The Ottawa Valley Song Poem by Paul Henry Dallaire

Fort Coulonge is about fifty miles west of Ottawa Ontario the Capital City of Canada and I guess you could say Mac Beattie and his band The Ottawa Valley Melodiers was a country music legend here in the Ottawa valley area and I still is.

Have you ever been where the Coulonge River flows
Timbers a fallin and the whistlin wind blows
Lumberjacks drive the river keepin logs on the go
To make pulp into paper E.B.Eddy must roll

When springtime comes home with a glory for all
A festive of tulips and the Rideau Canal
The call of Quebec is luring me back
To the town of Old Chelsea where grandpa was born

Chorus:
In summer the farmers rise early at dawn
Their hands tell a story of ancestors gone
They'll feed this great nation with tractors and hoes
At the old byward market their produce are sold

Now autumn is a beauty in the Gatineau Hills
Speckled trout fishing by the old sugar mills
Get your quota of partrige in the bush their galore
And the flies don't bite hard when there's a breeze in Arnprior

There's Luskville and Aylmer Buckingham and Wakefied
West down to Pembroke and up north maniwaki
And the road to Masham is a haven to me
And God bless Mack Beattie and the renfrew Valley

Chorus:
In summer the farmers rise early at dawn
Their hands tell a story of ancestors gone
They'll feed this great nation with tractors and hoes
At the old Byward Market their produce are sold

Paul Henry Dallaire
Paul Henry Pub. SOCAN