Canaday I.O - Canadian Song feat. Michael Burnyeat

Fiddle by ‪@MICHAELBURNYEAT‬ vocals & arrangement by Farya Faraji, with archive footage from Canada's national film archives. Be sure to check out Michael and subscribe to his channel, he is one of our most talented folk fiddlers in Canada and a true expert.

This is a Canadian folk song from the tradition of lumberjack songs found across the U.S-Canadian border and shared in the two countries. Whilst these songs tend to reflect their respective regions, with the American ones using American sounds such as the banjo, and the Canadian ones being more Scots-Irish oriented, they share similar stylistic features such as the quirk of modifying place names like Lake Superior or Canada into easily rhymeable words like Super I.A or Canaday I.O

The arrangement features the heavily Scots-Irish influenced style of fiddling of Canada, and I found a piano here in Montréal that dates to the 1800's, which I recorded playing the underlying chord progression of this song.

Lyrics:

1. Come all ye jolly fellows, how would you like to go
And spend one winter in the woods of Canaday-I-O?
“We’re going up to Canaday,” is what we young men say,
“And going up to Canaday depends upon the pay.”

2. “It’s sure we’ll pay good wages, we’ll pay your passage out,
But you must sign the papers that you will stay the route,
For if you should get homesick and say back home you’ll go,
We will not pay your passage from Canaday-I-O.”

3. We had a pleasant journey on the route we had to go
And landed in Three Rivers in Canaday-I-O
Oh then the Norcross agent, he came a-prowling round
And said, “My jolly fellows, why don’t you all lie down?”

4. Our hearts were made of iron, our souls were cased with steel,
The hardships of that winter could never make us yield.
Our food the dogs would bark at, our beds were on the snow,
We suffered worse than poison in Canaday-I-O.

5. And now the winter’s over, it’s homeward we are bound,
And in this cursed country we’ll never more be found.
Go back to your wives and sweethearts, tell others not to go
To that God-forsaken country called Canaday-I-O.