Songs Celebrating Canada

Subject: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: Beer
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 08:15 AM

Will be off to an all afternoon and late into the evening gathering of musicians. This is an annual party started about 4 years ago and folks from State side will be joining us. It's a BYOB food for the pot luck and instruments if you have one.

Now to the question. Besides The "Maple Leaf Forever", What songs are our there celebrating this great country? I'm going to be singing a song that was in a contest for "Expo" 1967. The title is: Hank's Centennial Travel"s by Hank Rivers. Great song that covers every Provence.
Happy Canada Day.
Beer

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 09:24 AM

Mon pays ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver: Gilles Vigneaux

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 09:28 AM

Farewell to the groves of shillelagh and shamrock
Farewell to the girls of old Ireland all round
May their hearts be as glad as ever I would wish them
When far away on the ocean I'm bound
My father is old and my mother quite feeble
To leave their own country it grieves them full sore
The tears down their cheeks in great drops they are rolling
To think they must die on a foreign shore
But what matter to me where me bones may be buried
If in peace and contentment I can live my life
The green fields of Canada they daily are a-blooming
Where I'll find an end to my misery and strife

So come pack up your sea-stores consider no longer
Ten dollars a week isn't very bad pay
With no taxes or tithes to devour up your wages
At home on the green fields of Americay.

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: Peter T.
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 09:31 AM

Canadian Railroad Trilogy. The best song about Canada ever.

(Tom Russell's Canadian Whisky song is good too -- the great export).

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: Emma B
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 09:41 AM

Stan Roger's song

has always epitomized the wildness of Canada for me

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 09:48 AM

OK. I get it. You don't want stuff from a Québecois but good old British imperialism.
Bold General Wolfe then . . .

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: *daylia*
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 09:52 AM

My favourites are Un Canadien Errant (traditional French Canadian folksong), Alberta Bound (Gordon Lightfoot) and Four Strong Winds (Ian Tyson).

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: Dave Earl
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 09:55 AM

Farewell to Nova Scotia perhaps?

Dave Earl

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 10:47 AM

Canada, home of the best damn self-deprecators in the world. Well, maybe not the best, but we're right up there.
Moved here; shouldn't have: Scarborough Settler's Lament
Better to be a dead Manitoban than a live Canadian: Riel's Farewell

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: Bob the Postman
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 10:52 AM

Okay, so we're only Junior B when it comes to humble. Pass the Tim Bits.
I will never go again to north Ontario: The Blackfly Song

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: Beer
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 12:46 PM

Peter T
Couldn't agree with you more. The best.
Beer

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 01:11 PM

Another nod for CRT. I think that it should be taught in public school.

Another one that I like is The Band's "Acadian Driftwood".

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: C. Ham
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 04:36 PM

My list of great songs of Canada, songs that capture the essence of Canada, are (in chronological order):

The Land of the Muskeg and the Shining Birch Tree by Wade Hemsworth
Four Strong Winds by Ian Tyson
Canadian Railroad Trilogy by Gordon Lightfoot
Northwest Passage by Stan Rogers
Out Past the Timberline by Murray McLauchlan.

I limited myself to one song per songwriter. Certainly there are others by each of those writers that could be on the list

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: CeltArctic
Date: 01 Jul 06 - 06:14 PM

This one is old, but I know nothing about it. I just posted the lyrics here: Arise and Come Along

There is an interesting one in the DT which I would love to know more about too: Come to me in Canada

Moira

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 02 Jul 06 - 06:16 AM

I could drink a case of you - Joni Mitchell

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 02 Jul 06 - 10:21 PM

Eileen McGann has a couple. One is called Rolling Home Canadian, the other one, the name escapes me, but it's about a woman who disguises herself as a man so she can go work in the Canadian woods with her husband. Maybe it's Ballad of Isabella Gunn. She also has a terrific song called Requiem which celebrates the trees Canada has but is evidently in danger of losing.

You could say Robert Service's poem, Ballad of Blasphemous Bill, celebrates Canada - it has been put to music by Debby McClatchy.

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: CeltArctic
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 01:45 AM

Here in Canada's North - Yellowknife - a group called the Gumboots writes and sings songs about the north. Some are historical, some are local legends, some decribe the importance of the land, some are tragedies, many are celebrations. My favourite, one which I've recorded as a ballad, is a true story about a woman who lost her way in a blizzard in a small community in Nunavut called Baker Lake.

Martha (c) Bob MacQuarrie & Bill Gilday (SOCAN)

Wailing like banshees the cold winds blow over
The frost riven rocks of the barrens once more.
The snow's driven fiercely across the bleak tundra -
A wayfarer loses the footpath before...

CH: Where are you, Martha, my dear heart, my darling,
Beside Qamanittuaq's furious shore?
The children are crying, the daylight is dying--
Oh, Martha, come in from the storm.

For two days the storm keeps the family together;
Through wind-battered walls hunger slowly intrudes.
Then Martha suggests to her husband, Oovayuk,
"I'll go to the Bay, for our children need food."

Turning her shoulder full into the blizzard,
She turns her face sideways, evading the blast.
She loses the path to the shrouded food market
And walks to her death on the tundra, alas.

Repeat first verse.

'Qamanittuaq' is the Inuktitut name for Baker Lake.


Moira Cameron
The Arctic Celt

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: Beer
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 05:23 AM

Guest Gerry and Moira I've really enjoyed reading both your threads. I have heard of the Gumboots and of course Robert Service but the other I'm afraid not. Must do a little search to see if I can come up with more information.
Thanks.
Beer

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: GUEST,thurg
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 10:35 AM

C-A-N-A-D-A by Sompin' Tom. And everything else by same.

Canadian Pacific by George Hamilton IV (or is it III?).

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: bobad
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 10:47 AM

I submit this song, written by Bruce Murdoch, for consideration of worthiness as a song celebrating Canada.

COUNTRY 'TIS OF THEE

This is the place I live, this is the place I be;
I don't respect the politics of ancient history.
Honey, I just try to tell it true.
I often walk around here, I cannot find my place;
Pirates raped my lover and they slashed her in the face.
Just give me words that I might write for you,
Country 'tis of thee, country 'tis of thee.

It is not true that languages do not get along;
They're written down, they're spoken of and sometimes put in songs.
I'm just trying to tell it true.
I count the blessing that daily that the air I breathe is free;
But between assault and battery you'll be brought to your knees.
Just give me words that I might sing for you,
Country 'tis of thee, country 'tis of thee.

Patriots shout promises and fools salute a flag;
While the country which it represents is torn apart like rags.
It's not just done in fact, it's done in deed.
Rich man left you helpless with his bank account intact;
Poor folks never had it can't ask us to put it back,
Hurts me deep inside to see you bleed
My country 'tis of thee, country 'tis of thee.

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: stormalong
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 11:29 AM

Cheer, Boys, Cheer apparently extols emigration to Canada:

http://www.nls.uk/broadsides/broadside.cfm/id/16731/transcript/1

although "Canada" is not actually named in the song.

Richard

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 12:07 PM

Joni Mitchell's "I wish I had a river"
and Lucie Blue Trembley's "Tour Song" are the best Canada songs for expats since "un Canadien Errant"

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: Beer
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 12:34 PM

Interesting Bobad. Will have to listen to it next time I am up.
Beer

Subject: RE: Songs Celebrating Canada
From: CET
Date: 03 Jul 06 - 12:35 PM

Countess Richard, possibly you had your "langue" in your cheek, but Gilles Vigneault was definitely not celebrating Canada.

Edmund