What do wars accomplish?
Two postings ago we discussed the Seven Years War (1756-1763) that shaped not only a continent but the modern world. The War of 1812-14 changed little if anything in North America.
In Europe it defeated Napoleon, and in the Congress of Vienna that followed, Prince Metternich tried to put things back they way they were before the French Revolution.
In North America ...
Monday, May 25, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Continental Uplift Created two Countries
The Great Lakes are a natural boundary between the United States and Canada. The manmade lines to the east and west are extensions of the watery wedge that thrusts almost halfway across the continent. And the economies of New England and New France, the forerunners of today's two countries, centred around two river systems: the Hudson and the Saint Lawrence.
The forces that created these rivers and the lakes behind them, and the point at which these took their shape are defining moments par excellence. The melting of the glaciers and the rising of the land that accompanied this led to three distinctly different orientations of the continent.
The first was due south. Meltwater from an enormous continental ice sheet flowed through what is now the Mississippi basin with a far bigger drainage area. Had that continued, North America would be one country around the delta, or two countries, east and west, on river opposite banks.
The second phase occurred when the Lakes Erie and Ontario, larger than today's lakes, drained eastward through the Hudson-Mohawk System. This was caused by uplift that cut off the southward drainage path to the Mississippi. The upper Great Lakes--Superior, Michigan and Huron--drained through what is now Georgian Bay, Lake Nippigon and the Ottawa River.
Had this pattern continued the American colonies would have had a route to the interior like New France did. The pressure for land that contributed to the American Revolution would not have been as acute, as settlers would not have had to cross the mountains to move inland. The Saint Lawrence-Ottawa would have been a more northerly system, like today's Mackenzie.
This landscape would have favoured two separate Americas as later emerged in the Civil War. Canada, if it had emerged as a country at all, would have consisted mainly of Arctic and sub-arctic territories. Like Greenland, it might have remained a European colony for much longer.
The third phase began when out Hudson outlet to the lower Great Lakes closed off, forcing them to drain up what is now the Upper Saint Lawrence Valley. At about the same time, the upper Great Lakes cut through an isthmus to drain through the lower ones.
This expanded a small cataract into the mighty Niagara Falls and swelled the Saint Lawrence even further as it made the Great Lakes into a single drainage system instead of two. French domination of this system, building forts down the Mississippi, created a counterweight to English power in North America.
Even though the Mississippi extension was later lost to the US, the French base was sufficient for two countries on the continent, rather than one. It was French voyageurs who continued to sail west from the Great Lakes, whose waterways became the routes of the later railways that secured Canada as an east-west power parallel to the United States.
Niagara Falls is a highlight for visitors to both countries, each of which has a falls--or half of the Falls to call its own. The Niagara River is part of the natural border between Canada and the US. And ths natural history of the River and its Falls--which have changed considerably in the last 10,000 years--mirrors the changing face of the content, and shows us what might have been.
The forces that created these rivers and the lakes behind them, and the point at which these took their shape are defining moments par excellence. The melting of the glaciers and the rising of the land that accompanied this led to three distinctly different orientations of the continent.
The first was due south. Meltwater from an enormous continental ice sheet flowed through what is now the Mississippi basin with a far bigger drainage area. Had that continued, North America would be one country around the delta, or two countries, east and west, on river opposite banks.
The second phase occurred when the Lakes Erie and Ontario, larger than today's lakes, drained eastward through the Hudson-Mohawk System. This was caused by uplift that cut off the southward drainage path to the Mississippi. The upper Great Lakes--Superior, Michigan and Huron--drained through what is now Georgian Bay, Lake Nippigon and the Ottawa River.
Had this pattern continued the American colonies would have had a route to the interior like New France did. The pressure for land that contributed to the American Revolution would not have been as acute, as settlers would not have had to cross the mountains to move inland. The Saint Lawrence-Ottawa would have been a more northerly system, like today's Mackenzie.
This landscape would have favoured two separate Americas as later emerged in the Civil War. Canada, if it had emerged as a country at all, would have consisted mainly of Arctic and sub-arctic territories. Like Greenland, it might have remained a European colony for much longer.
