Information/Write-up
In loving memory of my step-father Philip Bentz (b. 1918 in Burstall, Saskatchewan; d. 1991 in Iberville, Québec). Philip was my first informant on World War II. As a kid, I couldn't even begin to under-stand what he went through during the war on the Front Lines. Later, I really started to appreciate the sacrifice of the young men of his generation, many still in their teens. As Adrienne Clarkson, Governor General of Canada from 1999 to 2005, declared at the VE-Day 60th Commemorative Ceremony at the Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery, in Apeldoorn, Holland: "(...) You men gave your youth (...) Canadians are proud of you (...) You deserve every honour you get, and every attention that is paid."
This recording is another at-tention that is paid to you all.
Jean-Pierre Sévigny
Victory
In 1945, the Canadian 1st Army of 120,000 men was given a grim assignment: to clear the Western Netherlands, and drive the Germans from the Atlantic Coast. It took months as Canadians faced the fierce resistance of the German 15th Army, a formidable force of 90,000 men.¹ For the Dutch people and the Canadian Army, who had lost 7,600 men, liberation came on May 5, 1945. In the town of Wageningen, Canadian Commander Charles Foulkes accepted a surrender from General Johannes Blaskowitz covering all German forces in Holland. On May 7, 1945, great liberation scenes erupted all over Holland. As reported by CBC war correspondents Marcel Ouimet and Peter Stursberg, large agitated crowds cheered and mobbed the Canadians soldiers who came driving through each major city. Some soldiers were even knocked down from their tanks as they were being embraced by a wild Dutch crowd.
On May 8, Prime Minister William Mackenzie King addressed the nation. He underlined that the “victory was won at so great a price.” After six years of conflict, in which Canada had enlisted more than one million men and women in the armed forces, 42,000 were dead. It was indeed a remarkable contribution for a country of 11 million people. Canada had won the respect of other nations and emerged as a new power in the world, and had to learn power. As Canadians and Europeans took to the streets to celebrate, Mackenzie King pointed out that the War was not over; Japan had yet to surrender. For many, it was a summer of semi-peace.
In Holland, the Dutch people cheered and swarmed their Canadian liberators. As soldier Lloyd Rhoads of Sault Ste. Marie remembers: “we were so happy to be liberators.”² The Dutch who celebrated then with their Canadian liberators have since been called: “Holland’s wild summer of 1945” which means by then, Canadians and their new Dutch friends were engaged in serious partying. In the city of Haarlem, in the euphoria of the street celebration, Lloyd was attracted to a young Dutch girl who was riding a bike. He hitched a ride… for life. They both remember that summer: “We danced in the streets for weeks on end, parties and parties (…) drinking and sex (…) It was as if you were crazy, you couldn’t stop.” Lloyd and Olga were married on Christmas eve 1945 in the Haarlem Town Hall. Olga became a “Canadian war bride.” There were 41,000 Canadian war brides and 19,000 war children, all transported to Canada by the Department of National Defense at an average cost of $140.29. The first wave of a huge baby-boom.³
In Canada, VE-Day revelries were also intense in many cities; and on, at least one occasion, they turned into rioting. The port city of Halifax was the main point of entrance for the returning forces from Europe. The city was totally unprepared to handle the huge logistic challenge caused by the repatriation. Halifax became quickly overwhelmed. Above all, both civilian and military authorities had grossly misjudged two human factors: the level of frustration of both civilians and sailors after six long years of sacrifice, and the irrepressible impulse to cheer and drink on VE-Day. Pubs and liquor stores were locked up tight in Halifax that day. Sailors didn’t agree with that idea. No drinks on VE-Day! On May 7th and 8th, celebrations went wrong in Halifax as civilians and sailors broke into Keith’s Brewery and cleaned it out. Later on, the crowd rioted and looted liquor stores and local shops along Barrington and Sackville Streets. The results: 564 stores damaged; 207 looted shops; 211 people indicted for rioting; damages estimated at $1 million; and Rear Admiral Leonard Murray, the man in charge of the Navy in Halifax was fired.⁴
The end of the war also presented a challenge for returning combatants. They quickly realized that the world they had known and fought to preserve had changed. The new Canada was going to be a very different place and everyone would have to adapt and fit in. Some men found it hard to “re-assimilate,” especially Blacks and aboriginals. Some were repudiated and wondered how they could fit into the new social order. In parts of England, people were glad to see the Canadian and American soldiers and sailors leave. Many thought the Yanks and also Canucks were simply “overpaid, oversexed and over here.” Repatriation had also become an issue: a complex point system had been introduced by the Canadian Army to bring the boys home, but in phases. Tens of thousands of soldiers had to sweat it out before they could be repatriated and get on with the “best years of their lives.”
