Labour & Pop Culture: Free in the Harbour

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is the late Stan Rogers’s “Free in the Harbour”. Like much of Rogers’s work, it focuses on the migration of workers from Atlantic Canada (in this case, from Hermitage Bay on the south shore of Newfoundland) west to the oil fields of Alberta.

What is particularly striking in this song is his enumeration of how migration entails leaving behind a community that continues on after one have left.

Well, it's living they've found, deep in the ground,
And if there's doubts, it's best they ignore them.
Nor think on the bones, the crosses and stones
Of their fathers that came there before them.
In the taverns of Edmonton, fishermen shout
Haul it away! Haul it away!
They left three hundred years buried up the Bay
Where the whales make free in the harbour.

The emotional impact of migration of both migrants and sending communities is rarely considered in right-wing prescriptions for reducing income support programs in order to trigger greater migration.



Well it's blackfish at play in Hermitage Bay
From Pushthrough across to Bois Island.
They broach and they sprout and they lift their flukes out
And they wave to a town that is dying.
Now it's many's the boats that have plied on the foam,
Hauling away! Hauling away!
But there's many more fellows been leaving their homes,
Where whales make free in the harbour.

It's at Portage and Main you'll see them again
On their way to the hills of Alberta.
With lop-side grins, they waggle their chins
And they brag of the wage they'll be earning.
Then it's quick, pull the string boys, and get the tool out,
Haul it away! Haul it away!
But just two years ago you could hear the same shout
Where the whales make free in the harbour.

Free in the harbour; the blackfish are sporting again
Free in the harbour; untroubled by comings and goings of men
Who once did pursue them as oil from the sea,
Hauling away! Hauling away!
Now they're Calgary roughnecks from Hermitage Bay,
Where the whales make free in the harbour.

Well, it's living they've found, deep in the ground,
And if there's doubts, it's best they ignore them.
Nor think on the bones, the crosses and stones
Of their fathers that came there before them.
In the taverns of Edmonton, fishermen shout
Haul it away! Haul it away!
They left three hundred years buried up the Bay
Where the whales make free in the harbour.

Free in the harbour; the blackfish are sporting again
Free in the harbour; untroubled by comings and goings of men
Who once did pursue them as oil from the sea,
Hauling away! Hauling away!
Now they're Calgary roughnecks from Hermitage Bay,
Where the whales make free in the harbour

-- Bob Barnetson