The third phase began when out Hudson outlet to the lower Great Lakes closed off, forcing them to drain up what is now the Upper Saint Lawrence Valley. At about the same time, the upper Great Lakes cut through an isthmus to drain through the lower ones.
This expanded a small cataract into the mighty Niagara Falls and swelled the Saint Lawrence even further as it made the Great Lakes into a single drainage system instead of two. French domination of this system, building forts down the Mississippi, created a counterweight to English power in North America.
Even though the Mississippi extension was later lost to the US, the French base was sufficient for two countries on the continent, rather than one. It was French voyageurs who continued to sail west from the Great Lakes, whose waterways became the routes of the later railways that secured Canada as an east-west power parallel to the United States.
Niagara Falls is a highlight for visitors to both countries, each of which has a falls--or half of the Falls to call its own. The Niagara River is part of the natural border between Canada and the US. And ths natural history of the River and its Falls--which have changed considerably in the last 10,000 years--mirrors the changing face of the content, and shows us what might have been.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Defining Moments in North America
For the next few weeks we'll be looking at events in North America that proved decisive not only for a continent but for the world. Some are already be known, though their full significance may not be. Others are more obscure, though of equal impact.
Some of these events affected both countries simultaneously. Others occurred in only one, and had a secondary effect in the other. Others can be seen as parallel events that occurred separately and had parallel and at times divergent impacts.
Our coverage of these events will not be in any set order, topical or chronological. Rather, we'll leapfrog in time and topic. We begin with a part of the Seven Years War (1756-63) that played out here before either Canada or the United States existed as countries.
Some of these events affected both countries simultaneously. Others occurred in only one, and had a secondary effect in the other. Others can be seen as parallel events that occurred separately and had parallel and at times divergent impacts.
Our coverage of these events will not be in any set order, topical or chronological. Rather, we'll leapfrog in time and topic. We begin with a part of the Seven Years War (1756-63) that played out here before either Canada or the United States existed as countries.
Fall of New France changed the world
Of all the events that occurred in North America since the arrival of Europeans, the fall of New France and its capital, Quebec is the keystone on which the world today depends.
From this single event flowed two major and a host of minor revolutions, the rise of the United States and the global asendency of the English language. From it also arose another type of pluralistic state in Canada, and the possibilities of global linkages that this model portends for future generations.
The Seven Years War (1756-63) has been called the first real world war. It involved all the major European powers and was fought in and over their colonial possessiongs around the world.
On a single day in 1759 Britain defeated France in two theatres half a world apart: in the Battle of Pondicherry, which gave her control of India, the jewell in the crown, and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, which gave her control of North America.
Taken together, these victories replaced France as the leading world power. It is the second that concerns us here.
Until this time Britain's colonies in North America were spread in a narrow band along on near the eastern seaboard. Even with the "Indian lands" their colonists later coveted, they were boxed in by French forts along the Saint Lawrence, down the Mississippi and on the lower Great Lakes.
The outcome of the Seven Years War changed all this. It placed the entire eastern half of the continent under a single colonial power. Potentially, it opened up the interior to English speaking settlement, though this did not occur for some time.
But with the First Nations farther inland no longer allied with and armed by the French, the tables tipped in favour of the one remaining European power. And with the fear of France removed, the Thirteen Colonies became more assertive.
They no longer depended on Britain for defence, and therefore felt safe to push the British out. The American Revolution became possible and imminent after the colonies of eastern North America were unified under a single flag.
The replacement of France by Britain as the leading world power also opened the way to Britain's eventual eclipse by the United States. It divided British industrial and commercial power. The American War of Independence became a precedent for other revolutions.
The French Revolution was inspired in part by the success of the American one. The new French Empire that emerged under Napoleon weakened the British, even though they ultimately triumphed over it.
Other New World colonies in the Americas rebelled against their Spanish and Portuguese colonial masters in the hope of form a United States of South America. Though this did not materialize, the loss of these possessions sent out a signal that the day of European domination was over.
