25 lyrics that transport us across Canada
From Drake to Feist to Terry Uyarak, we look at musicians who've lyrically taken us from place to place
Canada is a vast country, and plenty of musicians — from here or elsewhere — have tried to capture its cities and towns, lakes and mountains in song for years. But which song transports you immediately to a particular place? Which lyric has a specificity of feeling or region that means it can't be about anywhere but here?
CBC Music producers took on the daunting task of finding songs that answer that question, but it wasn't easy. There are just so many to choose from — and it's a personal endeavour. Canada is also a difficult place to define; First Nations, Inuit and Métis have all lived here, outside any government borders, for thousands of years. Their songs may reference a place colonially called Canada, but with that comes a heavier history.
No matter how you define where you live, below are 25 songs with lyrics that'll make you think of Canada — whether they describe sharing a hometown with Neil Young, recall a terrifying drive on la 20, or evoke the gorgeous landscape of Nunavut.
Which ones do you think we missed? Let us know via Instagram @cbc_music.
'Escarpment Blues,' Sarah Harmer
If they blow a hole in my backyard
Everyone is gonna run away
And the creeks won't flow to the Great Lake below
Will the water in the wells still be OK?
Part tribute to the wild of the Niagara Escarpment, part condemnation of development on it, the banjo-plucked "Escarpment Blues" is synonymous with Sarah Harmer's documentary of the same name. The film documented Harmer's I Love the Escarpment tour across southern Ontario to promote Protecting Escarpment Rural Land, a citizen's organization that she co-founded to preserve the area. Harmer, who grew up near the Niagara Escarpment, continues to fight to protect the land nearly 20 years later.
'Africvillean Funk,' Aquakultre and Trobiz
George Dixon'll (knock a brother back)
Richard Preston'll reawaken and come hunting for that.
This funk track immediately name-checks Africville, a once-vibrant Black community in Halifax that was displaced and razed by the city in the 1960s. It's where some of Lance Sampson's, a.k.a. Aquakultre's, family is from, and "Africvillean Funk" is a celebration of that community — and an irresistible invitation to dance. That Sampson drops the names of George Dixon, a professional boxer from the community in the late 1800s, and Richard Preston, a minister and former slave who helped establish the church in Africville, makes it all the more poignant.
'SNRK,' Snotty Nose Rez Kids feat. Nyomi Wahai
Where all the snotty-nosed rez kids you found at the bay
Couldn't even be phased of what you thought of their ways
'Cause you know we feeling numbness when we're swimming in the Douglas.
Haisla rappers Darren "Young D" Metz and Quinton "Yung Trybez" Nyce regularly write about their years growing up in Kitamaat Village, B.C., in their work as Snotty Nose Rez Kids, and this early cut from the duo's self-titled debut album is equal parts reminiscent and defiant. After shouting out the Douglas, Yung Trybez raps: "We never cared about the tides, if it's hot out, they're there/ you can catch me on the beach, wet feet in my socks," transporting listeners immediately to the West Coast.
'One Great City,' the Weakerthans
I hate Winnipeg.
To love one's hometown is to also hate it; to understand all its flaws and still admire it despite them. All of those emotions are wrapped up in the simplest statement on the Weakerthans' "One Great City": "I hate Winnipeg." When John K. Samson sings those words, it's not out of malice, but a deep fondness for the Manitoba capital. And as he repeats that phrase over the course of the song, you can't help all of those feelings bubbling up until your eyes are welling with tears and you're singing those words at the top of your lungs, arms slung around your fellow Manitobans.
'Canadian Railroad Trilogy,' Gordon Lightfoot
So over the mountains and over the plains
Into the Muskeg and into the rain
Up to St. Lawrence on the way to Gaspé
Swingin' our hammers and drawin' our pay.
Gordon Lightfoot's ability to authentically write about place was one of his most powerful gifts, and he continued to show us that when he turned a CBC-commissioned song for the Canadian Centennial into a long-revered classic. His lyrics about building the Canadian Pacific Railway romanticise travel from the Rocky Mountains to the Prairies to Gaspé, with added detail about the workers' hard days. While he does have a few lines that hint at the deaths and havoc that monumental project caused ("A dollar a day and a place for my head/ a drink to the livin'/ a toast to the dead"), listeners have since been recontextualizing the song — and what it doesn't detail.
'Coyote,' Joni Mitchell
I looked a coyote right in the face
On the road to Baljennie near my old home town
He went running thru the whisker wheat
Chasing some prize down.
