Lakeside Park (song)

"Lakeside Park"
Single by Rush
from the album Caress of Steel
B-side	Bastille Day (promo only)
Released	1975
Genre	Rock
Length	4:08
Label	Mercury
Writer(s)	Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson Lyrics by Neil Peart
Producer(s)	Rush, Terry Brown

Lakeside Park is a single from Rush's third album Caress of Steel. The music was written by Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson and the lyrics were written by Neil Peart. The song details Peart's memories of many summers spent at the park.

The "Lakeside Park" mentioned in the Rush song is on the shore of Port Dalhousie; a suburb of St. Catharines, Ontario, on the south shore of Lake Ontario in Canada. Peart lived very near Lakeside Park, and spent summers as a child working and playing there. The lyrics mention the "24th of May" which is Victoria Day, commemorating Queen Victoria's birthday.

The actual Lakeside Park in Port Dalhousie, Ontario overlooks the War of 1812 wreck sites of the USS Hamilton (1809) and the USS Scourge (1812). The smaller of the two piers in Port Dalhousie have been used as staging areas for most of the Hamilton–Scourge survey expeditions to the wreck sites, since the early-1980s.

Geddy Lee gave a somewhat unfavorable mention of the Rush song in a 1993 interview:^[1]

A lot of the early stuff I'm really proud of. Some of it sounds really goofy, but some of it stands up better than I gave it credit for. As weird as my voice sounds when I listen back, I certainly dig some of the arrangements. I can't go back beyond 2112 really, because that starts to get a bit hairy for me, and if I hear "Lakeside Park" on the radio I cringe. What a lousy song! Still, I don't regret anything that I've done!

— Geddy Lee, Raw Magazine

See also

• List of Rush songs

References