We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Railways West

from The Song Of Ontario by Matt and Jun

/

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.
    Purchasable with gift card

      name your price

     

  • Buy the Full Digital Album

about

We all have to leave at some point in our lives.

Leave for school. Leave for work. Leave home. Start something new.

Where there is uncertainty, movement from the known into the unknown, there is also opportunity.

This is the story of people and the story of Ontario.

For Jun and I, the decision to take a sabbatical year from our lives as medical students, into a world of unknown, travelling across the province, meant leaving behind a lot of what we had come to call home.

But our path echoed the many people that have left, moved, and settled across Ontario. From the animals and plants, to the First Peoples, to the settler society, we see motion, growth, creativity, and leaving home.

Our province as we know it today was based on these movements – people leaving their homes and seeking out new lives, following the path of nature, the fur trade, the Canadian Pacific Railroad.

In all our travels across Ontario, the Railroad and its’ westward expansion in search of opportunity was a palpable reminder of this intergenerational movement. Of this unavoidable aspect of the human experience. Of leaving.

lyrics

We rose with the setting sun
Like a train that never comes
But always goes

We left with our hands out
To quell the doubt
Of those who’d never find us

Oh what it means to be alive
In this dark night
I think about it way too much
Seek the light

We left our homes behind
To bear us in their mind
Or let us go

We followed railways west
We fronted the night
And sang for a new day

Oh what it means to be alive
In this dark night
I think about it way too much
Seek the light
Be the light

credits

from The Song Of Ontario, released April 13, 2020

license

tags

about

Matt and Jun image

Matt and Jun Hamilton, Ontario

We are 1st year medical students at McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario. From July-November 2019 we are going on a road trip across the province to learn more about the places and people who call Ontario home. We seek to express what we learn, see, feel, and hear in our journey as a musical album, that captures some of the essence of life in Ontario.​
Page Art by Gunhild Hotte. ... more

contact / help

Contact Matt and Jun

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

If you like Matt and Jun, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Seafood Sam joins the show to discuss his newest album, " Standing On Giant Shoulders".
listen now