Woman Of Labrador
I wrote this song sitting in front of a coal fire in a rented room in St Johns Newfoundland during a month I spent there back in the 1980s. I was playing in pubs at night and had plenty of time during the day for reading. One book I picked up at the library was an autobiography of Elizabeth Goudie who grew up in Labrador and married a fur trapper. I was so moved by her simple humanity and raw courage that, as soon as I finished the book – it’s called Woman Of Labrador — I wrote these simple verses and found a tune that works. Here’s my version….
A few years later a friend approached me at a music event in Vancouver and said, “Did you know that Figgy Duff want to record your song Woman Of Labrador and they’d like to talk to you about it?” Well, by the time I made contact with Figgy Duff the recording was already done and the album, Weather Out The Storm had gone to press with “author unknown” against my song. Nevertheless, we worked out a co-publishing agreement and they were kind enough to include a corrected credit when the song was re-released on the Figgy Duff Retrospective album. Here’s the Figgy Duff version…
Since then many groups and artists have recorded the song and it has been published in several anthologies of music and poetry from Newfoundland. In 2006 it was selected as one of fifty songs from across Canada for a new collection called “The Great Canadian Songbook”.
Here’s a page from the handwritten original of Elizabeth Goudie’s book Woman Of Labrador.
