I wrote this song for a choir I used to direct – the Dartmouth Men’s Choir.  The choir was just a group of men that liked to sing.  There was no audition.  The individual members could each carry a tune in a bucket, although some of the buckets were a little leaky.

 This song came about after a conversation about life, and why some people were “haves” and some people were “have-nots.”  There was a lot of back and forth.  It was at a get together one weekend at a friend’s house and so the comments were pretty free-ranging.  It left me wondering. 

I’ve spent most of my life in the Maritimes; a place where we are relatively free from civil strife and wars. I feel really lucky to live here.  For the most part, people are employed, make money and can find enough food to live on and put a roof over their heads. There’s support for people that need it from both our government’s social services programs and from private programs, food banks, and other organizations. We have water in abundance.  We as a society could always do better taking care of our most disadvantaged folks, and our system is far from perfect, but generally speaking this is a good place to be.

 The weather, except for the odd year, is moderate.  We have an occasional hurricane and blizzard every now and then, but I don’t usually worry about not being able to get home when I leave for work in the morning.  We have some of the most beautiful shorelines in the world. People are generally friendly and it’s not unusual to see someone stop their car to let another car into traffic or a pedestrian cross the street. 

If you compare us to the world, even the poorest of us in the Maritimes is rich compared to about 95% of the rest of the world.  At least, that is, when we’re talking about material things.

“Silver and Gold” doesn’t really talk about material things. It talks about the other things.  One day, we’re all going to be equal, and it won’t matter what we had during our life (although how we used what we were given may come into play).  Have a listen and see if you can figure out what’s really important in life.