Work Through Time: Cape Breton Stories of Land & Sea

Kenzie MacNeil discusses the song "Wood, Wind and Water" and the N.F.B. film "Empty Harbours, Empty Dreams".

“I should give Bob Morgan his due because one of the courses I loved in college was the Maritime History course that he taught. He was passionate - as he usually is - and it was infectious and I got the bug. I dove into it heavily and started reading like crazy - everything I could get my hands on. And the whole issue of the Maritimes and Confederation came up, and the Golden Age period. "It was about four years after taking that course - we were living in Halifax at the time and I was doing some research at the archives on that period. I bumped into the director of the film at the airport and we started talking about this film he was wanting to work on. I told him what I was doing and it turned out that we were researching the same period. So we began spending a lot of time together and started working on the show.

But ‘Wood, Wind and Water’ was written slightly before the film was underway; it was written as its own piece on that period. Basically it was intended as a sort of explanation as to why Maritimers are the way they are. There's a wistful thing about the past-it's very subtle, almost subconscious-that there was a greater period, that there was a period when things were under control and people were in command of themselves. But nobody could tell you about it; the man-on-the-street wouldn't be able to say anything about it. However, when you dive into the archival material, you see the extent of it. Every harbour on the south coast of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick was a major shipbuilding port or a shipping port. The Maritimes was becoming a mature place because of a maturation of people, because of an attitude. But then, that got completely chopped off at the knees with Confederation. What had been a sort of adolescent growth and a very interesting confidence in belonging just disappeared.

The Golden Age occurred between the 1830s and the 1860s, the same period with Joseph Howe. Sam Slick-all those things that were giving an indication of a maturing of place, an independent place.”

The sheet music for this song was kindly provided to us by Kenzie MacNeil and Allister MacGillivray. It originally appeared in The Cape Breton Song Collection by Allister MacGillivray and John C. O'Donnell, published by Sea-Cape Music Ltd. in 1985.

© 1985 Sea-Cape Music Ltd. (Sheet Music)

© Kenzie MacNeil (The Island)