UPEI researcher studies families of Maritimers working in Alberta

From snowbirds with clipped wings to preachers talking to empty churches,MaritimersarefuellingAlberta's oil patch at a cost, according to new research underway on P.E.I. and in Cape Breton.

"If I want to go to Florida, or I want to go away on holiday, I kinda have to wait until he comes home to be able to do that."

That's just one of the sentiments expressed to researcher Christina Murray by parents watching their sons and daughters work in the oilfields while the extended family waits back east for those precious weeks off.

Murray, whose thesis work began while teaching at UPEI's school of nursing, interviewed Island women in rural communities left to run a home and raise children while their husbands spent most of their time on the job in Alberta.

"Many women shared with me how valuable it was to have that extended family support. So their mothers, their mothers-in-laws, their fathers, their sisters, their brothers to help them out with their children."

After presenting her original research at a conference, she met two colleagues from Cape Breton who wanted to know more about the impact of the oilfields out West on their community. Together the group applied for a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Communitiesfeelimpact of migrant workforce

Over the next two years, the teams are working "to try to get a comprehensive look at how their phenomenon of having a loved one coming [from] and going to Alberta for work is impacting families and it is impacting rural communities," Murray explained.

The work delves deeper than extended families too. The researchers are also talking to people who work with and support families of the migrant workforce on the two islands.

"Physiotherapists have told us about the challenges that they're seeing as they have someone coming back from Alberta who's gotten injured on the job," Murray said.

"Just that back and forth between WCB in Alberta and the claim processing here on Prince Edward Island or in Cape Breton. "

With everything from depleted volunteer fire departments to tradespeople trading their own business for a cheque from the oil companies, when workers head to Alberta, the researchers are discovering, everyone feels it.

"The church is empty many times, except you know when it's Christmas time you know the pews are full and the families are intact," Murray said of a recent interview with a member of the clergy.

"Or weddings can't happen or baptisms can't happen until the partner is back from out West."

At the end of the project the team hopes to have a unique story to tell, one that hasn't been told before.

• Listen to the full Island Morning interview with Christina Murray

"This, to our knowledge, will be the first piece of work done in Canada that looks at the full intergenerational family experience of the coming and going. "