I’ve been putting a fair bit of effort in to sur­round­ing myself with French lan­guage media and con­ver­sa­tion as I begin the learn­ing process.  While I’m still quite hope­less­ly lost with con­ver­sa­tion­al French, the sounds are becom­ing more famil­iar and some vocab­u­lary is start­ing to stick…  Bateau, ciseau..   :)

Hav­ing popped down to the US to see some fam­i­ly over the Christ­mas break has some­what short-cir­cuit­ed this habit though, so now that the fes­tiv­i­ties are com­plete, I’ve repaired to a cafe to soak my ears in my French only Spo­ti­fy playlist.  In research­ing some new songs and artists to grow the list today, I came across this Wikipedia entry about Wade Hemsworth, the com­pos­er of an old Cana­di­an Favourite, The Log Driver’s Waltz, and I was pleased to learn that there’s even a French ver­sion, trans­lat­ed by Philippe Tatartch­eff that’s just as beau­ti­ful as the Eng­lish one that you may well know, and will most cer­tain­ly love!

And as youtube does so well, it was fol­lowed up short­ly by this beau­ty from Félix Leclerc:

For those of you who haven’t yet had the plea­sure of hear­ing the oth­er ver­sion of The Log Driver’s Waltz:

And as an added bonus, we’ll fin­ish off with anoth­er Wade Hemsworth tune about yet anoth­er very Cana­di­an tra­di­tion..  The Black Fly…

I hope you’ve had a won­der­ful hol­i­day sea­son filled with good food, and your favourite peo­ple. You, my favourite peo­ple, scat­tered about this beau­ti­ful globe were here with me in spir­it and in my thoughts.  Be well friends!   –J