The war had been costly but it also brought to Canada a new prosperity. The industrial sector which had expanded and diversified during wartime was now producing at full capacity and the economy was booming. The social fabric of Canada was also changing; many women were now working and the birth rate was high. Family life was redefined, and a new middle class appeared. This is the Canada I was born into; the late 1940s were a period of full in which the country focused on the economy and the production of commodities. By the 1950s, North America rapidly slid into the Cold War, consumer society and Mall culture. I still believe that in some way consumerism is the corollary of the psychological and social pressures brought on by the Cold War.
Notes on the musical selections
Jean-Pierre Sévigny, music historian
1. Shake Down The Stars – Georgie Auld & His Orchestra. Vocal: Kay Foster 3:11
(Eddie de Lange, James Van Heusen)
Varsity 8199 Recorded: February 1940
To begin this VE-Day (Victory in Europe) Memories CD with Canadian tenor, alto and soprano saxophonist Georgie Auld seems appropriate. He is a little ignored but highly regarded jazzman who made it in the United States (US) in the big band era. Auld (born John Altwerger) is not nearly as well-known in Canada as his compatriot, jazz icon Oscar Peterson; but for some jazz enthusiasts Auld is a musician of the same calibre. Many jazz critics see him as one of the finest improvisers of the swing era and one who bridged the gap between swing and progressive jazz. Auld was born in Toronto in 1919 and moved as a child with family to Brooklyn. He won the Rudy Weidoeft scholarship for alto in 1931. He turned to tenor sax in 1935 after hearing a Coleman Hawkins recording. Most saxophonists, not just Auld, were simply swept away by the Hawk, who was blowing and flying higher than anyone else in history at the time. Auld was, for that reason, like Lester Young being a rare exception. Auld led his own combo and worked in various clubs where he played with the great swing bandleaders of the time. He played with Bunny Berigan (1937-8), Artie Shaw (1939 and 1942), Benny Goodman (1940-41), and Count Basie (1950). Throughout his career, between professional engagements, he led his own bands (small or large). Auld later returned home to Toronto, where, in the 1980s, he did gigs in jazz bars such as George’s Spaghetti House, a regular nightspot for the jazz crowd. At the end of his life, he went back to the US. He died in Palm Springs, CA, in 1990.
We start this surprising journey of World War II music with Georgie Auld and His Orchestra. Written by Eddie de Lange and James Van Heusen Shake Down The Stars became famous through Glenn Miller’s recording (on Bluebird label) and the Ella Fitzgerald one (on Decca).
2. Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree (With Anyone Else But Me) – Lucio Agostini & His Orchestra. Vocal: the Jack Allyson Singers 1:05
(Lew Brown, Charles Tobias, Sam H. Stept) Recorded: July 2, 1946
This version features the orchestra of Lucio Agostini put together for the CBC radio series “Let There Be Music.” In the spring of 1946, on the first anniversary of VE-Day, Lucio produced and conducted a VE-Day special on the CBC with vocalists Norma Locke, Alys Robi, and the Jack Allyson Singers. Locke and Robi were both renowned stars but very little is known about the Jack Allyson group who were possibly hired and liked for their performance on radio broadcasts.
For the arrangement and orchestration skills, Agostini, born in 1913, is arguably the greatest Canadian band conductor. Much like his father Giuseppe, Lucio was a child musical talent. At 16, he was cellist for the Montreal Philharmonic. As arranger-conductor, he had the ability to write in any style including classical, jazz, Broadway, pop, and Latino. Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree was a favourite of vocal groups from the swing era. There were notable versions recorded by The Modernaires and the Andrews Sisters who performed the song in the movie Private Buckaroo (1943). The general public seemed to have always been fond of this upbeat ditty, and this song obliged audiences to perform it frequently. This one title alone features in copyright royalties (recordings and sheet music) for its writers Brown and Tobias.
3. We’ll Meet Again – Lucio Agostini & His Orchestra. Vocal: Norma Locke 1:32
(Hugh Charles, Albert R. Parker) Recorded: July 2, 1946
Norma (Beth) Locke, a singing star of the big band era in Canada, was born in Montréal in 1923. She recorded with Western Gentlemen, band Mart Kenney and His Western Gentlemen, from the mid-1940s to the late 1960s. Locke was the house music vocalist at the Ottawa Wind Tunnel, Locke with her own contralto voice was a regular of CBC Toronto where she sang a number of national shows.
