(Click for larger version here)

I found the above at a second-hand store and bought it for a dollar. It's falling apart and even missing portions, but that doesn't detract from its awesomeness for me. What you're looking at is a 1915 sheet music edition of "I Love You, Canada," written by Morris Manley and Kenneth McInnis and "sung with great success" by Miss Mildred Manley, "Canada's Greatest Child Vocalist." This song came on the coattails of what was probably the Manley father-daughter team's most popular work, "Good Luck to the Boys of the Allies," although both songs were additionally recorded by other singers such as Herbert Stuart.

Given the specificity of place, "I Love You, Canada" was obviously limited in its ability to be a cross-over success, whereas "Good Luck..." (which references "Johnny Canuck" along with the Union Jack and snippets of "God Save the Queen") was hit across the Commonwealth.

Musically, there's really nothing out of the ordinary in this song or others by Manley; they all follow the pop song conventions of the day. Instead, what I find interesting here is, first, that Canada had a child star so early in its music history and that, like so many child stars later in the 20th century, her singing career doesn't appear to have extended into adulthood. Despite her portrait gracing the cover of a number of wartime sheet music singles (ex 1, 2) I could find (in under an hour, sitting at my computer) only one instance of any later work by Mildred, a 1924 record of "Mamma Goes Where Papa Goes."

The second fascinating thing here is the map.  Regional boundaries and additions to the Confederation were a work-in-progress at this time, but it's curious how they're reflected in some depth in this map. Why bother? Perhaps because it's a patriotic song and an ode to homeland that the editors felt a need for a certain level of detail, although not too detailed since the Maritime provinces are not labelled. Or maybe that's just an early example of Toronto-centrism?! (Both Manley and the publisher were based in Toronto at this time, but the omission is more likely due to a lack of room for the text to fit in neatly.)

In any case, nobody I've shown this cover to yet knew what the markers of "Patricia" (in the Northwest part of Ontario) or "Ungava" (Northern Quebec) were all about.  Check out those Wikipedia links for the full story, but the short of it is that they were former districts that had been dissolved through land transfers and administrative re-allocations in 1912.  So, even though the districts had been rendered functionally obsolete by the time "I Love You, Canada" was printed in 1915, the cover map demonstrates that the terms were still in common use.

Download a pdf score of "I Love You, Canada" here.