“I finally got tired ,” Charlie Rhindress writes, “of not being taken seriously as a writer because I tend to write pop culture stuff as opposed to ‘Maritime drama’ and this new play was the result.” The Maritime Way of Life is billed as a satire on the maritime way of life, but it might as easily be called a satire of dramatic representations of the maritime way of life. “The story,” as related by Tom McCoag, “deals with a hard luck, rural New Brunswick family forced by economic conditions to milk the system.... There is the devious grandma; the proud, but bumbling father; the tireless, self-sacrificing mother; the smart, well-to-do, city-fied daughter and the lazy, dumb son.” When Pa “comes home from his lonely shift at the mine which [has] been closed down for two years” the cliches already abound. As Dale Fawthrop notes in his review of the play’s opening night, “too often other Canadians see us as unemployed, pogie-abusing miners and fishers who are proud of their lobster, crab, maple cream roots”. Rhindress’s frustration is understandable. Since 1991, he has co-written ten dinner-theatre pieces with Karen Valanne, written two Christmas plays for teens and written four more mainstage shows including Elvis Presley is Alive: and Well and Living in Sackville, the Gates Motel, and a musical about werewolves entitled Under the Night, which was co-written with Dean Burry, in addition to The Maritime Way of Life which he took to the Atlantic Fringe Festival on the Labour Day Weekend. But even his work closest to “Maritime drama” mould, Guilty! The Story of the Great Amherst Mystery, rep resent s the maritime way of life with an un orthodox twist.