A British hit published in 1941 and forever associated with the war by Vera Lynn, We’ll Meet Again was a favourite of the British public in World War II. The most poignant war song we can hear today. This current Agostini version comes from the CBC broadcast “Let There Be Music.” It is the only CBC broadcast-7 cut of a live music session professionally re-recorded by the same Agostini unit with the preceding number Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree.
4. This Is Romance – Georgie Auld & His Orchestra 3:03
(Edward Heyman, Vernon Duke) Varsity 8159
Recorded: January 1940
Recorded in 1933 by the Casa Loma Orchestra, the bands of Ray Noble and Artie Shaw (both in 1941) subsequently recorded this tune. A moody intimate moving instrumental rendition, we hear Georgie Auld’s expressive lyricism on tenor saxophone. Some contemporary critics singled out the fact that Auld was not a true jazz master because he sounded too much like Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, or Larry Binyon (who played in Ben Pollack’s band). Who cares about such details? Auld was certainly not a composer but he adapted his style to the band or the singer that he was accompanying. This is not a flaw, but the ability to adapt yourself to each different band and to serve a specific song, while still blowing your own sound and expressing your individuality. Like Oscar Peterson, Georgie Auld had this gift. Arguably, this collective approach to jazz is more a Canadian attribute; American jazz is more individualistic.
5. March Along Joe Soldier – Robert Farnon / Canadian Band of the A.E.F. 0:54
(Farron / Montgomery)
Recorded: 30 April 1945
6. That’s An Order From The Army – Robert Farnon / Canadian Band of the A.E.F. 1:39
(Frank Shuster)
Recorded: 30 April 1945
7. The Very Thought Of You – Robert Farnon / Canadian Band of the A.E.F. 3:07
(Ray Noble)
Recorded: 26 February 1945
These spoken BBC introduction leads to a Robert Farnon festival of three numbers that were performed on the BBC’s Canadian Time in 1945, two with military sing-a-longs and a swooning ballad. Captain Robert Farnon, born in Toronto in 1917, was bandmaster-conductor of the Canadian Band of the Allied Expeditionary Forces. The orchestra, later known as the Canadian Forces Go To War, comprised a basic orchestra of up to 30 musicians, a mixed chorus of 10 voices (5 female, 5 male), and an MC and comic. This was a CBC series, the orchestra went on the road and, as always describes, the show was meant for “men and women of the forces, by the men of the forces.” The three pieces here are all performed by the Canadian Band of the A.E.F. under the direction of Captain Bob Farnon, and songs of the day performed by Privates Joanne Dallas (CWAC), and Paul Carpenter. Farnon confided to Chas Wray that the band “in addition to five or six weekly broadcasts at the studios and venues around town, played many ‘one-niters’ at hospitals, army camps, etc. up and down the country. After the war, Farnon stayed in Britain where he had a brilliant career as a composer and conductor. He lived in the Channel Islands and died there in 2005.
The Canada Show lasted from September 1944 through December 1945. The show always opened with the theme song March Along Joe Soldier, an upbeat march written by Robert Farnon. The song That’s An Order From The Army, penned by comedian Frank Shuster, was broadcast live from the Queensbury All Services Club in Soho. Ray Noble, the important British bandleader, composed the crooner’s ballad The Very Thought of You, sung here by Private Gerry Travers.
8. My Blue Heaven – Bert Niosi & His Orchestra. Vocal: Doug Hurley 4:10
(George Whiting / Walter Donaldson)
Recorded: September 30, 1943
Bert Niosi’s early 1940s performances are hard to find and not well documented. Fortunately we were able to find one so we can hear what “the swing king” in Canada sounded like in his heyday. This CBC radio performance dates from 1943, and was broadcast from the RCAF depot in Toronto.
My Blue Heaven was one of the biggest hits of the late 1920s and had been successfully revived in 1929 by Sammy Kaye. In the 1950s, Fats Domino popularized it for the rock and roll audience, and it charted again in 1960 as an instrumental version by guitarist Duane Eddy.
9. No Name Jive, part 1 – Glen Gray & The Casa Loma Orchestra 3:46
(Larry Wagner) Decca 3089
Recorded: March 18, 1940
This segment opens with an excerpt aired on 6 May 1945. Reporting from the field, CBC’s war correspondent Marcel Ouimet was telling Canadians that it was the end of the war in Holland.
