Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey

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You are invited aboard the Metagama, to the plains and lakes of Canada, to 1920s Detroit and Prohibition, and through the ebb and flow of fortunes on both sides of the Atlantic.

About Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey

Listed Under Music Events / Nights Out Events

This event has been rescheduled to 26th March 2026

Shortly after the end of World War One, the British and Canadian governments came to an agreement. The British armed forces were going to come home to a land fit for heroes. It is well recorded now that this didn’t happen as the Great Depression of the late 1920s destroyed this high-sounding hyperbole.

In the Outer Hebrides two events happened within a few years after the end of the war which affected and are remembered by subsequent generations. First, on January 1 1919 there was the HMY Iolair disaster as the fully laden troopship sank with all hands after hitting rocks approaching Stornoway harbour. That removed at a stroke about 200 men of the islands. Few families on the Isle of Lewis did not experience the loss of relatives or friends among the 184 Lewis men who died that day. The bereaved also included some of the 3,100 Lewis men who had served in the wartime RNR. Most of them survived to enjoy the peace, but some lost fathers, uncles, brothers or cousins on the Iolaire.

To help crofters migrate in the 1880s the British government committted £10,000. After World War One, it then set up the Overseas Settlement Committee to help ex-soldiers emigrate. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Empire Settlement Act of 1922 provided funds for those who wanted to emigrate. No doubt encouraged by this as well as by stories filtering through from those had already emigrated to the USA and Canada people from the islands keenly signed up.

Canada wanted immigrants to help expand the country to the west across the great plains and the Rockies to the Pacific west coast. Enter the Canadian Pacific Steamship company and the SS Metagama, along with their two other ships, Marloch and Canada. The Metagama played a significant role in the 20th century migration of people from the Outer Hebrides to Canada. On Saturday 21 April 1923, she sailed from Stornoway with 300 young Lewis emigrants on board, all but 20 of them young men, with an average age of 22. This was one of the first waves of mass emigration from the islands, and had a profound effect on the island culture and history. The image above shows the crowd at Stornoway harbour to Metgama departing.

The show Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey tells this story in music, song, words and pictures of the islanders’ emigration, its effect on the islands and how some of those who emigrated thrived but others sometimes did not thrive while trying to farm on poor soil!

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Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey

You are invited aboard the Metagama, to the plains and lakes of Canada, to 1920s Detroit and Prohibition, and through the ebb and flow of fortunes on both sides of the Atlantic.

About Metagama: An Atlantic Odyssey

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