Maple Leaf

Maple leaf (emblem). The maple leaf at first was considered an emblem of French Canada, and in 1834 the St-Jean-Baptiste Association adopted it formally. The cover design of Joseph Maffré'sOriginal Canadian Quadrilles (J.W. Herbert 1847) is the first known sheet music publication to use the maple leaf (and the beaver as well). John McCaul's literary annual The Maple-Leaf, which first appeared in 1847, and two works by James P. Clarke - his setting of 'The Emblem of Canada' to words taken from McCaul's annual (Nordheimer ca 1850) and his Lays of the Maple Leaf (Nordheimer 1853) - indicate that the emblem had become accepted in Upper Canada as well. More than any other music, however, Alexander Muir's'The Maple Leaf For Ever' (1867) popularized the emblem. Other 19th-century examples of 'maple leaf music' are Harold F. Palmer's The Maple Leaf Polka Mazurka (J.W. Herbert 185?), Roch Lyonnais ' polka Feuilles d'érables, and H.H. Godfrey's 'The Land of the Maple' (Mason & Risch 1897). J.D. Kerrison's 'The Flag That Bears the Maple Leaf' (Suckling & Sons 1889) anticipates Canada's official adoption of the maple leaf flag by 76 years. Another popular song was William Westbrook's 'A Handful of Maple Leaves' (H.H. Sparks 1901). Numerous songs of later years - eg, R. Goublier's 'Les Érables' (1909) and Gustave Goublier's 'La Voix des érables' - refer to the leaf in title or text, and even more frequently the leaf is part of the cover design. The fiddler Ward Allen of 'Maple Leaf Hoedown' fame was the composer of Maple Leaf Two-Step and the widely played Maple Sugar. Orchestral scores include L.-P. Laurendeau's march Land of the Maple (Carl Fischer 1907), J.-J. Gagnier'sLe Vent dans l'érable effeuillé (1927), Hector Gratton'sSous les érables (1940), and Charles O'Neill's The Land of the Maple and Beaver. The famous Maple Leaf Rag (1899) by the US composer Scott Joplin has only a tenuous connection with the Canadian emblem (see Ragtime).