Though Britain's Second Empire remained standing for almost another two centuries, the hand writing was on the wall. It was no longer tenable for a European kingdom to control vast territories and populations abroad for its own local advantage. Two world wars in the twentieth century finally brought this to an end.
Though British politcal hegemony would decline, Britain's cultural and economic legacy was not exhausted. The US would carry the English language to a new global supremacy, and surpass British inventiveness in what would become the American military industrial complex. Another part of the British legacy would be carried forward in the northern half of North America.
Britain's generous treatment of the French colonists she acquired in the Seven Years War was motivated not only by a desire to counter American assertiveness to the south. It also grew out of Britain's own experience as a pluralistic state: the United Kingdom of Great Britain which included the principality of Wales.
Though Britain's treatment of its Irish subjects was far from exemplary, she went to significant lengths to incorporate, not assimilate, the different peoples on her own island. This was taken even farther in the New World.
The religious and cultural rights extended to the so-called "conquered" French colonists laid the basis of a second North American state. French speaking voyageurs and Scots traders were the backbone of the fur trading enterprises that linked Canada from east to west by canoe.
Their waterways were the routes followed later by transcontinental railways. And the political alliances that followed grew out of a sense of Britishness that was based on ideas of inclusiveness rather than ethnicity. This is the basis of the current Canadian federation.
All these developments could not have occurred as they did if the colonial leadership of the continent had not passed from French to British hands in the treaty of 1763. Had the order been reversed--had British tenure given way to French supremacy--progress would have been very different.
French government was not inclined to favour the moves that led to eventual democracy. In fact, it was early British sympathies for colonial grievances that allowed the American liberty movements to flourish until they reached the point of no return. Had French troops been occupying the Thirteen Colonies, reprisals and repression would have been much more severe.
Likewise, had the British been succeeded by the French in Canada, rather than the reverse, it is unlikely the language, religion and culture of the Anglo colonists would have been tolerated or encouraged. There is a French cultural imperialism that has no equivalent in English speaking society, even at the height of the Raj.
French and English influences in North America occurred in the order that gave us the best of both. The passage of leadership from one to another was crucial to the strength of the modern world, and the two countries that emerged in North America.
From this single event flowed two major and a host of minor revolutions, the rise of the United States and the global asendency of the English language. From it also arose another type of pluralistic state in Canada, and the possibilities of global linkages that this model portends for future generations.
The Seven Years War (1756-63) has been called the first real world war. It involved all the major European powers and was fought in and over their colonial possessiongs around the world.
On a single day in 1759 Britain defeated France in two theatres half a world apart: in the Battle of Pondicherry, which gave her control of India, the jewell in the crown, and the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, which gave her control of North America.
Taken together, these victories replaced France as the leading world power. It is the second that concerns us here.
Until this time Britain's colonies in North America were spread in a narrow band along on near the eastern seaboard. Even with the "Indian lands" their colonists later coveted, they were boxed in by French forts along the Saint Lawrence, down the Mississippi and on the lower Great Lakes.
The outcome of the Seven Years War changed all this. It placed the entire eastern half of the continent under a single colonial power. Potentially, it opened up the interior to English speaking settlement, though this did not occur for some time.
But with the First Nations farther inland no longer allied with and armed by the French, the tables tipped in favour of the one remaining European power. And with the fear of France removed, the Thirteen Colonies became more assertive.
They no longer depended on Britain for defence, and therefore felt safe to push the British out. The American Revolution became possible and imminent after the colonies of eastern North America were unified under a single flag.
The replacement of France by Britain as the leading world power also opened the way to Britain's eventual eclipse by the United States. It divided British industrial and commercial power. The American War of Independence became a precedent for other revolutions.
The French Revolution was inspired in part by the success of the American one. The new French Empire that emerged under Napoleon weakened the British, even though they ultimately triumphed over it.
Other New World colonies in the Americas rebelled against their Spanish and Portuguese colonial masters in the hope of form a United States of South America. Though this did not materialize, the loss of these possessions sent out a signal that the day of European domination was over.
Though Britain's Second Empire remained standing for almost another two centuries, the hand writing was on the wall. It was no longer tenable for a European kingdom to control vast territories and populations abroad for its own local advantage. Two world wars in the twentieth century finally brought this to an end.
