Ode to Elsetkook

© Tony Reddin

 

Paddles flashing in the sun, gliding up along the banks,

With the forest cool and quiet reaching inland on each side,

The Mi'kmaq people came this way to busy summer camps

For game and fish aplenty Elsetkook did provide...

 

Chorus

 

And you've seen them come and go through the ages

Come and go with the ebb and flow of tide

From the Bay up to the Head, all along your watershed

Fair Hillsborough, the river of our lives.

 

Puis de France les immigrants arrivent, des fermiers extraordinaires

Pour habiter en Acadie avec une vision de paix

A Port La Joye ils construisent protection mais la guerre les suit

Ceux qui ne se cachent pas son banis de leur foyer.

 

(Instrumental- the Elsetkook Reel)

 

Then so to clear the fertile land more immigrants arrive

The Celtic Cross at Scotchfort bears a witness to their hands

And when the tenants got their titles clear well then came prosperous times

With villages of merchants making trade of every kind-

 

Webster's Corner, Little York, St. Andrews, Bedford, Tracadie Cross, Mount Stewart,

Marshfield, Mermaid, Pisquid, Southport, Suffolk, Fort Augustus,

Johnston's River, Cherry Hill, Glenroy, Glenfinnan, Ten Mile House, Dunstaffnage,

Frenchfort, Scotchfort, Head of Hillsborough and Bunbury...

 

Chorus

 

So generations have worked and played along your banks and on your waters

Building bridges, moving churches, fencing pastures in a row

Now so many cross your span each day, not realizing how you've changed

But you take it all in season, may you never...Ohhh please don't overflow

 

Chorus