The Emigrant's Farewell

The Emigrant's Farewell tells of the migrant Scots who made Canada their home. Updating the traditional Scots ballad, the poem weaves together stories of imaginary immigrants from the nineteenth, twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to ask questions about how immigrants change and are changed by the cultures they inhabit. As Canada grows, the poem asks us to remember those "whose names have died/yet live on in the streets and cities of this place" - the Scots, whose pioneering activities gave birth to so many of Canada's institutions but who are now broadly forgotten.