Diefenbaker John G on Sir John A – Canada’s 13th prime minister tells stories about our founding PM
Scott, D.C. On the Way to the Mission
Trudeau (1) un des plus célèbres discours de Pierre Trudeau au cour de la compagne référendaire au Quebec en 1980: “Bien sûr, mon nom c’est Elliott …”
Klein, A.J.M. This Montréal poet of the 1930s-40s reads “Political Meeting” on a race-loaded speech in the conscription crisis of World War II
Les Cyniques La bataille des plaines d’Abraham en forme d’un commentaire sportif bilingue
Monique Leyrac “Félix Leclerc chante et dit …”
Readings by Four Kingston Poets
Gail Fox Love Poem
Tom Marshall Near Kingston/country heat
Stewart MacKinnon Poem for Silent Hand
David Helwig Harbour
Scott, F.R. “All the Spikes But the Last”
Three century-old poems (2 sonnets) on Canadian cities
OTTAWA BEFORE DAWN D. C. Scott
The stars are stars of morn; a keen wind wakes
The birches on the slope; the distant hills
Rise in the vacant North; the Chaudière fills
The calm with its hushed roar; the river takes
An unquiet rest, and a bird stirs, and shakes
The morn with music; a snatch of singing thrills
From the river; and the air clings and chills.
Fair, in the South, fair as a shrine that makes
The wonder of a dream, imperious towers
Pierce and possess the sky, guarding the halls
Where our young strength is welded strenuously;
While in the East, the star of morning dowers
The land with a large tremulous light, that falls
A pledge and presage of our destiny.
QUÉBEC Jean Blewett
Québec, the grey old city on the hill,
Lies with a golden glory on her head,
Dreaming throughout this hour so fair, so still,
Of other days and her beloved dead.
The doves are nesting in the cannon grim,
The flowers bloom where once did run a tide
Of crimson when the moon rose pale and dim
Above a field of battles stretching side.
Methinks within her wakes a mighty glow
Of pride in ancient times, her stirring past.
The strife, the valour of the long ago
Feels at her heart-strings. Strong and tall and vast
She lies, touched with the sunset’s golden grace,
A wondrous softness on her grey old face.
CALGARY OF THE PLAINS E. Pauline Johnson
Not of the seething cities with their swarming human hives,
Their fetid airs, their reeking streets, their dwarfed and poisoned lives,
Not of the buried yesterdays, but of the days to be,
The glory and the gateway of the yellow West is she.
The Northern Lights dance down her plains with soft and silvery feet,
The sunrise gilds her prairies when the dawn and daylight meet;
Among her level hands the fitful southern breezes sweep,
And beyond her western windows the sublime old mountains sleep.
The Redman haunts her portals, and the Paleface treads her streets,
The Indian’s stealthy footstep with the course of commerce meets,
And hunters whisper vaguely of the half-forgotten tales
Of phantom herds of bison lurking on her midnight trails.
Not hers the lore of olden lands, their laurels and their bays;
But what are these compared to one of all her perfect days?
For naught can buy the jewel that upon her forehead lies
The cloudless sapphire Heaven of her territorial skies.