A song written by two Canadians – including one from Surrey – is celebrating the longstanding bond between Canada and the United States.
As Canadians prepare for Canada Day on July 1, and Americans get ready for Independence Day on July 4, a new song by South Surrey’s Marc Burchell and Halifax singer-songwriter Terry Kelly highlights the friendship between the two countries.
Kelly is an Order of Canada recipient, award-winning singer-songwriter, motivational speaker and accomplished athlete. Burchell is a singer-songwriter, entrepreneur and co-founder of the Canadian Walk for Veterans. He also serves as a community ambassador for the White Rock/South Surrey Coldest Night of the Year campaign and has received both the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal and the King Charles III Coronation Medal.
Their song, Hands Across the Border, is a musical reminder to both countries that theirs a “time-tested” friendship that has taken hold over generations.
Burchell told Peace Arch News in an interview that he and Kelly were inspired to write the song after seeing increasing tension surrounding the relationship between the two countries, while also witnessing local gatherings at the Peace Arch monument encouraging unity and friendship.
“We were both concerned about a lot of the rhetoric that was being thrown around regarding the relationship between Canada and the United States because, as the song says, we’ve always been friends and allies,” said Burchell.
Burchell and Kelly co-wrote the song remotely after years of collaborating together.
“We see it as kind of symbolic, because as much as it’s hands across the border, it’s also hands across the country,” Burchell said.
The song celebrates love, freedom, respect and pride while paying homage to the history of friendship and cooperation between Canada and the United States, a news release notes.
Burchell shared that local initiatives in South Surrey – such as the annual Rotary “Hands Across the Border” event held at the Peace Arch and the Peace, Love and a Handshake gatherings – inspired the pair to write the song. The final lyrics in the song are, “Peace, love and a handshake.”
Performed by Kelly, Hands Across the Border aims to remind people living on both sides of the world’s longest international border that Canadians and Americans have shared generations of friendship, alliance, trade and business partnerships.
“Today’s troubled waters are just a moment in time,” Kelly said in the release. “Canadians and Americans have shared more than 150 years of friendship, through thick and thin, and those bonds and shared experiences will endure.”
One lyric carries particular meaning for Burchell.
“I think the one lyric that strikes an emotion for me would be, ‘We laughed and cried together. We fought and died together,’” he said.
Burchell said the lyric reminds him of his father, a Second World War veteran, and the history of Canadians and Americans serving alongside one another during conflicts including the Second World War and Afghanistan.
“We’ve always been friends, we’ve always been allies, we’re fighting for democracy and freedom and our right to make decisions,” explained Burchell.
Burchell, who lives near the Peace Arch border crossing, says “the song is an anthem and reminder of the peace, harmony, respect and affection that Americans and Canadians have always felt toward one another.”
“There are few countries in the world with a shared border quite like ours,” said Burchell. “We are at home in each other’s country, and that relationship remains founded on trust and respect. I cannot think of two other countries who share the bonds and border that connect Canada and the United States of America.”
He hopes listeners remember the value of those relationships.
“We have the freedom to make choices, and our choice should be to remember and to place great value in the friends that we have developed over the many years since both countries were created and to not let friction of any sort interfere with that in the long run,” he said.
Listen to Hands Across the Border at www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGCqjLnOgbs.