The Illinois & Michigan Canal: The Last Great Canal Bringing the Canal to Life Through Song Created by Jane Garrison
Intended Grade Level: Middle Elementary	Approximate length: 2 One hour class periods
Goals/Objectives 1. Explain what it was like to live and work on the I&M canal. 2. Design a storyboard that depicts life on the I&M canal.
Procedures 1. View Prairie Tides video 2. Discuss difficulties travelers encountered attempting to make their way from the east coast to the Mississippi River. 3. Play “The Illinois & Michigan Canal song by Arranmore. 4. Ask students to identify the events and places depicted in the song. 5. Have students create a pictorial storyboard that reflects the development of the canal and those who worked on it.
Materials 1. Prairie Tides video 2. Arranmore song 3. Story board handout

“The Illinois & Michigan Canal

Music & Lyrics by Kevin O’Donnell

Performed by Arranmore

On a hill behind the chapel in the parish of St. James

Are weather-worn and tangled graves of mostly Irish

names.

These faded flagstone monuments bear witness to a dream

That a hundred fifty years ago no one could have foreseen.

In a young town of Chicago, on the plains of Illinois,

The I&M Commission brought in desperate men and boys

To have them build a great canal and change the river’s

flow,

And wed the Great Lakes waters with the Gulf of Mexico!

They cam from ports of Galway, from Cork and

Baltimore,

On the promise of more money than they’ve ever known

before.

To carve a new beginning in a land of liberty,

They said good-by and sailed across the sea.

REFRAIN:

Bid farewell to famine, it’s off to a better day,

To work as a navigator for ninety cents a day.

And hope to dig a fortune by the time they reach LaSalle

On the Illinois & Michigan Canal.

Ten thousand Irish navvies

Reached out across the land,

And picked their way through mud and clay

And moved it all by hand.

While the tyrant canal foreman worked poor Paddy

without pay

As he dreamed about his family in a country far away.

For empty-handed promises were all they came to know

With food and tools in short supply, and money running

low.

So many tired, thousands died longing to be free

Where the wild bluestem grasses grew as far as the ey

could see!

And the coming the railway

Made their efforts obsolete,

As it ran along their banks before the digging was

complete.

But the locks were finally open and they tallied up the cost,

With no mention of how many lives were lost.

REFRAIN:

Bid farewell to famine, it’s off to a better day,

To work as a navigator for ninety cents a day.

And hope to dig a fortune by the time they reach LaSalle

On the Illinois & Michigan Canal.

Now gone are the locks and boatyards, the barges and the

scows,

And the clapboard shacks of Corktown where the navvies

used to house.

From Bridgeport to LaSalle and every town along the way,

Only remnants of the great canal can still be seen today.

Neglected through the ages, her water will not flow

And where mule teams pulled the riverboats, now wild

Poplar grown.

Where canaling was a way of life that I might have tried to

Myself.

It’s now buried in the pages of some book upon a shelf.

And in a corner of a graveyard in the Parish of St. James

Lies a noble Irish navvie who helped pioneer these

plains.
Who fled a great oppression just to build himself a home,

Now it’s the only piece of sod he’ll ever own.

REFRAIN:

Bid farewell to famine, it’s off to a better day,

To work as a navigator for ninety cents a day.

And hope to dig a fortune by the time they reach LaSalle

On the Illinois & Michigan Canal.

(repeat)