Why we're Coming home
Published Monday August 4th, 2008
The first time I really knew I was home was June 30, 1994.
After a long day of travelling from Oxford, England to London and Halifax, I had finally landed in Saint John, relieved to have finished my university exams and be back in Canada. As the stale air hissed out of the airplane, I was greeted by an overpowering rush of the familiar - a humid, slightly salty breeze, carrying the scent of wildflowers and fresh-cut grass. It was unmistakably the smell of a summer evening in coastal New Brunswick, my New Brunswick. And there I was: dumbstruck by the feeling of being home.
The next day, Canada Day, I joined what felt like all of Saint John, searching the sidewalk flea market on King Street for bargains, finding instead a dozen friends - a day of handshakes, hugs and quiet conversations. The experience affirmed what I had felt the night before - a sense of authenticity and purpose. In New Brunswick, I was as comfortable as a migrating salmon, safe at last in the stream of its birth.
The brain drain was a much-discussed topic in 1994, just as it is today. During a scholarship interview, I was asked, "should the government require university students to work in their home province, as a way of paying back society's investment in their education?" I remember thinking that most graduates I knew weren't leaving New Brunswick because they wanted to, but because so little work was available.
Every week or so, I ran into a cross-section of students from my high school graduating class; we were all tutoring for the school district on a part-time basis. One tutor was training to be a doctor; others were already qualified to be teachers, but there were few full-time job openings.
Gradually, debt and the desire to get a start in life lead many of my friends to leave. The aspiring physician and most of the skilled tradespeople I knew found work in Alberta. Many of the teachers travelled even farther west, to become instructors in English at Asian schools. Some have stayed away: my best friend from high school is now a principal in Colombia, and I'm told an acquaintance who once played frantic bass in a punk rock band is now a country musician in Thailand.
It has been like this in New Brunswick for a long time - the swifter current of the world economy drawing away the young, the adventurous, and those determined to provide for their families, whatever the personal cost. The outward voyage makes a big impression, not only on those departing but on the community that remains behind. Perhaps that's why we hear more about the brain drain than those out-migrants who return.
As long as New Brunswickers have been "goin' down the road," others have been coming back up it, some richer and some wiser.
Sir Max Aitken, the first Lord Beaverbrook, is arguably the greatest. He became the most prominent New Brunswicker of his age as a British press baron and cabinet minister. He made several trips back to New Brunswick, eventually investing millions to create the Beaverbrook Art Gallery and other public infrastructure. His recent biographer, David Adams Richards, describes a photograph of Lord Beaverbrook "as an old man, walking a lane in New Brunswick, with his limousine a hundred yards behind him - like a child searching for something he lost along the way."
Several well-known names in New Brunswick politics today are residents who returned after years abroad. Lieutenant Governor Herménégilde Chiasson (educated at the Sorbonne in Paris), Justice Minister T.J. Burke (once a non-commissioned officer in the U.S. Marines) and public policy guru Donald Savoie (educated at Oxford) top the list. These intelligent, accomplished men could have built careers anywhere in the world. They chose to return to New Brunswick - and in a variety of ways, they're changing it.
The same phenomenon can be seen in the private sector. New Brunswick's name-brand family businesses are being run by a new generation of entrepreneurs - graduates of Harvard Business School, Columbia University and the University of Western Ontario who have brought their talents back to this province. And they're not alone: thousands of New Brunswickers who left to pursue opportunities in New England, Ontario, Quebec and Alberta have come home to raise families or start businesses. Others are commuting between lucrative out-of-province jobs and the communities they love - an experience former premier Bernard Lord shares with the workers who fly in and out of Alberta's oilpatch.
To me, that says a lot about the strength of New Brunswick's communities. This province hasn't always had a booming economy, but its people have always had a lot of heart. That commitment, to one another and to the future, makes life in New Brunswick worth living.
The aspiring doctor I tutored alongside when I got out of graduate school is now a medical specialist working out of the Saint John Regional Hospital. I don't know what other job offers he received, but I'm certain there were several, and probably very good ones, at that. He turned them down to work at the hospital where his father had practised for more than two decades.
To me, that simple act of returning home because you believe in it and want to be a part of it exemplifies the character of New Brunswick - past, present and future.
Eric Marks is the Telegraph-Journal's opinion page editor. He grew up in St. Martins, attended UNB Saint John and graduated from the University of Oxford on scholarship in 1994.
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