country.
