On the Barenaked Ladies CD, Stunt, track three is called Light up My Room. It features the lyric :
“A hydrofield cuts through my neighborhood. Somehow that always just made me feel good. I can put a spare bulb in my hand and light up my yard.”
I am the user formerly known as puffington.
Maybe it’s a play on words:
Hydroelectric field
They use a lot of hydroelectricity in Canada, maybe there are a lot of high voltage lines to get that juice to the cities.
That’s my WAG.
In Ontario, the big public power authority is “Ontario Hydro”, because, yes, most power is produced in hydroelectric generators and dams. The term made it into the vernacular; you pay a “hydro bill”, and because you clear out all the trees underneath it, the path of a high-tension line is called a “field”.
You can in fact do the trick in question; hold a fluorescent bulb near any line above 16 KV and you can get flickering. Connect a big loop of wire between the contacts on either end and it works even better.
I used to know the BNL’s manager’s girfriend back in Toronto… I hear there’s a song about her but I couldn’t say which one.