Sometimes the Grand Manan attitude toward others hasn't really been as warm as it should: while non-Islanders might be the finest kind of people, they just didn't have that Grand Manan pedigree. Hopefully that sort of thinking is becoming a thing of the past, and if a recent thread of comments on Facebook is any indication, I think it is.
While conversation was positive, a term was still used that doesn't really help: "CFA's" or "Come From Aways". With comments going back and forth, a recent enthusiast for our Island community talked about choosing to live here, and a term was coined: "Chooser". At that point a Grand Mananer said he "chooses" to live here too. So there you have it.
The neat thing about the word "chooser" is that it is deliberately positive. It doesn't matter where you were born and brought up, if you are here because you deliberately want to be; you are a "Chooser".
So, take that, Wikipedia, you heard it in a Grand Manan Facebook converstion first: "Chooser - someone who deliberately chooses a particular community to call home."
