This section contains a resource bank of 200 songs that reflect Canada in all its diversity. Many you’ll recognize by tune. Others are relatively new.
This material is organized in three main groups:
- Regional songs with samples from seven large areas
- On the Rock, the Grand Banks and Labrador: inland, outports, oil rigs and towns
- Acadia, The Island, North Shore, Cape Breton, Saint John Valley, Fundy and Atlantic coasts
- Laurentia: au long du fleuve, en Gaspésie, au grand nord / along the River, into Gaspé, into the north
- Upper Canada: along/near the lakes, into the rocks and woods, the cities and towns
- West of the Great Lakes and East of the Great Divide: prairie, parkland, boreal forest
- North of 60: Klondike, Mackenzie, Eastern Arctic and Archipelago
- Vancouver Island and islands of the Gulf, Lower Mainland, Interior, Cariboo, Haida Gwai, Far North
- Rail and other songs that join us over distance including
- Connections / Passages CP & GTP
- West Coast Connections
- Atlantic / European Connections
- Northern Transcontinental
- French / English Connections
- North American Connections
- Rogers and Roots (Stan Rogers, Gilles Vigneault, Gordon Lightfoot, Félix Leclerc, our bards, their predecessors (Wilf Carter, “La Bolduc” ) and successor chansonniers/singer/songwriters and groups that have made an underground and sometimes surface railway for those who choose to know the country better.
There will be overlaps between the three streams. Many singers and groups are linked to regional traditions. Only a few like Rogers actually set out on a Northwest Passage to gain a sense of the whole.
That is why we’ve made his name one of the Three Rs of this section because that is what the Canadian Classroom on Rails is all about!
This page is still under development. Our list and links largely completed but we’re still dotting the I’s and crossing t’s of permissions and copyrights,
In the meantime, we’re including a sample—audio, lyrics or both—from each of the headings, so you’ll know what you’re waiting for!
Regional Songs:
Bluenose