Gordon Lighfoot – Canadian Railroad Trilogy

“There was a time in this fair land
When the railroad did not run
When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun
Long before the white man and long before the wheel
When the green dark forest was too silent to be real”

Canadian Railroad Trilogy – Gordon Lightfoot:
from the album The Way I Feel

Many top artists have their signature songs, tunes that define their careers on many levels. Some have to be dead or long retired before some music critic or media heavy decides for all time for which song they will be known. For Gordon Lightfoot, this was the Canadian Railroad Trilogy. However, Lightfoot never needed anybody to tell him or us which song defined him. There were so many and each of his fans could make their own lists. But if you had to choose one it would be the Trilogy.

If the truth be known Lightfoot did not sit down and write this piece as he did his many others. The CBC commissioned him to write The Canadian Railroad Trilogy for a 1967 New Year’s Day program celebrating Canada’s Centennial. The song appeared on Lightfoot’s The Way I Feel album released later that year.

The song begins with a ballad-style, single guitar announcement of what this country was before plows first dug into the soil and ships came through the Great Lakes. When the first verse ends Terry Clements bass brings the railroad rhythm to the song as progress begins to take hold of the country.

As the railroad cuts through the land the pace picks up with the tempo of the railway workers who have been given the sacred trust of joining the country. Just when you think the song will bring in an instrumental part it suddenly stops. This is where the mountains come into view and the sad realization that the workers have families many hundreds of miles back east or thousands of miles across the ocean.

The time for sentiments ends with the rail car tempo picking up again. The workers are back at it and this time it sounds frantic and this part of the song ends with “. . . A drink to the Living, a toast to the dead.”

Lightfoot ends the song just as he began the second verse, with a rollicking bass, but the last line lets us know that building the Canadian Pacific Railroad had it’s cost in human life:

“And many are the dead men, too silent to be real.”

You want to try something that will make your hair stand on end? Go through the Roger’s Pass in B.C. and drive through the series of snow sheds with the window down. As you drive into the long shed (these protect the road from avalanches) turn up the Canadian Railroad Trilogy.