The community of Baljennie is only an hour-and-a-half southeast of Maidstone, Sask., where Mitchell was raised, and on "Coyote" she takes us to that formative place. Mitchell's best-known lyrics often detail an emotional place over a physical one, though Canada does pop up sometimes ("I drew a map of Canada," she sings on "A Case of You") — and on "Coyote," Mitchell is more specific as she unravels a story of lovers (or stalkers?) in bars, and coyotes on open plains in Saskatchewan. "He's too far from the Bay of Fundy/ from appaloosas and eagles and tides," Mitchell sings, as the people in her story are shown to be as just as wild as the roaming animal.
'Montreal,' Allison Russell
Oh, my Montreal
Can I dream of you tonight?
Of before the fall
Your rose, your azure light
Oh, you cathedrals
Your shadows felt like loving arms
I was your child, Montreal
You would not let me come to harm.
On the first song off her debut solo album, Outside Child, Allison Russell doesn't shout out any specific Montreal landmark but instead positions the whole city as a sanctuary for a younger version of herself. She felt protected by the city's lights and shadows, and its vibrancy let her imagination run free. Her voice is stirring and harrowing as she sings about the beautiful times before "the jackal came in spring," referencing the sexual abuse she faced at the hands of her stepfather, a recurring theme throughout the album.
'Hell,' Tegan and Sara
No, I'm not ready for a big, bad step in that direction
No, I'm not ready for downtown trash, avoid collection
Four blocks, run and hide, don't walk alone at night
Cityscape, city change before they die
Four blocks, I should mention in a song if I wanna
Get along with change, who doesn't wanna change this?
The first single from Sainthood, "Hell" is about Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Tegan's neighbourhood at the time. "When I moved into my new neighbourhood in December of 2006, the Vancouver Sun had an aerial photo of my neighborhood with the headline 'Vancouver's four blocks of hell' on the front cover. Welcome home, I thought." The song is about unrequited feelings for a girl, not drugs, as Tegan also detailed, but it's also in defiance of that Sun article: "In the end I got the girl, but the struggle for most people here on the Downtown Eastside continues." She and Sara fundraised for non-profits providing harm reduction and support services in the area during their Sainthood tour.
'Know Yourself,' Drake
Runnin' through the 6 with my woes
Countin' money, you know how it goes
Pray the real live forever, man
Pray the fakes get exposed.
With this single from Drake's 2015 mixtape, If You're Reading This It's Too Late, the Toronto rapper coined a new nickname for his hometown that still sticks. The line "Runnin' through the 6 with my woes" is sprinkled throughout the signature track, which also drops the address 15 Fort York Blvd. in the intro — a CityPlace condo building where Drake and producer Noah "40" Shebib famously worked on the rapper's 2009 launchpad mixtape, So Far Gone. Drake endlessly name-drops Toronto locations in his music, but "Know Yourself" is an indisputable ode to the 6.
'James Bay,' Midnight Shine
James Bay is calling my name
James Bay is running through my veins
James Bay will always be my way
James Bay is who I am today.
Midnight Shine frontman Adrian Sutherland is from Attawapiskat First Nation, which sits on the mouth of the Attawapiskat River leading into the western shore of James Bay. This song, from the roots-rock band's self-titled 2013 debut album, is an ode to Sutherland's hometown, where the singer still lives. "Home of the Mushkegowuk Cree/ watching North of 60 on the telly," he sings, closing the song with a strong memory for many listeners.
'Northern Touch,' Rascalz
Teamed with the best in the nation
Yes, and who that be?
Custom design fine rhymes into salary
All the way from T-dot to the VanCity All Stars
Rude boys freak you like a fantasy.
"Northern Touch" is a monumental moment in Canadian hip-hop history: it was the first commercially successful collaborative track that brought rappers from across the nation together. On the 1998 song, Rascalz, a trio from Vancouver, enlisted the help of Toronto legends in the making, Choclair and Thrust, for hooky verses and, of course, Kardinal Offishall for the explosive chorus. There aren't too many specific references (other than Choclair mentioning the Sky Dome, which is now called the Rogers Centre) but the overall air of cross-country camaraderie makes this a lasting symbol of Canadian hip-hop greatness.
'La 20,' Édith Butler
Oh, Sainte-Eulalie, Saint-Valère, Saint-Albert et Trois-Rivières
Comme une prière
Woah, tout le long de la grande rivière
La 20, c'est comme ma sœur, je la connais par cœur
Je la connais par cœur.
Autoroute 20, a.k.a. "la 20," is the highway that follows the St. Lawrence River, and is the longest highway in Quebec. On "La 20," legendary New Brunswick Acadian singer-songwriter Édith Butler details the trek along the water that she knows "par cœur" (by heart) — and that many listeners would know just as intimately. "La 20" ends when she's close to Montreal: "Voici le Mont-Saint-Hilaire et la nuit," she sings, naming the mountain just east of the city, which looms large on the drive in.
