The Longest Road

I'm standing at a window
 I'm pressed against the past
 I'm looking on in black and white
 Through the eyes of photographs
 And I'm falling into faces
 Cultivated smiles
 Two dimensional
 Je me souviens Canada
 Out of Gastown in the morning
 On a train in '69
 Into the arc-weld of the rising sun
 We left the coast behind
 And the wheels rolled in a rhythm
 And I heard in them for the first time
 The endless song of traveling out of Canada
 Oh Canada
 The longest road I've known
 Paved with the kind of broken hearts
 That lead to broken homes
 Looking backwards I remember
 The cracks in all the paving stones
 And the distances I've traveled out of Canada
 Through the dog-days of the prairies
 The boundless sky above our heads
 My stepfather looked for Mounties
 In the streets of Winnipeg
 And he told them that my mother's love
 Had stole his heart away
 And we all stood there
 Posed for Polaroids of Canada
 Oh Canada
 The longest road I've known
 Paved with the kind of broken hearts
 That lead to broken homes
 Looking backwards I remember
 The cracks in all the paving stones
 And the distances I've traveled out of Canada
 I awoke wrapped in my mother's arms
 On the docks of Montreal
 The ships lit like Christmas
 And the moon a swollen ball
 When a sailor spoke of England
 I'd never felt so small
 I waited until the ocean
 Turned from emerald to grey
 The wind threshed the water
 And washed our wake away
 And the seagulls blew like words
 Back to the mouth of the St. Lawrence
 As we sailed out
 On The Empress of Canada
 Oh Canada
 The longest road I've known
 Paved with the kind of broken hearts
 That lead to broken homes
 Looking backwards I remember
 The cracks in all the paving stones
 And the distances I've traveled out of Canada
 The first country of my youth
 My heart was ever drawn to you
 Like a tongue to a broken tooth
 In a world where everyone was always leaving
 I was trying to keep my fingertips
 On Canada