Ah for ^Djust one ^Atime I would ^Gtake the Northwest ^BmPassage To ^Gfind the hand of ^DFranklin reaching ^Emfor the Beaufort ^GSea Tracing ^Done warm ^Aline through a ^Gland so wide and ^Bmsavage And ^Gmake a Northwest ^DPassage ^Ato the ^Dsea

Westward from the Davis Strait, 'tis there was said to lie The sea route to the orient for which so many died Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered broken bones And a long forgotten lonely cairn of stones Three centuries thereafter I take passage over land In the footsteps of brave Kelso where his "sea of flowers" began Watching cities rise before me then behind me sink again This tardiest explorer driving hard across the plains And through the night behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west I think upon Mackenzie, David Thompson, and the rest Who cracked the mountain ramparts and did show a path for me To race the roaring Fraser to the sea How then am I so different from the first men through this way Like them, I left a settled life, I threw it all away To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men To find there but the road back home again

Stan Rogers - Northwest passage