'The Girl in Saskatoon,' Johnny Cash
Then I found the trail that had packed beneath the snow
I made the final miles where the Prairie lilies grow
The steeple on a church glistened by the Prairie moon
I'm freezing but I'm burning for the girl in Saskatoon.
Johnny Cash co-wrote this song with Johnny Horton in 1960, which tells the story of a man trying to make his way back to Saskatoon for the woman he loves. As each verse gets the man closer to Saskatoon, Cash unfolds a vivid journey of what it's like to cross the Prairies during the winter: "My heart was beating for her like the winter beat my face." A heartbreaking story follows the song, though: In 1961, Cash sang the song at a Saskatoon show to Alex Wiwcharuk, who'd been brought onstage as part of a contest for the occasion. But a year later, she was found murdered, and Cash reportedly never sang the song again.
'Mushaboom,' Feist
Old dirt road (Mushaboom, mushaboom)
Knee deep snow (Mushaboom, mushaboom)
Watching the fire as we grow (Mushaboom, mushaboom)
Old.
One of Feist's most enduring songs, "Mushaboom" gets its name from the small township on the eastern shore of Nova Scotia. Feist was born in Amherst, N.S., but was living in Toronto at the time of writing the song (and the rest of her 2004 album, Let it Die), and the wistfulness for a slower pace of life is palpable in the lyrics. Two lines in the pre-chorus — "But in the meantime I've got it hard/ second-floor living without a yard" — reference her second-floor apartment above a record shop on busy College Street. What she's really dreaming of is an idyllic life, growing old with the one she loves, with acres of nature all around them.
'Helpless,' Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
There is a town in North Ontario
With dream, comfort, memory to spare
And in my mind, I still need a place to go
All my changes were there.
While Neil Young's hometown of Omemee, Ont., is pretty clearly in southern Ontario, it's widely believed that the first line in this classic from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is about the Kawartha Lakes community. There's a nostalgic pull to "Helpless" that isn't regionally specific, though, and you can project its gentle sway on any place that tugs at your heart just so: "With dream, comfort, memory to spare/ and in my mind, I still need a place to go."
'Echo Beach,' Martha and the Muffins
From nine to five, I have to spend my time at work
My job is very boring, I'm an office clerk
The only thing that helps me pass the time away
Is knowing I'll be back at Echo Beach someday.
When Toronto's Martha and the Muffins first released "Echo Beach" in 1980, no such place existed. Guitarist Mark Gane, who wrote the song, drew inspiration from Sunnyside Beach to create this dream destination that his brain escaped to while working a boring day job as a wallpaper inspector. In 2011, Echo Beach became a reality, launching as a music venue with a sand beach and a beautiful view of the Toronto skyline, however the venue is currently closed as Ontario Place undergoes redevelopment.
'Oliver Square,' Cadence Weapon
See me on the bill
Better follow me there
I solemnly swear
I'll make it back to Oliver Square.
"We're kind of hardscrabble, do-it-yourself, overlooked, underrated kind of people, so let's make an anthem for that," Edmonton's Cadence Weapon said a couple years ago, about this early track from his 2005 debut album, Breaking Kayfabe. "Oliver Square" is so filled with site-specific lyrics about the rapper's hometown that you can pull nearly every verse and find an address or landmark. The chorus is what sticks the most, though in 2017 the rapper was reconsidering the lyrics that reference Frank Oliver, a former Edmonton MP who was "instrumental in pushing Indigenous people off traditional land in the early 1900s," according to CBC. In 2021, the square, which is actually a mall, was renamed to Unity Square.
'Bobcaygeon,' the Tragically Hip
It was in Bobcaygeon, I saw the constellations
Reveal themselves, one star at a time.
Perhaps the Tragically Hip's most famous line, "Bobcaygeon" holds a significant place in many Canadians' hearts. Whether lead singer and songwriter Gord Downie was directly inspired by the Kawartha Lakes town, or if he just landed on that name because it was the closest rhyme for "constellations," this song perfectly captures the idea of a paradise just outside the reach of a city.
'Inuit Nunangat,' Terry Uyarak
Translated from Inuktitut:
Inuit, Land of the Inuit
There is nothing like our land
Inuit, Land of the Inuit
No other compares to ours.
Nunavut singer-songwriter Terry Uyarak released this solo single in August 2020, which is a tribute to his hometown of Igloolik, its surrounding landscape and the singer-songwriter's ancestors. "It's about our beautiful land, and being grateful for our ancestors to have found this wonderful land," he told the National Arts Centre of the song, which he sings in Inuktitut. Uyarak's music is deeply tied to his Nunavut home, and for his 2020 debut album, Nunarjua Isulinginniani (Before the World Ends), he was nominated for a Juno Award for Indigenous artist or group of the year.
