"Mon pays" ("My Country", or "My Homeland", in English) is a song composed by Gilles Vigneault in 1964.
The song was written for the NFB film La Neige a fondu sur la Manicouagan, directed by Arthur Lamothe. The song, with its lyrics about winds, cold, snow, and ice, of the solitude of wide open spaces and of the ideal of brotherhood, has become a kind of anthem in Quebec, with many people seeing it as expressing the free spirit of the province; Vigneault, however, has denied that this was ever his intention.
Vigneault won the Prix Félix-Leclerc at the 1965 Festival du disque de Montréal for the song. Later that same year, Monique Leyrac performed it at the International Song Festival in Sopot, Poland, taking first prize with it.
In 1976 "Mon Pays" was reworked into the disco song "From New York to L.A." recorded by Patsy Gallant. This song with English lyrics by Gene Williams unrelated to the original French, was an international hit for Gallant - Canada/ #6, the UK/ #6, Ireland/ #5, Australia/ #10, the Netherlands/ #15, Norway/ #7, South Africa/ #5, Sweden/ #17, - and in 1995 reached #5 in Austria via a remake credited to N.Y.L.A. featuring Stephanie McKay.
Famous quotes containing the words mon and/or pays:
“Ah, mon cher for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.”
—Albert Camus (19131960)
“There is a great deal of self-denial and manliness in poor and middle-class houses, in town and country, that has not got into literature, and never will, but that keeps the earth sweet; that saves on superfluities, and spends on essentials; that goes rusty, and educates the boy; that sells the horse, but builds the school; works early and late, takes two looms in the factory, three looms, six looms, but pays off the mortgage on the paternal farm, and then goes back cheerfully to work again.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)