Stonecutter

Intro: If you're down by Queen and Britain streets You'll find Stonecutter's Lane The house that my Grandfather built Where I was born and raised My Granddad was a mason And my father in his time When my time came I signed as an apprentice lad INTERLUDE: The early Nineteen Hundreds Were a rich, fat afternoon We were cutting stone like demons No work was done too soon We were hired out on seven jobs And so to take the slack We put out advertisements for apprentice lads INTERLUDE: Bridge: You'd never find a better crew They knew what work was Cornices and lintels They laid stone like they were gods To hear the hammers ring out You'd think it was a song In August, Nineteen Fourteen In the sultry summer heat They took a vote in Ottawa The drums began to beat Honour, glory, us or them The story doesn't change To a man they all enlisted, my apprentice lads INTERLUDE: I didn't say that I agreed 'Cause I knew what war was It was worker killing worker For some politician's cause And off to battle they all marched They gassed them at Cambrai The dogs of war had done for my apprentice lads INTERLUDE: Bridge: In Nineteen Sixteen fire broke out Parliament was razed The call went out for masons To rebuild and to re-lay It was the contract of a lifetime The house upon the hill So they came out from Vancouver They came down from Montreal Master masons everyone They were answering their call There was no man under thirty No man whose work I didn't know The fields of France had swallowed the apprentice lads INTERLUDE: It's Nineteen Twenty-One now I'm standing at the peak About to cap the Peace Tower off There's no one here can speak The mortar for that stone we mixed With clay from Flanders' Fields Laid it in it's place for those apprentice lads Yeah, we laid it in it's place for those apprentice lads OUTRO: