The title of this paper is derived from a comment by Frank H. Underhill in The Image of Confederation, published in 1964. By that time, the Atlantic Provinces had become identified as the “sick man” of Canada, lagging behind the rest of the nation in economic growth. Underhill used this flimsy justification as an excuse for excluding the Atlantic region from his discussion, a common practice among policy makers and scholars of Canadian history. Exclusion from the national narrative is perhaps preferable to what often passes for analysis of the region. This paper probes the “mistaken identities” that bedevil Atlantic Canada and argues that the nation would benefit from paying more attention to the region located “east of Canada.”