Founded by Glen Knoblaugh, AKA Glen Gray, the band was first called the Orange Blossoms. One of the first “swing” bands, they played in 1927-28 at Toronto’s fashionable Casa Loma. The band later adopted the name Casa Loma Orchestra prior to gigs in the US. The ’30s and ’40s were good to the orchestra as it blazed a path for other big bands on both sides of the border. The band toured and recorded extensively, for Okeh, Brunswick and later Decca. Their first records were hot numbers, but the sound shifted in later periods to a more commercial style that emphasized ballads. Throughout the years, the band maintained its ability to swing when it wanted and to take pace to a climax using its signature riff style. The jumpy No Name Jive, recorded on two sides of a 78, dating from 1940 became one of the Casa Loma Orchestra’s biggest hits. We hear part 1 with the obbligato (introduction and main choruses).
10. Pick-Up Boys – Auld / Hawkins / Webster Saxet 3:24
(Leonard Feather) Apollo 754 Recorded: May 17, 1944
The segment begins with CBC radio personality Roger Baulu who is “open-miked” in Dominion Square near Sainte-Catherine Street in Montreal on VE-Day, May 8, 1945. We can feel the pulse of the street, the mood of the people and hear cheers, whistles, screams, and general banter.
Georgie Auld had the distinction of being a member of possibly the first jazz saxett (a small ensemble with three saxophonists instead of the usual one) along with icons Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster. Co-organized by the famous author and critic Leonard Feather who wrote this instrumental number, the recording showcases the three great tenor saxophonists. The saxett makes no compromises. At times, it sounds like a hard bop combo with the three musicians blowing and soloing one after the other. To swing devotees, this “progressive jazz” was hot and strayed too far from swing band conventions and the melodic structure of the music. Some simply dismissed it as jazz for musicians and not for the public. We hear Auld and Webster grappling with what was then modern jazz. Auld, who takes the second solo here, had made it in the jazz world; here he was blowin’ next to his idol Coleman Hawkins.
11. Juke Box Saturday Night – Glenn Miller & His Orchestra: Vocal by Marion Hutton, Tex Beneke & The Modernaires 3:04
(Al Stillman / Paul McGrane) Victor 20-1509 Recorded: 15 July 1942
According to Elwood Glover, CBC host of jazz radio broadcasts in the 1940s and emcee for some visiting US swing bands, Miller’s Canadian tour in 1944 was the highlight of the big band era in Canada. There are pictures of this historic event in the booklet. Like everybody else, Canadians found his relaxed jazz sound, which was easy to dance to, and this rendition of old sentimental ballads simply irresistible. He arrived at the right time with just the right sounds, and came to define the music of World War II. Like so many war acts, Miller’s reign was brief but supreme; he died in 1944 when his plane disappeared over the English Channel. From 1939 to 1942, he dominated jazz music with some 60 Top Ten hits, but he was too hot to not tell the whole story but in this case they speak volumes. In 1940 alone, he scored 31 hits. Miller and his main close competitor, Tommy Dorsey, are the top features on this CD. American pilots dropped bombs while Miller orchestra dropped Top Ten hits.
Miller’s band included singers Ray Eberle, Marion Hutton, and the vocal group The Modernaires, featured here. Formed in Buffalo in 1935, the Modernaires met in high school. There were changes in personnel over the years and some new members were Canadian, according to musician and author Murray Ginsberg. In the middle of the song, the youngsters do a parody of “fatherly advice,” the big idols of the moment.
This 1942 song anticipates the rock and roll lifestyle of teenagers of the mid-1950s—“hanging out and bopping around” is a joke both about and dancing to the sounds of the big bands in hotels and ballrooms. Orchestras started to disband in the late 1940s and were gradually replaced by the weekly entertainment of the juke boxes. Miller music was superseded by the new cool jazz.
12. You and I – Lucio Agostini & His Orchestra. Vocal: Alys Robi 1:47
(Meredith Wilson) Recorded: 2 July 1946
The Music Man by Meredith Wilson, best known for the musical The Music Man which premiered on Broadway in 1957, this was the best musical ever made for the major big bands of the war years. Like Ellington, Glenn Miller, and Tommy Dorsey. The ballad charted in 1941, and the Miller version shot to number one. Alys Robi likely heard it on radio-live broadcasts as US radio stations beamed far and wide. Robi began to sing in New York’s cabarets. The Agostini Robi performance is on a par with those of Ellington, Dorsey and Miller. In the version heard here, we find a complete contrast to the Agostini trademark, a classical and romantic form of jazz and orchestration. A minimalist CBC broadcast arrangement, where the singer sings in the key of C, inserts only three short alternate choruses (A) throughout, and no bridge. Agostini’s arrangement features the vocalist entirely. There are no instrumental solos.
