Gulf of Saint Lawrence

Golfe du Saint-Laurent

The crosscurrents of the Gulf Stream and the Labrador Current create some of the richest fishing grounds in the world. The Gulf of Saint Lawrence is the gateway to the interior of North America, and a richly diverse musical region of English, Irish, Scots Gaelic, Acadian and Québeçois French, Micmac, and Maliseet cultures.

This program captures Lynn's lifelong love affair with the region where her great-grandfather once captained fishing schooners from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland and Ireland, and where she worked as a canoe instructor and environmental educator from high school through graduate school.

This bilingual program includes traditional and original material from Lynn's 1987 album Crosscurrents, which received the Tree of Learning award for excellence in environmental education from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Submitted with Lynn's M.S. thesis on the Newfoundland fishery, the Crosscurrents cassette launched Crosscurrents Music, now celebrating its 30th year of sense of place in song and story.

The new release also includes newly recorded material from Lynn's campfire days on Cape Breton and at Kouchibouguac, Terra Nova, PEI, and Gros Morne National Parks. Programmation aussi disponible en français.

Atlantic Canada is rich in traditional song and sense of place. From Newfoundland to New Brunswick and from Nova Scotia to PEI, I've been exploring both the region and its music since the 1970s as a camp counselor, park naturalist, touring artist, and author with Breakwater Books. My song "Topophilia" (love of place), originally released on Crosscurrents and reissued on A Woman's Way, grew from this roots music.

This is a collection of campfire songs, learned and sung around the fire from Gros Morne National Park on Newfoundland's west coast to Camp Discovery in Cape Breton and Kouchibouguac National Park on the New Brunswick Gulf shore. French culture is interwoven with English, Scots, Gaelic and Micmac in this region, as you'll hear in the Maritime Mouth Music Medley. You'll find songs of the fishery and the lumber mills alongside songs for tramping, dancing, and yarning in the ballad and tall tale traditions. I hope that listening to these songs takes you back down home as much as singing them takes me.