What: Great Big Sea

When: Wednesday, Nov. 19. Doors at 7 p.m.; show at 8 p.m.

Where: Hamilton Place

Tickets: $49.50 to $69.50 at Copps Coliseum box office, ticketmaster.ca or 905-527-7666

Playing an album by Great Big Sea is like opening up a history book on Newfoundland.

You always come away learning something new about the rich culture of Canada's easternmost province.

So it is on the band's latest CD, Fortune's Favour. Like many of Great Big Sea's eight previous studio albums, Fortune's Favour carefully walks a musical line between pop and traditional.

The band will likely play several of the songs off the album when it comes to Hamilton Place Wednesday.

Songs such as Love Me Tonight and Walk On The Moon are tailor-made for radio play, while tracks such as Rocks Of Merasheen dig deeper into the band's national heritage.

"I think Newfoundlanders are more aware of their history than anywhere in Canada, with the exception of maybe Quebec," explains Great Big Sea multi-instrumentalist Bob Hallett. "It's all around us. Up until fairly recently, Newfoundland was its own country. So there's a strain of soft nationalism that runs through a lot of Newfoundland music."

The lyrics for Rocks Of Merasheen were written by the late Newfoundland poet Al Pittman to commemorate one of the most cathartic episodes in the province's recent history.

Merasheen is the biggest island in Placentia Bay off the southeast coast of Newfoundland. Until 1965, it was home to a thriving fishing community of just under 300. That was when the government of Premier Joey Smallwood decided to "resettle" the inhabitants to urban areas where it would be easier to provide services. Merasheen was one of 307 communities, once home to some 28,000 people, that were abandoned between 1946 and 1975. For many, the resettlement was more like a forced exile.

"Merasheen Island was famous in Newfoundland for its music and its poetry," explains Hallett. "It produced a tremendous amount of great folk music, great songs and great singers. Even though it's a place of exile now, it's still sort of a hotbed of culture. People go back there every summer to reconnect with the place. There are many songs about Merasheen but that one is the most powerful.

"The bitterness and the sadness of the exile is one of the great themes of Newfoundland music. So many Newfoundlanders were forced to leave and make their living elsewhere."

The song's opening lines, sung in gentle reverence by Great Big Sea's Sean McCann, reflect that bittersweet feeling.

"The fondest wish I ever had since the day that I was weaned,

Is to go back and walk again on the rocks of Merasheen."

grockingham@thespec.com

905-526-3331