It’s Canada Day, up Canada Way, and I want to put together a Canada Day play-list. All suggestions welcome.
And of course, what better one to start with than Stompin’ Tom: It’s Canada Day!
Quite different in tone, there’s Oscar Peterson’s Canadian Suite.
And of course, Lightfoot’s “Canadian Railway Trilogy”.
Regional/provincial songs?
Well, pretty much any song from Connie Kaldor’s “Wood River” CD is a celebration of Saskatchewan.
For Nova Scotia, anything from Stan Rogers: “Barrett’s Privateers”, “Fogarty’s Cove”, “Watching the Apples Grow.”
For Newfoundland, the Irish Descendants always do it for me, particularly, “Let me Fish off Cape St. Mary’s”
Alberta? Lightfoot again: “Alberta Bound”
Quebec: an oldie but a goodie: “Le canadien errant,” about a Québécois in exile after the '37. And “Mon Pays” I think has pan-Canadian appeal - we all know that our country is winter!
As an aside, anyone who thinks Canadian music is boring or limited or there isn’t much of it or it’s all Justin Bieber and Celine Dion is a poorly-informed person.
Winnipeg - nothing captures the city like Neil Young/Randy Bachman singing ‘Prairie Town’.
On a prairie theme, Murray McLaughlin’s ‘Farmer Song’ and Stan Rogers’ ‘Field behind the Plow’ beautifully sum up virtually any rural setting between Alberta and Manitoba.
Come to that, Stan Rogers did a great job describing a lot of transplanted workers in Alberta - The Idiot.
Bruce Cockburn, Coldest Night of the Year. It’s about Toronto: “Now the sun is lurking just behind the Scarborough horizon… I took in Yonge Street at a glance…”
Bill Houston’s Ojibway Country. Few songs celebrate northern Ontario; this one does.
The Barra MacNeils, Coal Town Road. Nova Scotia coal mining, and beautiful harmonies. I used to perform this with a male quartet when I lived in Ontario.
For a little more Canadian history, you’ll need Tanglefoot doing Secord’s Warning about the War of 1812 (we sang this one too); and more recently, Vimy, about WWI. We never sang this one; I doubt that we could have made it through the song.
We’ve got a lot of good Stan Rogers already, but I’d certainly think that The Mary Ellen Carter should be included.