'Belinda Says,' Alvvays
But I'll find my way
I'll egress to Inverness with nothing in my pocket.
Cape Breton, N.S., pops up sometimes in Molly Rankin's oft-reminiscent lyrics, and in this track from the band's 2022 album, Blue Rev, the singer references the gorgeous beachside town of Inverness, which faces Prince Edward Island on the west coast of Cape Breton, about an hour south of the highlands. Rankin — daughter of the late John Morris Rankin, who was a famed fiddler in the Cape Breton-based Rankin Family — hasn't lived in the province for years, but it's certainly never left her, and the verses in "Belinda Says" paint a bittersweet portrayal of a rural town far from most things.
'The Ballad of Crowfoot,' Willie Dunn
You are the leader, you are the chief
You stand against both liar and thief
They trade braves whiskey and steal your land
And they're coming in swift like the wind-blown sand
They shoot the buffalo and kill the game
And send their preachers in to shame.
Folk singer Willie Dunn often targeted colonialism in his lyrics, and "The Ballad of Crowfoot" is one of his best-known works. The singer, who was of Mi'kmaq, Scottish and Irish descent, wrote this late '60s ballad about Crowfoot, the 19th-century Siksika (Blackfoot) chief who negotiated Treaty 7 between the federal government and the Plains First Nations. As Dunn's lyrics pick up speed, he describes the "wind-blown sand" of Alberta, where the treaty was signed, and the atrocities that Crowfoot and his people had to endure. But even at the end of the song, Dunn is hopeful: "Maybe there'll be a better tomorrow."
'Make and Break Harbour,' Stan Rogers
Now it's so hard to not think of before the big war
When the cod went so cheap but so plenty.
Foreign trawlers go by now with long seeing eyes
Taking all where we seldom take any.
If Stan Rogers had lived past the age of 33, his name would be up there with Gordon Lightfoot's for his song-crafting abilities about people and place. While "make and break" is a two-stroke engine and not an actual place in Atlantic Canada, the lyric is a nod to the cod fishermen who used those boat engines to make a living — but whose industry, mainly off the coast of Newfoundland, was being decimated by overfishing from larger boats and companies. "Now I can see the big draggers that stirred up the bay/ leaving lobster traps smashed on the bottom/ can they think it don't pay to respect the old ways/ that make and break men have not forgotten," Rogers sings with a heavy heart — 16 years before the federal government officially shut down the cod fishery due to overfishing.
'Immigrant,' Alysha Brilla
They say my food is funny, my name is funny, I look funny
They say my clothes are funny, I speak funny, I laugh funny
They say I pray funny, I dream funny, I sing funny
My God is funny, but where I'm from it's not so funny.
While Alysha Brilla's song "Immigrant" more specifically describes a home on the Indian Ocean, the chorus details a figurative place that can be found across most of Canada: the judgment someone faces for having a different homeland. Brilla was born in Mississauga, Ont., to an Irish Canadian mother and a Tanzanian father with an Indian background, and the song was inspired by her father's experiences. "I think if people actually realized Europeans were only here in the last couple hundred years, who came here on their own journeys, they would be able to see that complaining about immigrants has no basis in logic at all," she told Penticton Weston News in 2016.
'Portugal or P.E.I.,' Jimmy Buffett, Lennie Gallant, Will Kimbrough
So, where am I gonna go when the volcanos blow?
Everybody's askin' all the time
Contemplatin' Malpeque Bay or a beach bar near Sagres
I'm sure I'll find a way 'til then, I'll be in the conga line.
Jimmy Buffett may not be synonymous with P.E.I., but he was on the island in 2001 when he met one of its best-known songwriters: Lennie Gallant. The two developed an early friendship, and in 2022 Buffett called Gallant up and asked if he wanted to co-write and sing on a song with him. The result was "Portugal or P.E.I.," an unexpected juxtaposition of places to choose from, where Buffett and Gallant name places in P.E.I. including Cavendish, Malpeque Bay and the Singing Sands. Buffett died before the song was released, and it came out on his posthumous album, 2023's Equal Strain on All Parts. For more songs about Prince Edward Island from the Islander himself, start with "Peter's Dream" and "Man of Steel."
'Montreal,' Ariane Moffatt
Je reviens à Montréal
La tête gonflée de nuage
Je reviens à Montréal
C'est le transit d'Amsterdam
Qui s'est chargé du glaçage.
A second song about Montreal, but from the francophone perspective. This track off Ariane Moffatt's second album, 2005's Le cœur dans la tête, is one of the Montreal pop singer's most popular releases. (Though funnily, the song with competing numbers is titled "Miami.") "Montreal" is light and catchy, a fitting vibe for someone who's excited to return to the big city after some needed time away — and the perfect song of the summer for Montreal in 2006.