Lyr Req: Estevan (Cecil Boone)

Subject: lyrics required: Estevan Strike song
From: GUEST,len wallace
Date: 16 Mar 11 - 12:43 AM

Hello all Mudcatters,

I'm doing some digging for a few songs, among them a song that came out of the Estevan/Bienfat strike in 1931. There is a song that was written to the melody to "Kevin Barry". Does anyone have the lyrics to this strike song?



Many thanks..

Subject: Lyr Add: ESTEVAN (Cecil Boone)
From: GUEST,Bardford
Date: 16 Mar 11 - 12:56 AM

This might be it. Scroll to bottom of the page
Here

A poem to the memory of these men was composed by Cecil Boone, simply entitled "Estevan". It goes as follows:

In a little mining village
Scarcely noticed on the map
Bourgeois guns were turned on workers
And their life's blood there did sap.

No one dreamed of such a slaughter
In that town of Estevan,
That armed thugs with guns and bullets
Would shoot men with empty hands.

Just a protest from the miners
And boss bullets then did fly,
Caring not who was the target
Or the number that would die.

Blazing forth, nine hundred bullets,
Bodies full of lead did fill,
Murdered three, and wounded twenty
But the Cause they could not kill.

Three more martyrs for the miners,
Three more murders for the boss,
Brutal laws, to crush the workers
Who dare fight in Freedom's cause.

As those miners lay a-dying
In their agony and pain,
Whispered ... "Though we die for freedom
Yet we do not die in vain.

"For we know our class will triumph
When they shall united stand;
They will take the world for labor
And the workers rule the land.

"Then the workers' day of vengeance
Will be proclaimed with each breath;
Labor's cause is right and mighty
And beyond the reach of death".

Canadian Miner (Calgary)
January 30, 1932, p. 2

Subject: RE: lyrics required: Estevan Strike song
From: GUEST,Bardford
Date: 16 Mar 11 - 01:06 AM

There's a fellow - Peter Karstner - singing the lyrics on
Youtube here. I don't know if the tune he is using is Kevin Barry.

Subject: RE: lyrics required: Estevan Strike song
From: GUEST,999
Date: 16 Mar 11 - 04:30 AM

"the Estevan/Bienfat strike in 1931"


Should be Bienfait.

Bienfait (a French term--two words==meaning well done) is a town in south eastern Saskatchewan. It is and was just about five/six miles west of Estevan.

Not the RCMP's finest hour, imo.