Lumber Camp Songs

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  • most folk songs that can still be found in Ontario owe their survival to the lumber camps
  • with few exceptions, the songs Fowke had collected in the last three years (1957/8-1961) have come from men who worked in the woods in their youth, or from men who learned them from their fathers, uncles or grandfathers who had spent time in the shanties; Fowke learned not to ask for folk songs or old-time songs but for “shanty songs”
  • most fruitful area for her was the Peterborough area, ninety miles east of Toronto
  • there, among the Irish-Canadians whose ancestors first came to Canada in 1825, she found some of the best traditional singers she had ever heard, where most of the songs on this album came from
  • mid-19th c, Peterborough was centre of a flourishing lumber trade, and every little town in the vicinity had its own saw-mill
  • later, when the forests there had been cut over, the shanties moved north, and many of the Peterborough men followed
  • farmers would work their fields in the summer, then spend the winter in the northern lumber camps, coming back each spring with their winter’s wages and a fresh batch of songs
  • during the long winter nights in the shanties the men took turns singing all the songs they could remember: old British ballads, music-hall songs, and popular songs of the day. But most popular of all were the songs that told of life in the woods and the adventures of the shantyboys – this is what the album consists of
  • many American shantyboys came north to the Canadian camps, and many Ontario boys went south to American camps, so a lot of the songs had “no border”
  • all but four were sung on both sides of the border – one of the four that seems to be purely Canadian is Hogan’s Lake *has never been found south of the border
  • Abbott the oldest on the album
  • several have preserved the custom of speaking the last word or phrase of the song to indicate that the end of the song has been reached; several also sing with a pronounced Irish accent, although most come from families who have been in Ontario for well over 100 years
  • almost all were recorded in the homes of the singers, so you will hear some ambient noise – ie. the phone ringing in Hogan’s Lake; and several tapped their foot to keep the time

From : FW 4052 Lumbering Songs from the Ontario Shanties, 1961

  • collected by Edith Fowke, various artists