One of Newfoundland and Labrador’s most beloved songs, “Let Me Fish Off Cape St. Mary’s,” written by native son Otto Kelland in 1947, will be inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame (CSHF) at the 2025 East Coast Music Awards, at the Mary Brown’s Centre in St. John’s, on Thursday, May 8, 2025. Performing the ballad as part of the induction will be renowned, multi-award-winning Newfoundland and Labrador folk group, The Irish Descendants, who are celebrating 35 years as a band in 2025.
“‘Let Me Fish Off Cape St Mary’s’ is the quintessential NL folk song! It embodies all the elements of this place that we cherish and hold dear,” says Con O’Brien, lead singer of The Irish Descendants. “NL is harsh and often unkind, but this song reminds us of, and illustrates to the world, why we cling on to the land and ocean we inhabit. Of all the songs we’ve sung, there’s none more powerful than what we affectionately call ‘The Cape.’ And I’m proud to say that Otto Kelland always said that The Irish Descendants version of his song was his favourite.” The band’s version was a duet with Con O’Brien and John McDermott, and was included on the 1997 certified Gold, JUNO Award-winning recording, Gypsies and Lovers.
“A masterwork of Canadian songwriting, ‘Let Me Fish Off Cape St. Mary’s’ so vividly captures the identity, pride, and resilience of Newfoundland and Labrador’s outport communities,” says Nick Fedor, Executive Director of the CSHF. “Otto Kelland’s deeply poetic lyrics and haunting melody have become part of our national musical fabric, passed down through generations, and resonating far beyond the Atlantic coast. We’re honoured to celebrate this timeless ballad and Kelland’s enduring legacy at the East Coast Music Awards in St. John’s, the place that inspired it all.”
Songwriter, author and model shipbuilder Otto Kelland, born in 1904 in the small coastal community of Lamaline, Newfoundland and Labrador, was a member of the Order of Newfoundland and the Order of Canada. He was a police officer and became supervisor of a penitentiary. He died in 2004. “It’s heartwarming that this song and his works still mean something to people today,” says Kelland’s daughter Jocelyn Kelland, who will be present for the Induction Ceremony.
Kelland was inspired to write the lyrics after meeting a very young fisher on the waterfront. Desperately homesick, the man said he’d been working off the coast of Boston, but would rather fish in his own dory, off St. Mary’s, and eat only one meal a day, rather than have three meals a day in a big city. So, Kelland wrote his slow, mournful anthem from the point of view of the outport fisher, a lifestyle with which Kelland, a Newfoundlander by birth, was very familiar. The poignant lyrics reflect the fisherman’s working conditions, where death on the sea is a real danger, while painting Cape St. Mary’s as he would have seen it from his dory: fog, seabirds, and the rugged cliffs of the Southwest tip of the Avalon Peninsula.
The much-loved lyrics of “Let Me Fish Off Cape St. Mary’s” paint their picture using terms that Newfoundlanders know well, such as Western boat (schooner-type fishing vessel); combers (long, curling waves); caplin (a type of smelt); dory (small fishing boat); a Cape Ann (fisherman’s oilskin headgear); and hag-downs (a seabird).
Kelland’s songwriting skill is further evident in his choice of a gapped major hexatonic scale (a scale having only six pitches) for his tune, rendering it distinctively Celtic in style. The song is also polished structurally – note the symmetry of six verses of six lines each (there is no chorus). There’s great attention to detail where the second line of a verse repeats for emphasis at the end of that verse; and in the repeated notes in the final phrase, which toll slowly and sadly like a death knell.
It’s no wonder Kelland’s composition has been adopted across Canada. Now nationally revered, “Let Me Fish Off Cape St. Mary’s” has thrived. At first, it probably spread locally at kitchen parties and other gatherings in towns and outports where, in the 1940s, electricity, radio, and recordings weren’t often available. As improvements such as electrification and the establishment of CBC Radio arrived in the province’s rural areas, more opportunities arose for residents to listen to and learn “Let Me Fish.”
The folk music revival brought great interest in the songs of the Atlantic provinces, with researchers “collecting” them in remote villages, such as Cape St. Mary’s. Kenneth Peacock, one such researcher, heard “Let Me Fish Off Cape St. Mary’s” from local singers during his 1951 field work in Newfoundland. He turned his research over to St. John’s businessperson Gerald Doyle, who published the song in the 1955 edition of his enormously popular book Old-Time Songs and Poetry of Newfoundland.
“Let Me Fish” was further spread by two more songbooks which introduced it to audiences outside Newfoundland: firstly, the 1958 songbook Favourite Songs of Newfoundland, by the influential Canadian folksinger Alan Mills, featuring piano arrangements by Peacock, and secondly, the 1964 volume The Folksinger’s Passport to Canada. Interest in “Let Me Fish” spread rapidly after Mills’s songbook was distributed to schools across the country, but it wasn’t until 1962 that the first known recording of the song was finally made on the LP Songs of the Anchor Watch, a collection of Kelland’s compositions sung by Leonard Meehan.
As the song spread, musicians far and wide recorded their own versions. Among many Newfoundlanders who recorded it are Dick Nolan (a 1963 country version); the St. John’s CJON glee club; actor Gordon Pinsent (1968); and folk musician Harry Hibbs (1971). Recent covers include those by singer-songwriter Kim Stockwood; jazz singer Heather Bambrick; and JUNO nominees Rum Ragged.
Among the earliest “come from away” musicians to record “Let Me Fish” were folk singer Omar Blondahl in 1971, and the RCMP Band. The popular Irish Canadian folk band Ryan’s Fancy performed it on their 1977 TV show, and later sang it for Queen Elizabeth II; Denis Ryan also recorded a heart-wrenching version with traditional Irish-style instrumentation. Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee Stan Rogers recorded “Let Me Fish” in 1983, and JUNO-winning cellist Ofra Harnoy has recorded an instrumental version. Interestingly, “Let Me Fish Off Cape St. Mary’s” became a protest song when the province’s economy was overturned by the 1992 cod-fishing moratorium.