My Dear, I'm Bound for Canady

DESCRIPTION: "My dear I'm bound for Canady; Love Sally we must part." Sally asks Willie to stay; "you'll find employment here" but he leaves St John's; he will marry her within three years. But the song ends "every honest decent young man Don't leave his girl behind"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1929 (Greenleaf/Mansfield-BalladsAndSeaSongsOfNewfoundland)
KEYWORDS: love parting unemployment hardtimes Canada father mother betrayal
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Greenleaf/Mansfield-BalladsAndSeaSongsOfNewfoundland 154, "My Dear, I'm Bound for Canady" (1 text)
Leach-FolkBalladsSongsOfLowerLabradorCoast 85, "Bound for Canada" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lehr/Best-ComeAndIWillSingYou 82, "My Dear, I'm Bound for Canaday" (1 text, 2 tunes)
Guigné-ForgottenSongsOfTheNewfoundlandOutports, pp. 187-190, "I'm Bound Away for Canada (My Dear I'm Bound for Canaday)" (3 texts, 2 tunes)
Roud #4411
RECORDINGS:
Jacob Noseworthy, "Canada" (on MUNFLA/Leach)
Charlie Williams, "My Dear I'm Bound for Canada" (on MUNFLA/Leach)
NOTES [154 words]: To understand this song, it is important to recall that Newfoundland did not become part of Canada until after World War II (for background, see especially "Anti-Confederation Song (II)"). And Newfoundland was poor, which meant that many of its people left for other places with more opportunity. Some went to the United States, some to Britain, but probably most went to Canada. Gary McManus and Clifford H. Wood, Atlas of Newfoundland and Labrador, Breakwater Books, 1991, plate 9, shows the shocking figures: Newfoundland in 1986 had somewhat fewer than 600,000 people. And there were 70,000 ex-Newfoundlanders in Ontario alone, and another 25,000 in the Maritimes, and 37,000 in the rest of Canada. That's more than a fifth of the population out-migrating! - RBW
One of Guigné-ForgottenSongsOfTheNewfoundlandOutports's texts is a verse from a version on the "MacEdward Leach and the Songs of Atlantic Canada" site. - BS
Last updated in version 4.4
File: GrMa154

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