On Canadian Nationalism
About a month ago, pkhentz blogged about "Canadian Nationalism" and the music of Stan Rogers. Rogers is a folk singer that I have an interest in, born of hearing his music on radio stations in Canada traveling to and from our grandparents' cottage in Ontario. I remember particularly hearing the song "White Squall" with it's reference to a "Wiarton girl" grieving for her lost lover who had "gone into a white squall" on the Great Lakes. Wiarton being a small town near the family cottage on the Bruce Peninsula, I was drawn in by the connection.
pkhentz's recent Stan Rogers crush brought about renewed interest from me and I downloaded MP3's of a number of songs that pkhentz mentions in a subsequent post on his reading of Rogers' "Rise Again." I was singing the refrain of "Barrett's Privateers" the other day as I was moving dirt. A sea shanty seemed an appropriate work song as I spaded dirt from a big pile into a wheelbarrow and moved it over to a berm. The spade makes a distinctive ringing sound as it cuts into the dirt pile, almost like a hammer on a rail spike, or a stay in the wind on a sailboat.
I had listened to "Barrett's Privateers" in the car on my way over to the work site and I smiled at the wry humor in the song. Rogers writes his own sea shanty about Canadian privateers, set during the American Revolution. According to this examination by Dan Conlin, a scholar with background in Canadian privateering, Rogers' song is fictional. There was no Elcid Barrett, nor a sloop The Antelope, and the violence and risks associated with privateering are exaggerated -- Collins asserts it is due to Rogers' anti-war bent.
But in it, I thought about Rogers as a Canadian nationalist, someone who invested himself in writing songs celebrating the history and culture of Canada. In "Barrett's Privateers," I hear a distinct version of the Canadian self-image. It is shaped by us, the U.S., Canada's neighbor to the south, and our distinctly imbalanced relationship. Canadians know all about the U.S. We're on the evening news. Famous Canadians, be they musicians (Neil Young) or hockey players (Mario Lemieux) or actors (Dan Akroyd, Mike Myers) go south and we Americans claim them as ours. Americans, on the other hand, are barely aware of Canada. This irks Canadians.
In Rogers' song, the speaker is a 23-year-old veteran, "the last of Barrett's privateers." He is, as he says, "a broken man on a Halifax pier," the only survivor of the ill-fated expedition of The Antelope. The full lyrics are here. He relates how the captain, Elcid Barrett, recruited he and 19 other Nova Scotian fishermen to be crew on his privateer vessel, the shabby Antelope. The Antelope is under commission from the King to raid American shipping during the war and keep the spoils. The boat is leaky and lists to one side, the crew had to pump water out of the hull all the way down to Jamaica. After 96 days at sea, they finally catch sight of a potential quarry, a "bloody great Yankee" ship, laden with gold.
He sings,The Yankee lay low down with gold.
She was broad and fat and loose in stays,
He's describing what seems an ideal prey, a slow ship laden with booty. However, his own ship -- the Canadian ship, mind you -- was slower:But to catch her took the Antelope two whole days
Here, he repeats the refrain:God Damn them all! I was told
We'd cruise the seas for American gold
We'd fire no guns, shed no tears
Now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's privateers.
Finally, the Antelope draws up, "two cables away" and fires with its "cracked four pounders" -- which Collins says was usual for privateer vessels, but seems pathetically small to me. The Yanks return fire and "with one fat ball the Yank stove us in." The Antelope pitched on her side and "Barrett was smashed like a bowl of eggs" and the speaker lost both of his legs. He returns to Halifax six years later, a broken man.
Here we have a tale, sung lustily, that might be singing of the folly of war (however, Rogers sings a victorious tale in "The Nancy") but is really singing about a confrontation of an underpowered Canadian ship (then, of course, still under the British flag) seeking quick prey of an American ship and getting smashed to bits by "one fat ball" from the Yankee guns. And it has such great humor, with it taking the Antelope "two whole days" to overtake the slow, laden-down merchant vessel and then having at it with small guns, out of range, and "cracked" to boot. It's an interesting take on Canadian nationalism as a sort of lost cause.
pkhentz's recent Stan Rogers crush brought about renewed interest from me and I downloaded MP3's of a number of songs that pkhentz mentions in a subsequent post on his reading of Rogers' "Rise Again." I was singing the refrain of "Barrett's Privateers" the other day as I was moving dirt. A sea shanty seemed an appropriate work song as I spaded dirt from a big pile into a wheelbarrow and moved it over to a berm. The spade makes a distinctive ringing sound as it cuts into the dirt pile, almost like a hammer on a rail spike, or a stay in the wind on a sailboat.
I had listened to "Barrett's Privateers" in the car on my way over to the work site and I smiled at the wry humor in the song. Rogers writes his own sea shanty about Canadian privateers, set during the American Revolution. According to this examination by Dan Conlin, a scholar with background in Canadian privateering, Rogers' song is fictional. There was no Elcid Barrett, nor a sloop The Antelope, and the violence and risks associated with privateering are exaggerated -- Collins asserts it is due to Rogers' anti-war bent.
But in it, I thought about Rogers as a Canadian nationalist, someone who invested himself in writing songs celebrating the history and culture of Canada. In "Barrett's Privateers," I hear a distinct version of the Canadian self-image. It is shaped by us, the U.S., Canada's neighbor to the south, and our distinctly imbalanced relationship. Canadians know all about the U.S. We're on the evening news. Famous Canadians, be they musicians (Neil Young) or hockey players (Mario Lemieux) or actors (Dan Akroyd, Mike Myers) go south and we Americans claim them as ours. Americans, on the other hand, are barely aware of Canada. This irks Canadians.
In Rogers' song, the speaker is a 23-year-old veteran, "the last of Barrett's privateers." He is, as he says, "a broken man on a Halifax pier," the only survivor of the ill-fated expedition of The Antelope. The full lyrics are here. He relates how the captain, Elcid Barrett, recruited he and 19 other Nova Scotian fishermen to be crew on his privateer vessel, the shabby Antelope. The Antelope is under commission from the King to raid American shipping during the war and keep the spoils. The boat is leaky and lists to one side, the crew had to pump water out of the hull all the way down to Jamaica. After 96 days at sea, they finally catch sight of a potential quarry, a "bloody great Yankee" ship, laden with gold.
He sings,The Yankee lay low down with gold.
She was broad and fat and loose in stays,
He's describing what seems an ideal prey, a slow ship laden with booty. However, his own ship -- the Canadian ship, mind you -- was slower:But to catch her took the Antelope two whole days
Here, he repeats the refrain:God Damn them all! I was told
We'd cruise the seas for American gold
We'd fire no guns, shed no tears
Now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's privateers.
Finally, the Antelope draws up, "two cables away" and fires with its "cracked four pounders" -- which Collins says was usual for privateer vessels, but seems pathetically small to me. The Yanks return fire and "with one fat ball the Yank stove us in." The Antelope pitched on her side and "Barrett was smashed like a bowl of eggs" and the speaker lost both of his legs. He returns to Halifax six years later, a broken man.
Here we have a tale, sung lustily, that might be singing of the folly of war (however, Rogers sings a victorious tale in "The Nancy") but is really singing about a confrontation of an underpowered Canadian ship (then, of course, still under the British flag) seeking quick prey of an American ship and getting smashed to bits by "one fat ball" from the Yankee guns. And it has such great humor, with it taking the Antelope "two whole days" to overtake the slow, laden-down merchant vessel and then having at it with small guns, out of range, and "cracked" to boot. It's an interesting take on Canadian nationalism as a sort of lost cause.