Grand Manan Island, a 200-year old fishing village in the Bay of Fundy, has been overwhelmed by globalization, technology, and changing government policies. Changes on the island call into question the myth of the rural idyll and point to an urgent need for reconsideration of urban-rural divides.

In less than a decade, the island community has faced the degradation of the wild fishery and rapid growth of aquaculture, an increasing presence of multinational corporations, new federal initiatives with respect to aboriginal policies, and widespread social dysfunction. Joan Marshall uses over twelve years of intensive ethnographic research to chart the nature and pace of social and cultural change on Grand Manan, showing how it relates to globalization and environmental degradation, as well as to a confluence of outside sources.

The personal stories of the Grand Manan people bring to life their local struggles and show how their community, like other rural and fishing communities across Canada, is being inexorably changed by forces outside their control.