It is a beautiful day here in Victoria, BC Canada.  Canada is officially 142 years young today.

Lots of celebrations going on all across the nation.  Wishing all the Canucks a Happy Canada Day.

Celebration brings up the subject of music for me. Music transcends the mundane and uplifts us.   Canada has a history of producing some great musicians, poets, writers, performers etc.  I will post a few later on.  Just a sampling as there are too many to list.

In our capital city of Ottawa, Sarah McLachlan is performing today.  Here in Victoria one of the performers is Pacifika from Vancouver featuring a Peruvian born singer I first heard on CBCradio2.

It is impossible to  pick and choose the best one with such a rich list of artists with the likes of Neil Young, Anne Murray, Leonard Cohen, Burton Cummings, Randy Bachman, Céline Dion, Shania Twain and so on.  There are many newer artists up and coming and who have arrived on the scene. Some move on to the USA and other countries and many choose to remain “Canadian” maintaining their connection with the country of Canada.

As a nation we are generally tolerant and takes things in stride and rarely shout about this great land of ours.  It is a natural beauty.

I like to view the natural settings we have, when I take time to do so, such as a recent photo I took.

I will leave you with one of Canada’s finest, Gordon Lightfoot singing about one of the greatest historical achievements in Canada. It is hard to imagine the difficulty in building the railroad across the varied and rough terrain.  I am sure many died along the way so people could travel across the country coast to coast.

Enjoy your day, wherever you may be.

Cheers,

Gene

Here are a few of the performing artists, mostly singers from Canada, you may have heard of one or two of them:

Bryan Adams
Paul Anka
Randy Bachman  The Guess Who
Paul Brandt
Michael Bublé
Tommy Chong
Tom Cochrane
Bruce Cockburn
Leonard Cohen
Bare Naked Ladies  group
Burton Cummings
Céline Dion
Leslie Feist
David Foster  composer
Sarah Harmer
Jeff Healey
Diana Krall
K.D. Lang
Daniel Lanois
Avril Lavigne
Gordon Lightfoot
Ashley MacIsaac
Natalie MacMaster
Sarah McLachlan
Alanis Morissette
Anne Murray
Nelly Furtado
Brad Roberts – singer for Crash Test Dummies
Sam Roberts
Serena Ryder
Hank Snow
Shania Twain
Ian Tyson
Sylvia Tyson
Chad VanGaalen
Gino Vannelli
Martha Wainwright
Neil Young

Apologies to the many others not mentioned.  Feel free to make a comment and add your favorites, if you wish.

There are likely a few ladies out there who have danced to the “end of love” with Leonard Cohen.  Like Willy Nelson and Julio Iglesias in sentimentality at least with their song To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before, Cohen has had his share of ladies.  But I am not here to talk about Willy and Julio.  Not not Bill “Willy” Clinton! I tend to like to feature Canadian artists as much as possible.

On a recent CBC television interview Cohen says he has not regrets about the ladies and for not having had a one long term partner.  He also talked about depression in the interview.  I do find some of his music melancholy and while I like some of his music I tend to favor upbeat music most of the time.  Cohen started out as a poet, writer, comedian in his early days in Montreal.  Perhaps he was funny back then.   He does a lot of concerts and travels quite a bit.

For the most part Canadians are a tolerant lot and most usually disregard things such as race, religion and philosophy.  That is one of the great features for living in Canada.  The minorities are working at being close to a majority in the general population of Canada.  Most people can speak any language in Canada and people do not mind.  We tend to honor that in people and respect their heritage.  It is mainly about respect and tolerance. Most do not see it as a threat at all.

Somehow Dance Me To The End Of Love fits with that also even though music tends helps to transcend the human condition and rise above so much of the pettiness, violence and the like.   Cohen is Jewish and we do not care.  So here is that video and song:

Another song I liked from a long time ago was Suzanne. (hot) But that is for another day and time.  The wannabe poet in me resonates with that and others.

Also a recent contest in Canada had a number of Cohen songs on it and the version of Cohen’s Hallelujah was done by KD Lang.  Cohen had also said in the interview previously mentioned this version by Lang touched him. Here is her version of Hallelujah:

That is a beautiful version, for sure.  I hope you enjoyed these two great Canadian artists, . We do have a few of them,Canadian songwriters and singers, in Canada and around the globe.  Wink wink.  I’ll see if I can find a few more for you another day.

Cheers,

Gene