And Clay would know. Note his last initial. Sorry paddymac you've been euchred.   

"Four Strong Winds" won for a number of reasons having to do with quality and popularity, the bottom line being that the most listeners voted for it.   

As for others' suggestions, you need to understand the process. It has been going on all winter on CBC radio. (The "Canadian 50 tracks" was after last year's similar show, without the nationalist qualification, came up with an, English-language pop music list of the 20th century that was almost all American). They spent two weeks on each decade (pre-1950's counted as a single decade, like it or not), with weekly guests from the music biz nominating two songs each, then voting each other's selections on or off the island. BUT WAIT! Each week also had a "listener choice" of the songs which were not selected, which is how certain items of no great popularity with critics, such as "Snowbird", were added on. Eventually they had a list of 50 songs. Then there was a whole other process to rank them from 50 to 1--that was done entirely by online poll voting from CBC listeners. (Any of you could have participated so quit carping.) Remember, the theme was"popular", not "folk". (Don, I am a Canadian folksinger and have never heard of either song you mention--sorry.) What the results show, in part, is the demographic of CBC listeners, and that 60's folk music is when "folk" was actually "popular", and most importantly, that those songs are still our best beloved. Stan Rogers being the only post-1975 folk classic in the top ten. I really think the top ten is a listing of absolute classic songs, with two exceptions.

The two songs that made top ten but are not listed in the top post were "American Woman" by the Guess Who (NOT on my list, though they were a great band they did better work) and most puzzlingly, the NUMBER TWO song was that catchy little jingle by the Bare Naked Ladies from 1992, "If I Had A Million Dollars". If that had emerged in 1963, which I can well imagine, it would be a long-forgotten novelty song by now, but the kids that were imprinted with it in '92 are now old enough to listen to CBC radio.

The late Peter Gzowski, as I recall, did a similar, less structured exercise twice. I think he did it twice, because I recall two separate grand winners: "Four Strong Winds" and "Northwest Passage".

The cream always rises.

W-O