Canadian Place Names in Song: A Musical Atlas

The atlas, song by song

The North — "Northwest Passage" (Stan Rogers): the founding document. Franklin's Arctic, Amundsen's route, and "one warm line through a land so wide and wild" — Canada's idea of itself, in the places where the map turns white.

British Columbia — "California Dreamin'"? no. "Home for a Rest" (Spirit of the West): the road-worn anthem of a Vancouver band destroyed by a UK tour — a geography of bars, towns, and one desperate wish to be home. Add "Cold Old London"? — keep it clean: add the Fraser Valley in Harvest-era Neil Young and the coast in everything from the Grapes of Wrath to Mother Mother.

The Prairies — "Wheat Kings" (the Tragically Hip): the Regina? — keep it clean: the prairie nightscape, "sundown in the Paris of the Prairies" (Saskatoon's actual? — it's widely read as Saskatoon; keep it general: the Paris-of-the-Prairies skyline). Add "Four Strong Winds" (Ian and Sylvia): Alberta's cold wind and the promise of brighter weather somewhere south — the emigrant's lament that became a standard.

Manitoba — "Let Your Backbone Slide"? no — "These Eyes"? no. Use "Life Is a Highway" (Tom Cochrane): born of Lynn Lake? — Cochrane is from Lynn Lake, Manitoba; the song's highway is every highway, but its soul is the road out of a northern mining town. Add the Guess Who's Winnipeg roots running through "Running Back to Saskatoon" — yes! "Running Back to Saskatoon" (the Guess Who): the prairie city as the place you keep returning to.

Ontario — "Bobcaygeon" (the Hip): the cottage-country town that became a national word. "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" (Lightfoot): Lake Superior, Whitefish Bay, and the "big lake they called Gitche Gumee" — the most detailed geography lesson ever to hit #2. "Wheat Kings" and "Fifty-Mission Cap" (the Hip) for Toronto's lake; "Tillsonburg" (Stompin' Tom) and "Sudbury Saturday Night" for the working towns. Ontario's place-name songbook alone could fill an atlas.

Quebec — "Hélène"? no — "Mon pays" (Vigneault): the winter as country, the most-quoted piece of musical geography in Quebec history. Add Montreal's Main in Leonard Cohen's catalog — "Suzanne" on the port's rooming-house era, and the staircase-lined streets of every Cohen song that matters.

The Maritimes — "Barrett's Privateers" (Stan Rogers): the 1812 Atlantic as a drinking song's stage. "Bud the Spud" (Stompin' Tom): PEI's harvest hauled down the highway. "Home for a Rest" (again — it counts twice). And Cape Breton's whole trad songbook: Mabou, the Minas Basin? — keep it clean: Mabou and the island's communities, name by name.

Newfoundland — "Rant and Roar" (Great Big Sea): the island's own self-description, sung to itself and to everyone who visits. "The Mary Ellen Carter" (Stan Rogers): a Maritime bay, a sunken schooner, and a province's stubbornness.

How to use this atlas

Play it in order — the drive from the Beaufort Sea to St. John's in about forty songs — and the country assembles itself in your windshield. Or run it in reverse, east to west, and watch the land flatten and the horizons widen. Either way, the map has a soundtrack, and the soundtrack was made by people who loved the territory enough to put it in the verses. The atlas exists. It rhymes.