ca. 1873-1876
See Maja Bannerman and Rusty McCarthy perform The Strike on the New Canal
Come all you jolly navvy boys,
That work on Canadian soil,
I call your kind attention
To these few lines I write.
Attention, pray, now lend an air [ear]
To what I’m going to say,
It’s of the glorious turnout,
In Thorold, the first of May.[i]
It was early in the morning,
A meeting we did call,
The Swedes being most in number,
They gave a loud Hurrah.
They took their stand right on the bridge
That crosses the Welland Road :
Such a lot of jolly fellows,
You never saw before.
Up steps our brave Contractor,
His name—it is John Brown;
When he had seen the turn-out,
He, like a bear, did growl,
He says, “My boys, you have done wrong,
This strike you all shall rue ;
For I will pay no more wages
Before the first of June.
We called our men to order,
And formed them in a line ;
We put them through their exercise
In military style.
The Union Jack we hoisted,
And the bag-pipes they did bawl,
And through the streets of Thorold,
We did march one and all.
As we were marching through the streets,
It’s then appeared in view,
The men from the Tenth Section,
Were glorious for to view.
They came along in rank and file,
Their tactics did display;
They swore by the American gods,
They’d die or gain the day.
We soon got consolidated,
Then for Shannon’s[ii] men we steered ;
We heard they were hard cases,
But them we did not fear.
You might hear tell of Waterloo,
Or the Battle of Inkerman,[iii]
It was nothing to the charge we made
Along the whole canal.
On the second day of May, my boys,
John Brown, he came along,
With money in each pocket
To pay off every man.
He called our kind attention
To a notice on the door,
Saying, “Whoever draws his money
Shall work for me no more.”
Now to conclude and finish,
I mean to end my song ;
I’m going to leave the New Canal,
And that before it’s long.
I’ll go along Columbia’s shore,
Or Dixie’s sunny land,
And leave those brave Contractors
That’re on the New Canal.
[i] In the late-nineteenth century, May 1st was designated by labour and socialist movements to be “International Workers’ Day.” It is still celebrated in Europe on that date.
[ii] Patrick Shannon: a contractor on Section 6 of the Third Welland Canal. This Section was located halfway between Port Dalhousie and Merritton.
[iii] The Battle of Inkerman occurred during the Crimean War in 1854 where British and French forces defeated the Russians.
Published in Spirit of the Big Ditch: The Story of the Welland Canals in Pictures, Poems and Songs. Compiled, edited and annotated by Robert Ratcliffe Taylor. St. Catharines: The Historical Society of St. Catharines, 2024
The Historical Society of St. Catharines 