A Place Called Away

Back home, there are two kinds of people. The locals, and those who come from away. The CFA’s, as they are called, are nice enough folks, it’s just that, well, they’re from away.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s no place more courteous, more welcoming, more accommodating, or just plain lovely than Down East. The Broadway musical (https://comefromaway.com/?ds_rl=1274339&gclid=Cj0KCQiAkZKNBhDiARIsAPsk0Wj17yb0XM-lq_jQG5WEeUOlxZVtCD8E0BVJgoeAjng7AUsT0ZKfKGMaAi4lEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds) “Come from Away” gets it right (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af77C4zUkjs) exactly.

But while Down Easters are the most hospitable people on the planet, and genuinely care for your wellbeing, they also know there is a difference between the locals and the CFA’s. Not better, not worse, just different.

And a CFA, even after twenty or thirty years, never completely loses his CFA-ishness. Mainly because he’ll talk a little funny, pronouncing “insurance” like “in-shoo-rance” instead of properly, like “in-shore-ance”. You get the picture.

But here’s the funny thing. We’re all, ultimately, CFA’s. My mother was a CFA from England, but her immediate ancestors in Liverpool were part of the Welsh CFA diaspora, and the Welsh themselves were CFAs from Iberia and the Middle East, albeit ten or fifteen thousand years ago.

Even Canada’s First Nations were CFA’s, also ten or fifteen thousand years ago, and DNA suggests that some other CFA’s contributed to the gene pool in a very distant past.

While our First Nations almost certainly arrived on an empty continent, few of the rest of us can say that. And for most of human history, the great migrations were not peaceful. Our ancestors were a brutal and violent lot when as marauding hordes they helped themselves to someone else’s homeland.

There is some evidence that the San people of South Africa may be the only humans on the planet still living in their place of origin. That leaves the other eight billion of us as CFA’s of some sort or other.

So as we are served at a local shop by a young girl wearing a hijab, or walk by a couple of youngsters speaking Creole, or are cared for by a doctor whose name we can’t pronounce, let’s remember that while they are all from Away, so are we.

In this huge, majestic land of ours, there’s still plenty of room, and plenty of opportunity for other CFAs, just as there was for us.