The album was commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada to accompany its Group of Seven retrospective show.

However, snippets of recorded dialogue from the Group of Seven artists, and other contemporaneous figures such as Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Mackenzie King and John Diefenbaker, are mixed in.

However, track 7 is a reworking of "Northern Wish", from the band's 1991 album Melville, and a Rheostatics fansite has compiled a set of unofficial titles for the other tracks which is commonly accepted by the band's fans.

Many of these alternate titles were taken from the band's actual set lists, when available.

Kerr also interviewed artist Winchell Price, a landscape painter, whose comments on the link between music and visual art open the album as the introduction to the first track.