The Blackfly Song Trivia Quiz

Answer: Little Abitibi with the survey crew

The Unemployment office sent him 'to the Little Abitibi with the survey crew'.

Gotta watch the government employment office folks. They have been know to send people out on miserable jobs. Like planting trees. No problem right? Except, for me it was in Long Lac, Ontario and still snowing, with a foot of rotten ice and snow on the ground on the first of April. Would have thought it was a cruel April fool's joke and went back home if they hadn't bought me only a one way bus ticket. There were no blackflies yet though...

Answer: Black Toby

"Now the man, Black Toby was the captain of the crew".

Most everyone had nicknames at the camps. I don't know how Black Toby got his, perhaps simply he had long a long black beard and his name was Toby! Every lumber camp I stayed at had someone named 'Frenchie' (being French Canadian helped,); 'Mule' might be for some one who was stubborn, but it wasn't a requirement; anyone from Newfoundland was 'Newfie'; someone from the USA might be 'The Yank' or 'New York'. We had a 'Brit' who infuriated Cookie by insisting his eggs be boiled for three minutes and no longer...

Answer: on the survey crew

"For I'm all but goin' crazy on the survey crew".

He probably was going stir crazy. Between the blackflies, swamp, trees, nothing but trees, the same job every day, and the camp monotony (just how many card games can you play over and over and over). It wasn't like he could walk into town to catch a movie.

Answer: Tea

"A-swimmin' in your soup and a-swimmin' in the tea"

The blackflies were probably swimming in everything they could, but in this case they were in Wade's tea.

Tea was a staple at the camps I was at; there would be several jugs on the table full of it at meals. I doubt if there was any beer around, most camps were away back in the bush, accessible by a dubious seasonal road, or by river or air. Milk was usually powdered, as it was hard to milk a moose. Beer would simply weigh to much to bring in, and most camps were 'dry' (though you COULD get a mason jar full of not bad homemade hooch from Cookie at a vastly inflated price...) and Diet Coke wasn't invented yet.

Answer: gettin' pretty low

"And the state of our morale was gettin' pretty low".

Now I never worked on a survey crew, I was in the lumber camps. But it's easy to lose morale when it's been raining/snowing heavy for a week, everything is wet, the tobacco is stale, and the food is bland because supplies can't get in - and you just KNOW Wainwright Willie is cheating at checkers when you go to get a tea...

Answer: Choreman, does various duties around camp

The Bull Cook was a choreman, doing various duties around camp. He might be cutting wood, setting the tables for dinner, feeding the horses, helping out Cookie, First Aid. He (in my time) was usually someone who was the youngest guy in camp, a new man, or a oldtimer who couldn't do a 'regular' job anymore. Though they were kept busy! As far as I know the name may have originated from when the choreman got up, before the rest of the crew and fed and watered the ox teams at the camps in the olden days.

The requirements seem to have gone up a tad, they still have a few ads for them online now and then. You seem to need college degrees nowadays, management skills, and actual cooking abilities. I wonder if Blind River Joe was a real character and from Blind River, the next town to where I live now?

Answer: North Ontario

"I'll never go again to North Ontario"

Northern Ontario has some rugged but beautiful country. If you don't like the weather wait a few minutes, it will probably change. Long winters, short summers. With bugs. Pretty of good fishing though! Try to remember that the strange black dog rooting in your garbage just might be a black bear. We tend to think of people from the south of Ontario, in particular Toronto, as the 'city people' or 'summer folks' who come up to their expensive cottage for a couple of weeks in the summer months, and occasionally try to tell us how it's done down south and how we should be running our lives. (example: Why are the roads not paved? Jeeze, I dunno, we keep sending our tax money to Queen's Park in Toronto...)

Answer: black flies

The blackflies, of course. If you write a song about them, they must be forever stuck in your memory, for some strange reason. Most anyone who has ever had the pleasure of being in a cloud of blackflies wouldn't like them too much. Any bare piece of skin is fair game.

They seem to get in your clothes everywhere and bite. Only thing to get rid of them (besides the advent of fall and winter) is a breeze/wind storm. The stronger the better. We tell the tourists here to be careful at the local picnic areas, as a swarm of them can devour the family dog or a small child in minutes. Oh and the Deer Flies? They are bigger and take chunks out of you...

Answer: yes

It's actually up in northern Ontario. Turn off at Smooth Rock falls on highway 11, and you will hit Fraserdale. The Little Abitibi river was diverted into the New Post River upstream from the Otter Rapids Dam - try not to get lost... The river empties into James Bay, at Moose Factory (if you have a map of Ontario, Canada, look at Hudson's Bay, south to James Bay, and the southern point of it will give you a idea of where it is).

Answer: Labrador

Labrador! NOT Ontario! (now part of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador) A cherished memory smashed all to pieces! Mr Helmsworth disclosed this in a 1996 interview. I don't think he ever hid this fact, probably no one had asked him before. So it's a compilation song of a few camps he worked at. Oh well, they've got blackflies in Labrador too.


Part of the interview goes:

Question: "Were you writing songs during that period, or did you write songs later about that time? I'm thinking particularly of 'The Blackfly Song', of course."

Helmsworth: "'The Blackfly Song' I wrote after I came back from the
woods in Labrador. I was in Labrador, not North Ontario. Of course, there was no difference."

Question: "So there's an element of poetic license there, shifting provinces."

Helmsworth: "Oh, well. Poetic license, I suppose. But I was in North Ontario, too. What's the difference?"

Question: "Was Black Toby in Ontario or Labrador?"

Helmsworth: "Ontario. Actually, I wasn't with Black Toby, but there was another expedition. And I was writing a song; I wasn't writing literature."

For a look at the whole interview:

http://cfmb.icaap.org/content/30.1/BV30-1art6.pdf


'The Black Fly Song'. Words and music by Wade Hemsworth. Like most visitors to the northland in summer, the survey party would have suffered from the attentions of 'the little black flies.' The song is copyright and was published by Southern Music/Southern Publishers (Canada) in 1957.

Some of you may think this is a fairly recent song, but you would be mistaken. Wade Helmsworth was born in 1916 and served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. He worked as a surveyor in Northern Ontario, Quebec and Labrador after the war, where he got most of his ideas for his songs. 'Blackfly' was written around 1949. In 1956 he recorded his first album ,'Folk Songs of the Canadian North Woods' which included 'Blackfly'. In 1995 he recorded a CD called 'The Songs Of Wade Helmsworth' Mr. Helmsworth passed away in Montreal in 2002, at the age of 85.


If you would like to see the wonderful National Film Board's animated version of the song use this link:

http://www3.nfb.ca/animation/objanim/en/films/film.php?sort=title&id=25968

You may notice perhaps that the background vocals are by Kate and Anna McGarrigle. How truly Canadian! The NFB short was nominated for an Academy Award in 1992.

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