Move west, move west, the article read

As the workforce of the East was quite quickly bled
They went west, to the land of milk and honey
They went west for the work, they went west for the month.

It was tough to leave families and friends behind

But work in the East was so hard to find
After many months, some returned with much pay
While others were slowly enticed to stay.

Some sent for their families, to start a new life
More often than not, it created much strife
For the pull of the East is so strong and so sure
To be separated from it is hard to endure.

Clubs formed for Downhomers, so help ease the pain
Of watching wind blow through the tall, yellow grain
Reminiscent of Atlantic waves caressing the shore
Desire to return home tugs at them once more.

From either the Maritimes or Newfoundland
This one aim in life is ever so grand
Returning to your home, your family, your friends
To be home, on the Eastcoast, when finally life ends.

Simon Gillis
20 Sept. 2006

Precious Water:
suspended droplet in a rainbow world

You radiate
Life, beauty, brokenness and wholeness.

Do you dance
with glee for the life you give
in your journey to the sea?

Do you long
for the purifying transformation
of droplet into mist and vapour?

Do you feel
the dreadful pain of pollution:
water-cancer in all its horror?

Do you dread
The toxic trail of human greed
- violating your brokenness
- shattering your wholeness
- erasing your beauty
- destroying your life?

Do you know
I too am a small and broken
part of the whole?
In my brokenness I can do little.
In my communion with others
who care
about your life, your beauty, your health

I can
- receive your life with gratitude
- appreciate your beauty with love
- honour your brokenness
- restore your wholeness
- make careful choices for your health.

I can, I must, I will!

Pricilla Solomon, CSJ
Sister of St. Joseph
Faith and Justice Coordinator for the Sisters of St. Joseph on Sault St. Marie, Ontario, Canada.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Music is indivisible, the dualism of feeling and thinking must be resolved to a state of unity in which one thinks with the heart and feels with the brain.

Music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings without attaching them to events or objects in the world.

What gives music its universal appeal is the very fact that it is at the same time the most subtle and intangible and the most primitive of all arts …

it can make a dog howl and silence a crying baby.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music: they should be taught to love it instead.

Too many people are trying to justify the precision with which organized musical sound is produced rather than the energy with which it is manipulated.

By concentrating on precision, one arrives at technique: but by concentrating on technique one does not arrive at precision.

Melody is the golden thread running through the maze of tones by which the ear is guided and the heart reached.

People compose for many reasons: to become immortal; because the piano happens to be open; because they want to become a millionaire;

because of the praise of friends; because they have looked into a pair of beautiful eyes; for no reason whatsoever.

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one has no time to write down.

The public today must pay its debt to the great composers of the past by supporting the living creators of the present.

Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast, soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.

Good musicians execute their music but bad ones murder it.

Of all the arts music is practiced most.

There should be music in every house – except the one next door.

The more you love music, the more music you love.

Hug a musician, they never get to dance.

While pompous priests from their pulpits screeched

of heaven and love and truth,

We lived in hell and learned too well

the curse of a squandered youth.

They paid scant heed to our grievous need

Though pledged to uphold His Word.

They shared the best and they cared the less

For the Sheep of the common herd.

These hypocrites who wracked their wits

and worry and scheme and plan,

for a Christian way to lower the pay

of the honest working man.

Union Leader Jim (JB) McLaughlin wrote in a similar vein:

We all drink Company Water,

We all burn Company light,

The Company preacher teaches

What the Company says is right.

Rev. Wade Reppert,
Secretary of the Sydney Presbytery,
the United Church of Canada for these poems.

I’ve worked on the Steel Plant all my life,

Since the time I was just a lad.

The hours were long but my back was strong,

And I gave them all I had.

I’ve shovelled their snow at ten below,

From tracks piled high and white,

While the city dozed, I worked and froze,

There many a winter nite.

I’ve shoveled their coal to a boiler old,

And just as hot as the grates of hell,

Just useless trash most stone and ash,

That coal mines couldn’t sell.

I’ve loaded their rails and packed their nails,

And bundled their rods and bars,

And I’ve gasped and choked in the poison smoke,

And the fumes of their hot coke cars.

I’ve swung a sledge on the crumbling edge,

Of a furnace wide and tall,

With my vision blurred with the dust it stirred,

And a man dared not fall.

I’ve shoveled their ore from the stinking floor,

Of ships from beyond the seas,

And my stomach turned when the gas was churned,

From shoveling manganese.

I’ve burned my feet in the hellish heat,

Of a slag pit’s firey glow,

And I’ve froze my ears at the scrapyard shears,

On a nite that was ten below.

I’ve swabbed their sewers where a man endures,

A stench that’s beyond compare,

In an air so foul that the rodents who prowl,

Have all abandoned there.

Now my nerves are frayed and my hair has greyed,

And slowed are my work worn hands,

And my back is bent from the youth I’ve spent,

At Sydney Steel’s demand.

For a man that toils in a steel mill spoils,

His chance for a ripe old age,

For the hazard to health are early felt,

And he’s old at middle age.

1

Now these are but a few of the jobs I do,

That briefly I’ve made mention,

And I feel in my heart that I’ve played my part,

And I’ve earned an early pension.

John J. McInnis
Sydney, N.S.

My grandfather had less leisure time than my father,

And my father had less leisure time than me.

This gives me more time to enjoy myself.

If only I had a job, I might enjoy life

As much as my grandfather.

Thick musty air, is the air conditioner on?

An awkward posture begs attention, the signal,

a different eagerness in their eyes,

To move on.

Hurried words.

Well meant platitudes once mutually voiced,

betrayed, replaced by discomfort and fidgeting.

The sensory comfort of an imagined security

just moments before, vanishes.

A dull blank void weighs in my stomach.

“No hard feelings then eh”

The phone rings as if scripted to signal it is over,

dismissing eyes have nothing more to say,

time to leave.

On the street busy people trying to look springlike

in lighter clothes pretend not to notice

the cold breeze as they appear in slow motion.

James Walter Cameron Douglas
16 Green Street, Booval
QLD, Australia , 4304