Wade Hemsworth was a Canadian folk singer and songwriter who was born as Albert Wade Hemsworth in Brantford, Ontario, in 1916. He achieved early professional recognition in 1955 with the release of the album Folk Songs of the Canadian North Woods and is famous for composing enduring Canadian folk classics including “The Black Fly Song” and “The Log Driver's Waltz”. Hemsworth studied at the Ontario College of Art and served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. After the war, he worked as a surveyor in Northern Ontario, Quebec, and Labrador, which inspired his original compositions. His discography includes the studio recording The Songs of Wade Hemsworth (1995), and he also provided the narration for the documentary Log Drive (1957). For his contributions to music, he was posthumously inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2003. Hemsworth died in 2002.
