The Songs of Wade Hemsworth

Neil V. Rosenberg is a professor of Folklore and Director of the
Folklore and Language Archive at the Memorial University of
Newfoundland.

Wade Hemsworth recorded his “The Blackfly Song” in 1955 for Folkways
Records of New York City. It subsequently became popular with singers of
folk songs in Canada and the United States, finding its way onto records
by a dozen folk acts. Hemsworth, a native of Brantford, studied at the
Ontario College of Art. While serving with the rcaf during World War II
in Newfoundland, he encountered living folksong traditions. His interest
in the genre was further stimulated by an involvement in Burl Ives’s
music, and after the war he began composing songs in the folk style. In
1949, while working as a surveyor in Northern Ontario, he wrote “The
Blackfly Song.” Later, settling in Montreal, he worked as a design
draftsman while carrying on a side career as a performer, songwriter,
and elder guru in the Montreal folk scene. He wrote songs for several
nfb short films and influenced many younger performers, the best-known
of whom are the McGarrigle sisters, who have performed and recorded more
of his songs than anyone else. All his songs, like his most famous,
reflect personal experience and speak to an idea of Canadian life in
which nature, particularly the rugged northern wilderness, plays a key
role.

This elegantly produced volume contains the words (in both the original
English and French) and music to “The Blackfly Song” and 14 other
Hemsworth songs. Printed in a limited edition with fancy paper and
featuring 40 illustrations by Thoreau MacDonald that nicely reflect and
resonate with the images in Hemsworth’s songs, it includes
commentaries by Hemsworth on the songs as well as a preface by him; a
foreword by Kate and Anna McGarrigle; a biographical introduction by
Dane Lanken; a discussion of Hemsworth’s guitar style by Peter Weldon;
and lists of recordings, films, and publications of Hemsworth’s songs.
It is a fitting tribute to a Canadian original.