Though British politcal hegemony would decline, Britain's cultural and economic legacy was not exhausted. The US would carry the English language to a new global supremacy, and surpass British inventiveness in what would become the American military industrial complex. Another part of the British legacy would be carried forward in the northern half of North America.
Britain's generous treatment of the French colonists she acquired in the Seven Years War was motivated not only by a desire to counter American assertiveness to the south. It also grew out of Britain's own experience as a pluralistic state: the United Kingdom of Great Britain which included the principality of Wales.
Though Britain's treatment of its Irish subjects was far from exemplary, she went to significant lengths to incorporate, not assimilate, the different peoples on her own island. This was taken even farther in the New World.
The religious and cultural rights extended to the so-called "conquered" French colonists laid the basis of a second North American state. French speaking voyageurs and Scots traders were the backbone of the fur trading enterprises that linked Canada from east to west by canoe.
Their waterways were the routes followed later by transcontinental railways. And the political alliances that followed grew out of a sense of Britishness that was based on ideas of inclusiveness rather than ethnicity. This is the basis of the current Canadian federation.
All these developments could not have occurred as they did if the colonial leadership of the continent had not passed from French to British hands in the treaty of 1763. Had the order been reversed--had British tenure given way to French supremacy--progress would have been very different.
French government was not inclined to favour the moves that led to eventual democracy. In fact, it was early British sympathies for colonial grievances that allowed the American liberty movements to flourish until they reached the point of no return. Had French troops been occupying the Thirteen Colonies, reprisals and repression would have been much more severe.
Likewise, had the British been succeeded by the French in Canada, rather than the reverse, it is unlikely the language, religion and culture of the Anglo colonists would have been tolerated or encouraged. There is a French cultural imperialism that has no equivalent in English speaking society, even at the height of the Raj.
French and English influences in North America occurred in the order that gave us the best of both. The passage of leadership from one to another was crucial to the strength of the modern world, and the two countries that emerged in North America.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Seeger of the Hudson
Today we celebrate the 90th birthday of a man who has used the power of song to speak to a country built upon the power of the river he lives beside.
Pete Seeger, activist, environmentalist and musician, lives in the home he built for his family on the banks of the Hudson River he helped restore with his sloop Clearwater.
There are two countries rather than one north of Mexico because of two great rivers around which Europeans settled and traded with the First Nations of the New World.
The Hudson was the site of New Amsterdam, later New York. It became the nucleus of New England and other settlements that formed the Thirteen Colonies. Following the first successful revolution of modern times, these became the United States of America.
The Saint Lawrence River was the site of Québec and New France that dominated much of North America for 150 years. When Québec passed to British control, its people were joined by English speaking refugees from the American Resolution. Side by side these evolved to become Canada, the first modern state born without revolution or civil war.
Canada and the United States are vastly disproportionate in population and industrial strength, but the areas of land they occupy in North America are approximately equal.
The boundary between then is a fixed line, much of which follows the 49th Parallel. Yet it is less on the manmade borders than the features of the land, the rivers and the people who live along them, that we must focus in our conversations Over The Fence.
Pete Seeger of the Hudson, a man who has toured the world collecting and sharing songs, is a pathway connecting his country to itself and to oceans of humanity that surround it.
Canada, whose name means “village” and one that grew up along a river and extended to a distant ocean, joins our neighbour in celebrating this elder citizen.
Pete Seeger, activist, environmentalist and musician, lives in the home he built for his family on the banks of the Hudson River he helped restore with his sloop Clearwater.
There are two countries rather than one north of Mexico because of two great rivers around which Europeans settled and traded with the First Nations of the New World.
The Hudson was the site of New Amsterdam, later New York. It became the nucleus of New England and other settlements that formed the Thirteen Colonies. Following the first successful revolution of modern times, these became the United States of America.
The Saint Lawrence River was the site of Québec and New France that dominated much of North America for 150 years. When Québec passed to British control, its people were joined by English speaking refugees from the American Resolution. Side by side these evolved to become Canada, the first modern state born without revolution or civil war.
