Very useful discussion. Thank you. Here is the information I collected in my original investigations.

There is a dispute about the authorship of this song, which was first published in Blackwood's Magazine for September 1829.

Various articles are contained in Canadian Poetry No. 06, Spring/Summer, 1980

The "Canadian Boat-Song": A Mosaic Compiled by D.M.R. Bentley I. The Text II. The Authorship of the "Canadian Boat-Song": A Bibliographical Noteby Linda Dowler III. John Galt and "The Lone Shieling" by Elizabeth Waterston IV. Tiger Dunlop and the "Canadian Boat-Song" by Gary Draper

From: 'Tiger Dunlop and the "Canadian Boat-Song" ' by Gary Draper

"The poem, of course, was first introduced in the "Noctes Ambrosianae" section of Blackwoods' Magazine, a brew of politics, literary gossip, and wit in the form of a convivial dialogue among the Blackwoodian fellowship. It would be impossible to draw a clear line between what in the "Noctes" was borrowed from life and what was pure invention. When "Christopher North" (who is understood to be John Wilson) introduces the poem, he explains that a friend "now in Upper Canada" has sent a translation of a Gaelic song sung by the Highland boat men of the St. Lawrence. Dr. William Dunlop, who was a friend of Wilson, was in Upper Canada at the time; that, in essence, is the argument for Dunlop's authorship.

"What constitutes the argument against? William Dunlop is not known ever to have written another line of poetry in his life."