Music is a powerful medium. Songs stir memories and can perfectly evoke places, express feelings—and yes, give a snapshot of a country.
Here are five songs that talk about Canada and evoke an aspect of the country, from funny city names to hockey, from the famous Canadian winters to Canadiana.
This list is by no means exhaustive… if you think of any song that would fit here, share it!
Prairie Town (Randy Bachman and Neil Young)
Randy Bachman, from Winnipeg is best known as the lead guitarist, songwriter and founding member of the Guess Who. Neil Young, who grew up in Toronto and in Winnipeg, is recognized as one of rock and roll’s greatest songwriters and performers, and is another great Canadian artist. And they sang together about growing up in the “Prairies,” the region that comprises the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
Winnipeg is often nicknamed “Winterpeg” and is famous for its long, harsh winter—even by Canadian standards. This song speaks of these long winters with several Canadian stereotypes, such as “learning to drive in the snow” and “Main & Portage”—one of Winnipeg’s most famous intersections—where it’s sometimes as cold as “fifty below.”
Fifty Mission Cap (The Tragically Hip)
The Tragically Hip (often nicknamed “The Hip”) is probably one of the most famous Canadian bands… in Canada. This is one of the stuff Canadians like and I have this theory that each and every Canadian has seen the Hip live at least once.
The band’s songs mostly revolve around hockey, small Canadian towns and Canadian history. One of them stands out for me, Fifty Mission Cap. The song is very obscure to anyone not familiar with Canadiana. It is about Bill Barilko, a Canadian hockey player who spent his NHL career playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs. During that span of five seasons, Barilko and the Leafs were Stanley Cup champions on four occasions. But like the Hip sing, “the last goal he ever scored won the Leafs the Cup”. In 1951, Barilko disappeared while on a fishing trip. Eleven years later, in 1962, the wreckage of the plane was finally found and that year. The Maple Leafs didn’t win the Stanley Cup until Barilko’s wrecked plane was discovered.
Runnin’ Back To Saskatoon (The Guess Who)
This song is primarily about the band touring in Canada, and all the cities’ names are mentioned: Moose Jaw, Moosomin, Red Deer, Terrace, Medicine Hat, etc. I always find city names in Canada both funny and poetic! Canadians have a weird geographical sense of humour.
The song also throws in rural stereotypes “I been hangin’ around grain elevators, I been learnin’ ‘bout food, I been talkin’ to soil farmers, I been workin’ on land.”
The Hockey Theme
This song has been nicknamed “Canada’s second national anthem” and is used for all NHL broadcasts on the CBC television network. It was composed in 1968 by Dolores Claman and orchestrated by Jerry Toth. In 2008, CBC’s licence to use the song expired and the negotiations to renew their licence or purchase the theme had been unsuccessful. The rights were then purchased by rival broadcaster CTV in perpetuity.
Claman said she wrote her song to reflect the narrative arc of a hockey game from the arrival on the rink, to the battle of the game, to the trip home, “plus a cold beer.” Millions of Canadian hockey fans (that is, pretty much the whole country) grew up with that theme.
Cold, Cold Toronto (Trooper)
Trooper is a Canadian rock band from Vancouver, B.C. The catchy chorus of the song repeats “cold, cold Toronto.” But wait, every Canadian not living in Toronto knows it, Toronto isn’t that cold. Well, I guess it can be if you are coming from B.C.….
Canadians love to brag about how cold it is in their respective cities but the general consensus in Ontario is that Torontonians have it easy. Whenever someone says it’s cold in Toronto, there is always someone else to remind them how cold it is in Ottawa, Montreal or even—gasp!—Winnipeg. And let’s not forget that in 1999, Mel Lastman, the mayor of Toronto, required the army’s help to shovel a pretty bad snowstorm. The rest of Canada is still laughing at Toronto for that.
Lol I suck as a Canadian, I don’t know any of those songs 😉
Really? Not even the hockey theme? I’m sure you heard it before!
For a small country (population wise) we sure do produce a lot of great musical talent. My German husband says that Canadian music, regardless of the type, is too melancholy.
I’ve never seen The Hip live!!! Hope to someday though!
Maybe your husband listened to Nickelback too much 😆 I can’t stand them! It’s not even melancholic, it’s just… yuck.
The Hip tour mostly during the summer festivals, I’ve seen them in Ottawa a few years ago. They are a good live band, if you ever get a chance, it is worth it!
I like the Hip’s music but I find the lead singer’s voice too twangy – sounds more like a country singer. That said, Nickelback’s lead vocalist has gotta be the worst singer in history. Why can’t these bands find someone who can actually sing and who has a pleasant voice to listen to? The older bands had great singers, be it Trooper or The Guess Who (Burton Cummings). Speaking of great singers, Gino Vannelli’s “I Just Wanna Stop” is a nice song about Montreal.
I can’t stand Nickelback either: they always sing the sale goddamn sing, the melody barely changes! Plus, the singer is depressing and has nothing special IMO.
La chanson la plus évocatrice pour moi, restera toujours “Tunnels”, d’Arcade Fire
Ah, je dois l’écouter! J’ai vu Arcade Fire en concert en première partie de U2 il y a longtemps. Pourquoi est-ce qu’elle est évocatrice pour toi?
Car c’est la toute première fois pour moi, en l’écoutant il y a des années, que j’ai réellement pris conscience du Canada ! C’est bête, je sais… Cette chanson parle des tempêtes de neige, d’hiver, de vent, et m’a indubitablement attirée vers le Canada !
J’aime aussi beaucoup “Montreal” de The Devlins (le titre est assez transparent :D) et “Language City” de Wolf Parade, qui me fait penser à une traversée sur le Pont Champlain. Bizarre !
I LOVE Canadian music and they play some great songs on CBC radio. But as for songs about Canada, I like “One Great City” by the Weakerthans and “Spring on the Prairies” by Connie Kaldor.
I don’t know these two songs, I have to listen to them. Thank you for introducing me to new artists!
This is fun post! It’s funny, although I would love to dispute the fact that every Canadian has see the Hip live, I don’t really get to, because they were performing in downtown Kingston while I was living there, and since I was walking by….Oh well. I’ve even been in an apartment in Kingston whose ‘claim to fame’ is that they/some of them used to live there. Neil Young bugs the heck out of me and I can’t quite enunciate why. Or maybe I can, I think his voice is weak and his accent sounds more back-country Canadian than it really needs to, I mean who talks like that really?
I’ll contribute two Canadian songs to the list that I enjoy: Lettre à Lévesque by Les Cowboys Fringants (gotta love those Québec politics!), and Helmethead by Great Big Sea (a funny hockey song for the ladies from the iconic East Coast band).
Ah, so another Canadian who hasn’t really seen the Hip! I can imagine how huge they are in Kingston 😉