Canada and the United States are vastly disproportionate in population and industrial strength, but the areas of land they occupy in North America are approximately equal.
The boundary between then is a fixed line, much of which follows the 49th Parallel. Yet it is less on the manmade borders than the features of the land, the rivers and the people who live along them, that we must focus in our conversations Over The Fence.
Pete Seeger of the Hudson, a man who has toured the world collecting and sharing songs, is a pathway connecting his country to itself and to oceans of humanity that surround it.
Canada, whose name means “village” and one that grew up along a river and extended to a distant ocean, joins our neighbour in celebrating this elder citizen.
Pete Seeger, Joni Mitchell: "Both Sides Now"
When Pete Seeger turned 50, on May 3, 1969, he sent a note to Joni Mitchell, asking her approval for the fourth verse he'd penned to Both Sides Now.
It follows the three verses that end with her confessing "I really don't know clouds/love/life at all. To which Seeger adds:
Daughter, daughter, don't you know
You're not the first to feel just so?
So let me say, before I go,
It's worth it any way:
Some day we all may be surprised,
We'll wake, and open up our eyes
And then at last, we'll realize
The whole world feels this way:
We've all been living upside down
And turned around, with love unfound
Until we turn and face the sun
All of us, yes, everyone.
If this is atypical New Age idealism for Seeger—the same Seeger who wrote the hard-biting words of Last Train to Nuremburg and Waist Deep in the Big Muddy—it’s perfectly in keeping with the broader theme of Both Sides Now.
Mitchell is one who has crossed many borders in her music and her life. Her retirement from singing to rediscover painting in California is the kind of organic boundary—as opposed to a border—described by the late Kate Wolf, another California songwriter in her chorus:
It's gone away in yesterday
And I find myself on the mountain side
Where the rivers change direction
Across the Great Divide.
It follows the three verses that end with her confessing "I really don't know clouds/love/life at all. To which Seeger adds:
Daughter, daughter, don't you know
You're not the first to feel just so?
So let me say, before I go,
It's worth it any way:
Some day we all may be surprised,
We'll wake, and open up our eyes
And then at last, we'll realize
The whole world feels this way:
We've all been living upside down
And turned around, with love unfound
Until we turn and face the sun
All of us, yes, everyone.
If this is atypical New Age idealism for Seeger—the same Seeger who wrote the hard-biting words of Last Train to Nuremburg and Waist Deep in the Big Muddy—it’s perfectly in keeping with the broader theme of Both Sides Now.
Mitchell is one who has crossed many borders in her music and her life. Her retirement from singing to rediscover painting in California is the kind of organic boundary—as opposed to a border—described by the late Kate Wolf, another California songwriter in her chorus:
It's gone away in yesterday
And I find myself on the mountain side
Where the rivers change direction
Across the Great Divide.
As he enters his tenth decade, Seeger has made that shift. He now appears only rarely, but significantly to savour the fruits he has spent his life cultivating: a world of communion across borders symbolized in the accession of Barrack Obama to the US Presidency.
It is in that benevolence Seeger addressed Mitchell as "Daughter" in his letter of 40 years ago: a parent who sees resolution of a lifelong struggle in reach for the next generation, especially one who puts the question philosophically as Joni did.
His addendum is more than a reassuring "It'll be all right" or "All you need is love." It’s an explicit nudge towards our Source however we conceive/experience it.
And if the medal awarded him by Bill Clinton is supplemented by a Nobel Peace Prize, then, in an Eighth Day of Creation, we can say, as in Genesis, "Yes, it is truly good."
Both Sides Now is a good place to end 60 days of discussion that began with President Barrack Obama's visit to Canada in February. Unlike Joni Mitchell, I cannot presume to say I've "looked at the border from both sides now," having spent less than 1% of my life in the United States.
Sharing a continent across the semipermeable membrane we call the Canada-US border is , however, a basis for the subtitle "Reflections of America by a Northern Neighbour."
I can claim a Both Sides Now in another sense. having moved back and forth across Canada's linguistic divide. For French and English have different words and different meanings to describe what happpens when we pass from one country to another.
