I've never really thought about this...it's interesting to see how quickly the recording of folk music was professionalized in Canada...like the songs were "collected" and quickly absorbed by the professional singers who then became the "definitive source version", as far as released recordings went.   


And yet, as Frankie suggests, there must be lots of the actual original source material out there, in archives such as Dr Creighton's and Edith Fowkes'. We just didn't have an Alan Lomax-type whose mission was to record the singers and release the best of their material for public consumption.   

Good job the fiddle players didn't get the same treatment, or we'd have "Ashley MacIsaac plays the tunes of Jean Carignan" instead of the real deal.