Hello, stranger, how do you do?
There’s something I’d like to say to you.
You seem surprised I recognize;
I’m no company stool but I just surmise
You’re from the place I’m longing to be.
Your smiling face seems to say to me
You’re from the island, your land and my land,
So tell me can it be-

Chorus
Are you from Bevan? I said from Bevan
Where those fields of stumps they beckon to me.
I’m glad to see you!
Tell me how be you,
And those friends I’m longing to see?
If you’re from Union Bay or Courtenay or Cumberland
Any place below that Bevan second dam-
Are you from Bevan? I said from Bevan,
‘Cause I’m from Bevan too!

Now it was way back in 19 and 12
Our gas committee was put on the shelf.
First we walked out, then we were locked out-
Then by a foul we were all but knocked out.
Our union miners faced guns and jail,
Hundreds of us were held without bail,
But by August 1914 our labor they were courting,
But they blacklisted me-

Chorus

Phil Thomas: In 1912 a militia was called out to put down a strike in the coal mines on Vancouver Island. The struggle was mainly over safety conditions, and the company’s failure in many cases to follow the gas committee’s decisions. This is the whole thing set up by the government, because there’d been so many people killed in the mines on Vancouver Island. The song says “First we walked out, and then we were locked out, and then by a foul we were all but knocked out” and the foul was the militia was brought in. They faced soldiers, and that was not the first time, but fortunately—at least in this part of the world—that seems to have gone we hope. Anyways, here’s the song: A lot of the men were blacklisted, never worked again on Vancouver Island, and so here is “Are You From Bevan”.