"The Canada-United States boundary" (its official name) uses a word with a fixed sense to it. We do the same when we talk of "settling personal boundaries." We imply there is something to be held together: the root "bound" as to "bind tightly" or that something "is bound to take place."
Border that we now use interchangeably with "boundary" has a soften tone. The borders of a garden or of a page are not fixed limits. They are margins into which one may stray, though it's better not to.
The French for border, la frontière, is more a margin than an outer limit. It is not le front but something that stretches farther: a zone rather than a line. American folklore took the idea of the frontier to great length. It was something not simply to be crossed but to be explored and experienced.
That is the sense we need to import into the word "border" in English. The line between societies and countries is like a cell membrane through which fluids pass: something intended to filter but not exclude entirely.
The semipermeable border between Canada and the US has served both countries: in the passage of labour and capital, immigrants and ideas. It has allowed slaves and draft dodgers to escape pursuit and return home at a more opportune time.
As this movement takes place back and forth Over The Fence, lives and categories become blurred, and we can say with Joni Mitchell—and Pete Seeger...
I've looked on ... from both sides now ...
Saturday, May 2, 2009
A Cross Border Country Singer
On the eve of the 90th birthday of Pete Seeger, the father of the twentieth century folk music revival in the English speaking world, we remember another pioneering cross border voice.
Wilf Carter was the father of Canadian country music: the first Canadian country performer to have a hit recording, in 1933.
In some ways his life parallels American Woody Guthrie, born eight years after him and who he outlived by 29 years. Like Guthrie, he work at odd jobs as a youth, and travelled cross country “riding the rods” and singing with hoboes.
He ended up in Calgary, where he became a cowboy, learned to ride and play the guitar. Moonlighting jobs singing and playing at dances led to a gig as an entertainer for Rockies trail rides organized by the Canadian Pacific Railway.
CPR then took him to sea for the maiden voyage of the Empress of Britain, a Titanic-size liner that plied the North Atlantic. En route to the ship, he recorded two compositions at a Montreal studio.
They were My Swiss Moonlight Lullaby featuring a yodeling style he developed after hearing a Swiss performer in his boyhood hometown; and The Capture of Albert Johnson about the “Mad Trapper” killed in a 1921 Yukon shootout with the RCMP.
These became his first hits. While he was at sea, RCA Victor pressed and released them, and he returned to public acclaim.
RCA took him to New York where a secretary, typing the lyrics to one of his songs, decided he needed a more distinctive name. She coined “Montana Slim” which became his trademark in the US, where the Carter Family (no relation) was already prominent.
Carter and his music had been a presence on radio before his first hit. In 1930 he landed a weekly evening slot on local Calgary station. After his visit to New York and broadcasts on the CBS network, his career skyrocketed.
He returned to Calgary married to Pennsylvania nurse Bobbie Bryan. They bought a ranch and raised a family in Alberta while performing and recording in both countries. One Calgary radio station played a Wilf Carter song daily at 7:20 a.m. for 25 years.
A serious back injury from a 1940 Montana car accident took him out of performing for most of the next decade, but he continued to release new recordings. Over his career he recorded more than 40 LP albums for RCA, and later he signed with other labels.
In 1949 Carter moved to New Jersey, returning to Canada in 1957 when American sales of his records declined. In the 1960’s he performed at the Calgary Stampede and appeared regularly on the Tummy Hunter Show on Canadian television.
In 1988 he recorded his last album. Three years later, at age 86, made his last performing tour. Wilf Carter retired in 1992 and died four years later in Arizona at age 91.
Wilf Carter enjoyed fame on both sides of the Canada-US border. Yet despite a growing country music movement in Québec during his lifetime, there is little evidence of any of his work having been translated into French. One exception that lends itself extremely well is In the Blue Canadian Rockies:
Dans les Rocheuses canadiennes
En entend chuchoter le vent
Tout au long du Lac Louise
Les pavots dansent le printemps:
Au bout du monde ils m’appelent
Je suis triste et désolé
Pour les Rocheuses canadiennes
Et la fille j’ai tant aimé
Ah, que je me ressens triste ce soir
Pour la fille que j’ai quittée
Et si je pouvais seulement la revoir
On pourrait tout recommencer...
