“O’er the mountaintops we stand, all the world at our command
We have opened up the soil with our teardrops and our toil.”
The CBC commissioned Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot, of Orillia, to write the iconic Canadian Railroad Trilogy in celebration of Canada’s Centennial.
He performed it for the first time on New Year’s Day, 1967, singing and playing his guitar, accompanied by a full orchestra, and with video of the building of the railway playing behind him.
The song celebrates the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald had enticed British Columbia to join Confederation with the promise of a rail link from Atlantic to Pacific by 1881, but the last spike was not driven until November, 1885, in Craigellachie, B.C.
