Friday, March 22, 2013

50 Days, 50 Songs to the 50 Years on the Carefree Highway Concert

Day 45


This song has always been one of my favorites. Written to help celebrate Canada’s centennial celebration, it’s an ambitious song that’s played in three parts and tells of the building of the railroad across that country. A saga in itself, it says much about the men who worked and lived and died to make that dream come true.

Oh there was a time in this fair land

When the railroad did not run

When the wild majestic mountains

Stood alone against the sun

Long before the white man and

Long before the wheel

When the green dark forest was too silent

To be real

Canadian Railroad Trilogy, Gordon Lightfoot



2 comments:

Connie Bretes said...

This is another one of Gord's 'long' songs that he sang alot before the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Even the audience would get into the foot stomping when he played it.

Lucy Naylor Kubash said...

At one of the more recent concerts I attended, he told the audience we could have The Trilogy or the Edmund Fitzgerald but we probably weren't going to get both. I think he did do both.