mhall46184@aol.com
Canada Day? Just One?
With love from an ‘umble Yank
But every day is Canada Day!
The afternoon plane lands in Halifax
When the hatch is popped, cool air rushes in
Even the fog is happy in Canada
The Muskogee 1 never made landfall here
And so we pilgrimage for her, completing
Her voyage from ’42 to Canada
Wolfville, Grand Pre’, Le Grande Derangement
The Deportation Cross and beer cans
Well, God forgive the Redcoats anyway
Newfoundland
Is a bold
Anapest
The church spires in a line, the light is green
The bold young captain shoots the narrows wild
Can you find your way to your painted house?
To walk again the cobbles of Ferryland
And smell the very blue of the Atlantic
The sea-blown wind is cold in Canada
Blue Puttees and a mourning Caribou
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord
Good children sing “We love thee, Newfoundland”
Quebec – royal city of New France
May Le Bon Dieu bless the Plains of Abraham,
And may God bless
The signs an English driver cannot read
The Coca-Cola streets of Niagara Falls
Yanks laugh at made-in-China Mountie mugs
And buy them, happy to be in Canada
A cup of Toujours Frais from – well, that place
But to us in your southern provinces
Below Niagara, Tim too is Canada
Though Canada goes on, these scribbles must not –
Your grateful guest wishes only to say
That every happy day is Canada Day!
1 My mother's first husband, Claude Blanchette, was second officer on the oiler Muskogee, torpedoed with the loss of all her crew while en route from the Caribbean to Halifax in 1942. My wife and I took Mother to Halifax shortly before her death.
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