(In the blue Canadian Rockies
Spring is sighing through the trees
And the golden poppies are dancing
Round the banks of Lake Louise.
Across the seas they call me
When I’m lonesome and so blue
For the blue Canadian Rockies
And the girl I loved so true.
Oh, how my lonely heart’s breakin’ tonight
For the girl I left behind
And if I only could see her tonight
That sweetheart who’s waitin’ for me…)
Tomorrow—Pete Seeger’s 90th—we’ll look at another cross border singer for whom Seeger penned a verse on his 50th birthday.
Wilf Carter was the father of Canadian country music: the first Canadian country performer to have a hit recording, in 1933.
In some ways his life parallels American Woody Guthrie, born eight years after him and who he outlived by 29 years. Like Guthrie, he work at odd jobs as a youth, and travelled cross country “riding the rods” and singing with hoboes.
He ended up in Calgary, where he became a cowboy, learned to ride and play the guitar. Moonlighting jobs singing and playing at dances led to a gig as an entertainer for Rockies trail rides organized by the Canadian Pacific Railway.
CPR then took him to sea for the maiden voyage of the Empress of Britain, a Titanic-size liner that plied the North Atlantic. En route to the ship, he recorded two compositions at a Montreal studio.
They were My Swiss Moonlight Lullaby featuring a yodeling style he developed after hearing a Swiss performer in his boyhood hometown; and The Capture of Albert Johnson about the “Mad Trapper” killed in a 1921 Yukon shootout with the RCMP.
These became his first hits. While he was at sea, RCA Victor pressed and released them, and he returned to public acclaim.
RCA took him to New York where a secretary, typing the lyrics to one of his songs, decided he needed a more distinctive name. She coined “Montana Slim” which became his trademark in the US, where the Carter Family (no relation) was already prominent.
Carter and his music had been a presence on radio before his first hit. In 1930 he landed a weekly evening slot on local Calgary station. After his visit to New York and broadcasts on the CBS network, his career skyrocketed.
He returned to Calgary married to Pennsylvania nurse Bobbie Bryan. They bought a ranch and raised a family in Alberta while performing and recording in both countries. One Calgary radio station played a Wilf Carter song daily at 7:20 a.m. for 25 years.
A serious back injury from a 1940 Montana car accident took him out of performing for most of the next decade, but he continued to release new recordings. Over his career he recorded more than 40 LP albums for RCA, and later he signed with other labels.
In 1949 Carter moved to New Jersey, returning to Canada in 1957 when American sales of his records declined. In the 1960’s he performed at the Calgary Stampede and appeared regularly on the Tummy Hunter Show on Canadian television.
In 1988 he recorded his last album. Three years later, at age 86, made his last performing tour. Wilf Carter retired in 1992 and died four years later in Arizona at age 91.
Wilf Carter enjoyed fame on both sides of the Canada-US border. Yet despite a growing country music movement in Québec during his lifetime, there is little evidence of any of his work having been translated into French. One exception that lends itself extremely well is In the Blue Canadian Rockies:
Dans les Rocheuses canadiennes
En entend chuchoter le vent
Tout au long du Lac Louise
Les pavots dansent le printemps:
Au bout du monde ils m’appelent
Je suis triste et désolé
Pour les Rocheuses canadiennes
Et la fille j’ai tant aimé
Ah, que je me ressens triste ce soir
Pour la fille que j’ai quittée
Et si je pouvais seulement la revoir
On pourrait tout recommencer...
(In the blue Canadian Rockies
Spring is sighing through the trees
And the golden poppies are dancing
Round the banks of Lake Louise.
Across the seas they call me
When I’m lonesome and so blue
For the blue Canadian Rockies
And the girl I loved so true.
Oh, how my lonely heart’s breakin’ tonight
For the girl I left behind
And if I only could see her tonight
That sweetheart who’s waitin’ for me…)
Tomorrow—Pete Seeger’s 90th—we’ll look at another cross border singer for whom Seeger penned a verse on his 50th birthday.
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