LES RAFT-MANS

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aukepalmhof
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LES RAFT-MANS

Post by aukepalmhof » Fri Oct 28, 2016 8:37 pm

One of Canada's authorities on folk music, Edith Fowke, defined folk songs this way: "A genuine folk song is not a song written within recent memory for commercial profit, but rather a song handed down by oral tradition, usually of unknown authorship and found in more than one version - since as with anything passed on by word of mouth or ear, no two people remember it exactly the same way." Canadians have a rich trove of folk music and these important links with our past are now celebrated in four commemorative stamps, each featuring a different song. This is the fourth and last issue in the popular Canadian folklore series. Folk songs cover a wide range of topics, including love, war, disasters, and everyday work. They also include ballads, dancing songs, even lullabies and children's game songs. The second stamp in this issue deals with the lumbering trade. Depicting life in the woods, "Les Raftmans" is an Ottawa valley song dating from the latter part of the 19th century. Marius Barbeau, a well-known folklorist and pioneer in collecting songs, noted that it was probably the happiest of the French-Canadian lumbermen's songs. Both French and English versions of the song can be found in the book, "Canada's Story in Song."
Canada Post Corporation. Canada's Stamps Details, No. 11, 1993, p. 19-20

The Canadian Encyclopaedia gives on the rafts: A snow road eased the hauling of logs and baulks to riverbanks by oxen or horses. With the coming of the thaw, the timber drive began. Men equipped with "jam dogs" (iron hooks), cant hooks or peaveys, and often immersed in chilly water, began the dangerous task of floating the cut-out on streams overflowing with melted snow. When more open water was reached, or where falls and rapids could be bypassed by timber slides, logs and timber were assembled into RAFTS to continue downstream to mills or to river-mouth booms (especially at Québec, Saint John and the mouth of the Miramichi River), from where they were shipped abroad. As steam power replaced water power in sawmills, it increased mill capacity and extended the season of mill operation; however, it did not break the pattern of winter logging. Although railways reduced the industry's dependence on rivers to transport timber to the mills, their initial importance was in carrying lumber from mill to market, and by the end of the century, specialized logging railways still only had a slight impact on eastern Canadian operations .

Canada 1993 43c sg1565, scott1492
The song is given on: http://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=3899
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