I'm standing at a window
I'm pressed against the past
I'm looking on in black and white
Through the eyes of photographs
And I'm falling into faces
Cultivated smiles
Two dimensional
Je me souviens Canada
Out of Gastown in the morning
On a train in '69
Into the arc-weld of the rising sun
We left the coast behind
And the wheels rolled in a rhythm
And I heard in them for the first time
The endless song of traveling out of Canada
Oh Canada
The longest road I've known
Paved with the kind of broken hearts
That lead to broken homes
Looking backwards I remember
The cracks in all the paving stones
And the distances I've traveled out of Canada
Through the dog-days of the prairies
The boundless sky above our heads
My stepfather looked for Mounties
In the streets of Winnipeg
And he told them that my mother's love
Had stole his heart away
And we all stood there
Posed for Polaroids of Canada
Oh Canada
The longest road I've known
Paved with the kind of broken hearts
That lead to broken homes
Looking backwards I remember
The cracks in all the paving stones
And the distances I've traveled out of Canada
I awoke wrapped in my mother's arms
On the docks of Montreal
The ships lit like Christmas
And the moon a swollen ball
When a sailor spoke of England
I'd never felt so small
I waited until the ocean
Turned from emerald to grey
The wind threshed the water
And washed our wake away
And the seagulls blew like words
Back to the mouth of the St. Lawrence
As we sailed out
On The Empress of Canada
Oh Canada
The longest road I've known
Paved with the kind of broken hearts
That lead to broken homes
Looking backwards I remember
The cracks in all the paving stones
And the distances I've traveled out of Canada
The first country of my youth
My heart was ever drawn to you
Like a tongue to a broken tooth
In a world where everyone was always leaving
I was trying to keep my fingertips
On Canada