13. You Belong To My Heart – Mart Kenney & His Western Gentlemen. Vocal: Norma Locke 2:59
(Augustin Lara / Ray Gilbert) Victor 56-001-A Recorded: 1943
Most veteran jazz musicians will tell you that Mart Kenney & His Western Gentlemen were the hottest Canadian Band during the war, overshadowing even the famous Kenney sisters. This CD includes three of Kenney’s wartime hits. The band was formed in 1931 before a gig in Vancouver where it also made its radio debut in 1934 on CJOR. Kenney began touring in Eastern Canada in 1937. He signed a contract with RCA Victor in 1938, and began recording for its Victor and Bluebird labels. The singer of You Belong To My Heart, Norma Locke, joined the band in 1944 and soon reached fame as a premier big band vocalist. Like Glenn Miller’s music, the melodic, sweet tones of Mart Kenney seemed to hit a sentimental spot with Canadians, who were going through a rough time and were being rationed even in basic necessities. People flocked to attend Kenney’s record launches organized by RCA at the Montreal record plant. The band toured across Canada between 1943 and 1945 and broadcasted weekly on The Victory Parade live from army depots and war plants. Kenney was made a member of the Order of Canada in 1980. Written by Mexican par- excellence Augustin Lara, You Belong To My Heart (Solamente una Vez) was huge hit, and has been recorded over a hundred times by various artists. In French-Canada, Alys Robi also recorded a nice version under the title Je te dirai merci.
14. Seems like Old Times – Guy Lombardo & His Royal Canadians. Vocal: Don Rodney & The Lombardo Trio 2:59
(Decca 18737) Recorded: November 15, 1945
Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians are a household name band in Canadian music. The orchestra is a symbol of the popularity of the instrumental based over 50 years between the 1930s and 1940s. The Lombardo band is the most enduring. The band of the 1920s was led by three Lombardo brothers, and its reshaping of ballads for the back end’s success was steady fare for decades. In the 1920s soft vocals that sounded old. Royal Canadians kept going into the 1940s show out the advertisements and record the nostalgia and myth of the “old times.” Carmen Lombardo and Jacob Loeb wrote down the lyrics to the nostalgic elegy, Get Out Those Old Records, and when Decca agreed, Guy and his brother Carmen gave the song to be awarded. The Lombardos acquired their music business savvy from vaudeville performances in their hometown of London, Ontario, in the late teens and early twenties. They also drew on the Scottish elements of that era, always ending their presentation with Auld Lang Syne and retained the schottische rhythm when linking together a string of popular songs, a Lombardo invention. The Lombardo orchestra was always first and early recordings for the Gennett label reveal a sweet band quite capable of playing “hot” when it wanted to. For some sectors, this is the best Guy Lombardo & His Royal Canadians ever sounded; the musicians were cut loose and played an easy swing sound that was most engaging. When the cameras along and somewhat stifled their creativity by the late 1920s, the Royal Canadians were one of America’s top acts, and they landed contracts in big hotels. On one New Year’s Eve each year, they played a wide arrangement of Auld Lang Syne. That recording alone would secure their place in show business history. Seems Like Old Times is a Carmen Lombardo original co-written with John Jacob Loeb. It was a moderate hit early in 1946 but later became huge when chosen by personality Arthur Godfrey as the theme song for his radio and TV broadcasts. That same year, Georgie Auld cut a version for the Musicraft label.
15. Shine On Harvest Moon – Gisèle MacKenzie with Jerry Gray’s Orchestra 2:01
(Jack Norworth / Nora Bayes) CBC World Program Service – Disc 209
Recorded, circa 1943
Mademoiselle Gisèle LaFlèche was born in Winnipeg in 1927. She was a predominant Canadian vocalist whose career peaked in the ’50s and ’60s. In the mid-1940s, she used only her first name on the CBC radio show Meet Gisèle. She used MacKenzie later; her first records shown name, when she left to pursue a career in the U.S. in the early ’50s, and settled permanently in Los Angeles. In 1950s pop vocalists, she began her career as a dance band, and later occasionally sang with the big bands. Gisèle, who died in L.A. in 2003, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Gone but not forgotten, she lives on today with a number of websites devoted to her memory and her heritage. Dating from 1908 Shine On Harvest Moon became famous in the 1930s with the Waters and Ruth Etting and again in the 1940s by Kate Smith. It is still a favourite of barbershop quartets singers.
