Canada is a vast country, with as much diversity of landscape, people, and spirit as its neighbor to the south. When Canadians gather to celebrate, as many do this time of year to mark Canada Day (July 1), there’s a good chance that singing will break out. As diverse as Canada’s lands and peoples are, it is very likely that at least one song by Ian Tyson and one song by Stan Rogers will be among those that connect singers and hearers across land and background. Their music holds stories which reach beyond Canada’s borders as well.

Ian Tyson’s subject, most often, is life in the real west. That’s been true since the 1960s, when he was half of the top notch duo Ian & Sylvia and wrote the iconic songs Four Strong Winds, Someday Soon, and Summer Wages. Making the real west come alive through his songs is a path he has followed in his solo career as well, drawing on his own real life experiences raising horses in Alberta at the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. Though circumstance has weathered his singing voice a bit over the decades — Tyson is now in his late seventies — that only invites you to listen a bit more closely for the words, and those words still resonate with poetry and imagery of western landscapes and the lives of the people who call them home.

On his latest album, Raven Singer, he invites listeners in to those lives and landscapes with songs including The Yellow Dress, Rio Colorado, Saddle Bronc Girl, and Charles Goodnight’s Grave.

Stan Rogers  loved all of Canada and had heartfelt connection to the lives of working people, especially those who worked the waters in the Maritimes and who raised crops in Ontario. Though he died in an accident in his early thirties — twenty nine years ago now — Rogers created a body of song which stands the test of time. Borealis Records has begun a project of reissuing Rogers’ albums, and to  begin Rogers’ widow Ariel and his original record producer Paul Mills  gathered sixteen of his most loved songs for Very Best of Stan Rogers. On the album you’ll find a song of hard and true life on the waters called Make and Break Harbour, a joyous love song called Forty-Five Years, a song of resilience and hope wrapped in the story of a sinking ship called The Mary Ellen Carter, and a song of vision, persistence, and landscape which connects Canada sea to sea to sea, Northwest Passage.

Note: See more Canada Music at Kerry’s Music Road.

As a policy of A Traveler’s Library, we tell you about affiliate links. The links included here may make it possible for you to listen to excerpts of the music, and the ones to Amazon in this post are affiliate links. If you buy anything through the affiliate links in this post, you will be supporting the site Music Road . Thank you. The picture of the Canadian Rockies is from Flickr, used with a Creative Commons license. Click on the photo to learn about the photographer. The other two photos are of Nova Scotia and are the property of Vera Marie Badertscher. The video comes form You Tube.