This Land is Made in Canada for You and Me

This Land is Made (in Canada) for You and Me

by Dorothy Lander

Every act of art is an act of resistance.

• Tom Morello, The Power of the People Festival, Maryland, Oct. 3, 2026

Oh, we’re radical environmentalists!

• Raging Grannies, Seniors’ Climate Witness, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Sept. 19, 2026

This land is your land, this land is my land

From Bona Vista to Vancouver Island

From the Arctic Circle to the Great Lake waters

This land was made for you and me.

Aux gens qui donnent

Sur le Pacifique

A leurs confrères

De l’Atlantique

Aux autochtones

Aux immigrants, ce pays

Nous appartient à toi et moi.

• Canadian lyrics by The Travellers, 1955

Historian and essayist Heather Cox Richardson reported on the Power to the People Festival held in Columbia, Maryland on Oct. 3, 2026. The Festival was curated by the Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello. The Festival brought together a line-up of legendary and intergenerational musicians including Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, and Stephen Stills. The concert took place on the anniversary of the day that Woody Guthrie died in 1967, eighty-six years after he wrote “This Land is Your Land.”

Woody Guthrie’s anthem echoes in the Canadian lyrics adapted by the Travellers in 1955— From Bona Vista to Vancouver Island, From the Arctic Circle to the Great Lake waters, This land was made for you and me—and echoes once more in the Seniors’ Cross-Canada Climate Caravan that reached the opening of the fall Parliament in Ottawa on Sept. 21, 2026.  Many seniors  refused to leave their positions outside the House of Commons without presenting MPs their pictures of children and the beauty of our land to make their plea to our elected representatives to think ahead to seven generations and move away from corporate interests and fossil fuels. Eleven of them were arrested, charged with trespassing and handcuffed as police escorted them off Parliament Hill. This act of peaceful civil disobedience—no-name Canadian style— is in stark contrast to the Festival in Maryland. Our Canadian musicians and artists and banner-creators do not have “legendary” name cachet. Yet, their passion and moral courage set in motion grassroots solidarity and a flurry of transgenerational artmaking in communities small and large across this vast land.   Every act of art making as an act of resistance, as Tom Morello says, served the Seniors’ Climate Caravan, as they flooded the media with their protests to the federal government caving to the fossil fuel industry, and totally ignoring the rights of Indigenous Peoples and century-old treaty obligations.

In the United States, the performers sang Woody Guthrie’s famous anthem, “This Land is Your Land” that he wrote in response to the Great Depression and as narrative witness to the essential contributions of people working the land.  They also sang Canadian Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” as a way of reclaiming their rights to free expression, including the right to protest injustice.  The verse left out of the Guthrie anthem that Tom Morello sang, conjures up images of climate desecration and injustice in the lands and oceans known as Canada, as species loss, contaminated water supplies, wildfires, flash floods and extreme weather descend on everyday life.  

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of the steeple

By the relief office, I saw my people

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking

Is this land made for you and me?

The acts of art and the acts of resistance in the one small community of Antigonish where I live, ask the same question of government at all levels — municipal, provincial, federal. Is this land made for you and me?  The following images tell the story of art as resistance by peoples of all ages, gender, race, and (dis)ability, and origins. Note that “autochtones aux immigrants”—Indigenous to immigrants—belong to the land in the French version of this anthem.  (Images courtesy of Sue Adams, Fran Wittgens, Dorothy Lander)