16. East Of The Sun (And West Of The Moon) – Dizzy Gillespie & His Orchestra. Vocal: Sarah Vaughan 3:15
(Brooks Bowman) Continental 6031
Recorded: December 31, 1944
In the winter of 1944, Dizzy Gillespie brought Leonard Feather a rough acetate of East Of The Sun with vocals by a new singer, Sarah Vaughan. Feather eventually found a small label (Continental) that was willing to produce it. To help the singer out, Auld and Gillespie and a few others agreed to play for the union scale of $30. So Sarah began her recording career with this bebop ensemble. The record was cut on New Year’s Eve 1944. Once again, Georgie Auld was part of a seminal moment in jazz. On this track, Auld takes a second seat to Gillespie who gets to blow the only solo of the ballad. Auld uses a floating breezy approach à la Lester Young, gently playing behind Sarah’s voice.
17. I’ll Never Smile Again – Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra. Vocal: Frank Sinatra and the Pied Pipers 3:08
(Ruth Lowe) Victor 26628 Recorded: May 23, 1940
Toronto songwriter Ruth Lowe penned the sad, mournful ballad I’ll Never Smile Again in the late 1930s. In the summer of 1939, she took the song to bandleader Tommy Dorsey, who was performing at the Canadian National Exhibition site in Toronto. On the site, a huge tent which could hold up to 10,000 dancers was the main attraction. The next year, Dorsey recorded it with a new arrangement with his young crooner Frank Sinatra and the back-up group the Pied Pipers. They produced a smash hit. The song reached the top of the charts and remained there for months. While opportunity was knocking, Lowe settled in New York and joined the big band community, befriending Dorsey and Sinatra. There she wrote the lyrics to one of Sinatra’s signature songs Put Your Dreams Away. After a few years in the Big Apple, she returned to Toronto and married an investment broker. Those two songs brought her wealth and fame.
18. I’ll Remember Suzanne – Mart Kenney & His Western Gentlemen. Vocal: Norma Locke 3:08
(Jack Segal, Dick Miles) Recorded: 1944
This is a forgotten big band war number and one of Jack Segal’s lesser-known compositions. Segal started his career in New York and later became a staff writer for Paramount Pictures. The song was introduced and recorded by Gene Krupa and His Orchestra in 1944 for the Columbia label. The Mart Kenney band is one of the few to have recorded a nice cover version. A nostalgic ballad, it was put on the B-side of their hit You Belong To My Heart.
19. We’re Proud Of Canada – Mart Kenney & His Western Gentlemen. Vocal: Art Hallman 3:51
(Mart Kenney) Bluebird B-4683-A Recorded: 1943
Finally, we have a patriotic march to close out this nostalgic pilgrimage to places and sounds of World War II. This is a Mart Kenney composition recorded in 1943 (Bluebird), an homage to his beloved Canada which was contributing all its resources to the war effort. A segment of Prime Minister William MacKenzie King’s address to the nation on May 8th 1945 is inserted between the instrumental overture and the vocal choruses of the song. Providing a fitting end to the recording, this song expresses the views of Canadians who felt proud and united as never before at the end of the war.
Produced & Compiled by Jean-Pierre Sévigny
Transfers by Chris Bradley at Library & Archives Canada
24-Bit Remastering by Fernand Martel, Studio Victor
Liner Notes by Jean-Pierre Sévigny
Research & Documentation by Jean-Pierre Sévigny
Package Design and Artwork by François Messier
Cover Illustration by Anne-Marie Bentz
This project was made possible with the help of the AV Preservation Trust and Canadian Heritage.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Gaëtan Pilon of Studio Victor, and to Elaine Keillor of Carleton University, and director of the Centre for Canadian Cultures and Heritages, for reading and commenting on my manuscript and for information, discussion and suggestions at different stages of the project.
I also express my gratitude to the following persons: David Ades of the Robert Farnon Society, Richard Green, Brenda Murti of the Library & Archives Canada, Barbara Brown, Ken Puley and Virginia Goodfellow of the CBC, Craig Morrison (editing), Carol Reid, Maggie Arbout-Doucette of the Canadian War Museum.
Photographic sources: Library and Archives Canada, Canadian War Museum, Georgette D. Bélisle, Jean-Pierre Sévigny, Thérèse Baron-Bentz, Anne-Marie Bentz, Griffin Press, Robert Farnon Society, CBC, Images Canada.
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