Song about the 1911 fire that devasted Timmins and South Porcupine in Northern Ontario. Many lives were lost and the real count will never be known as there were many prospectors in the bush at the time.

BALLAD OF DEAD MAN'S POINT
(Paul Henry Dallaire)

Strolling along by the lakeshore
I came to an old graveyard
The words that were written on a tombstone
Set my mind back many years ago

The year was nineteen eleven
It was one hot july summer's day
Smoke filled the air then like an eclipse
The sky turned as black as the night

Chorus;
Our little town burned to dust many lives were lost
And it left behind a trail of woe and ashes
Those who died that day may their ghosts lead on the way
And protect us from another God we pray

Verse;
The fire came like thief in the night
With a wind crazy blowing wild
Down in the mine some when there to hide
But suffocated and did not survive

Others ran to the lakeside
Fleeing for their lives
Hoping the water could save them
But in the waters were doomed there to die

Talk:
Sometime when your fishing for pickerel on Porcupine lake
Just down the hill of dead man's point
The always blowin breeze will connect you
To the past of North Ontario

And if your standing there gazing at the grave sites
Among the Loon calls where the lonesome jackpine grows
You can see the spot where the weisse family's sleepin
Found in that mine shaft dark and deep below

Chorus:
Our little town burned to dust it was a holocaust
And it left behind a trail of woe and ashes
Those who died that day may their ghosts lead on the way
And protect us from another god we pray

Paul Henry Dallaire
Paul Henry Pub.SOCAN