num_pages: 244
description: Following the fantastic success of his bestselling memoir Where I Belong  Great Big Sea front man Alan Doyle returns with a hilarious heartwarming account of leaving Newfoundland and discovering Canada for the first time.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 betweenopening 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 PEIAlan'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.
language: English
title: A Newfoundlander in Canada: Always Going Somewhere, Always Coming Home
publisher: Doubleday Canada