MAKE AND BREAK HARBOUR
(Stan Rogers)

How still lies the bay in the light western airs
Which blow from the crimson horizon.
Once more we tack home with a dry empty hold,
Saving gas with the breezes so fair.
She's a kindly Cape Islander, old, but still sound
But so lost in the long liner's shadow.
Make and break, and make do, but the fish are so few
That she won't be replaced should she founder.

It's so hard not to think of before the big war
When the cod were so cheap and so plenty.
Foreign trawlers go by now with long-seeing eyes,
Taking all, where we seldom take any;
And so the young folk don't stay with the fisherman's way.
Long ago, they all moved to the cities,
And the ones left behind, old, tired, and blind
Can't work for "a pound or a penny".

CHORUS: In Make and Break Harbour the boats are so few,
Too many are pulled up and rotten.
Most houses stand empty. Old nets hung to dry
Are blown away, lost and forgotten.

I can see the big draggers have stirred up the bay
Leaving lobster traps smashed on the bottom.
Can they think it don't pay to respect the old ways
That Make and Break men have not forgotten?
For we still keep our time to the turn of the tide,
And this boat that I built with my father
Still lifts to the sky! The one-lunger and I
Still talk like old friends on the water.