Taking teenage son 'home' to Lewis set musician and writer on Metagama story trail
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When musician and writer Liza Mulholland took her teenage son to visit her late granny’s home village on Lewis, it set her on a journey to Toronto, Chicago, Detroit and now the stage of Eden Court.
On Saturday, Lisa and hand-picked performers presented new show In The Wake Of Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey In Story And Song.
This year is the centenary of voyages to Canada that took over 1000 young people from Lewis and other islands across the world in search of a new life.
Four or five years ago, Liza had set off to Lewis with her son Roddy MacGregor, then playing football in the Caley Thistle Under-17 team, for a tournament in Stornoway.
“Just showing him around, it was then I realised I didn’t know enough myself,” Liza said. “That really got me thinking, so I began to research my family history.”
Liza had always heard her grandparents talk about being on the Metagama – they only met and married when they moved from Canada to Detroit.
“It is an American Indian name – ‘where the waters meet’ – and when I was doing TV production work Metagama was the name I used. I liked the symbolism of a gathering stream of folk memory and tradition. But it is also a place in the States, a rural outpost on a trainline in Ontario owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway. They also owned some of these immigrant ships.”
During lockdown, Liza was forwarded some research documents from the Stornoway archive centre.
“That was the germ of the idea, and knowing that the 100th anniversary of Metagama’s sailing was coming up. The date was April 21, 1923. Two other ships also made pick-ups between 1923 and 1924, going through the Western Isles taking nearly 1500 young people. It was a huge amount from small communities.
“The thing that made it even more significant was the fact it came on the back of World War I and then the Iolaire disaster, so Lewis and all the other islands had already experienced huge loss of young population.”
Liza went out to Toronto, Detroit and Chicago last October with her friend, the award-winning writer Donald Murray, filming for an upcoming documentary.
“We thought we needed to go out and walk in my grandparents’ footsteps and get a feel for their experiences out there,” Liza said.
As well as Liza writing her own family’s story, Donald was writing a novel, part of a trilogy – but the two were also thinking about the possibilities of creating a show in time for the anniversary.
Liza wrote the script but insisted “it’s not just my baby.” She said: We wanted live musicians to tell some of the story and bring it to life and to bring together a group of musicians, keen to get as many as possible from the islands.”
The music in the concert will include Gaelic and traditional music and new songs.
And it features Gaelic singer and piper Calum Alex Macmillan, Willie Campbell, the Lewis singer-songwriter and performer also known for bands Astrid and Tumbling Souls. Also included is Capercaillie and Session A9 fiddler Charlie MacKerron, Canadian cellist Christine Hanson, Gaelic singer and actor Dolina MacLennan and, masterminding projections, visual artist of the natural world Doug Robertson.
Many young people who went across the Atlantic in search of adventure, a new life and better prospects, returned – Liza’s grandparents among them, with her mother as a baby.
But many stayed and Liza says that with the losses of war and the Iolaire, that “lost generation” left empty villages and ruined houses throughout the Western Isles.
“Now, thankfully, young folk who have been brought up in places like Lewis are being far more vocal in their demands for housing and crofting legislation and really making an effort to challenge government on rural housing and things like that, so more power to their elbow,” she said.
Of the show, she added: “We wanted to tell some of the stories of the emigrations and bring them to life.”
In The Wake Of Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey In Story And Song was on Saturday at Eden Court and is now finished. More performances may happen in future. For news on this, follow: Twitter: @lisamulholland1
