Just in time for Canada Day

 "North" has a moral value, perhaps as "Marianne" means something profound to Parisiens. For a Canadian, especially from Southern Ontario, North is always a time of childhood excitement. We take our vacations in the North. All the youthful excitement of discovery is in the north. It's where you first caught a polliwog. It's where you picked blueberries right off the bush. It's probably where you had your first kiss.

And in Canada, especially de l'Ontario, North means rock, roches, pierre- pine and spruce trees growing straight up out of solid granite.

"Au nord de notre vie", the first movement of "À la poursuite du nord", has been exciting me for thirty or so years now. Part of that is that it was an "alternative" song in its day. It used to come on the radio station CFNY and suddenly we would be listening to a song in French. This is impossible to imagine today. English stations play English songs, et le stations de radio français capter le chants en français. Since we all had taken French in high school, we could follow the song.

So going back to the first movement of "À la poursuite du nord", you have that core central image - "The North of our lives". I have already spoken about what North means to a Canadian. Then we have the "of our lives" part, which is very Québécois. OUR lives. This sense of community is almost oxygen to the Franco-Ontarien. And this is what makes CANO interesting. As a Sudbury-based ensemble, they bridge le deux solitude of English et Français.

Finally, we have the glimmering beauty of Rachel Paiement's vocal. Almost a "pure tone" singer, she carries the first movement like Cleo Lane.

Here are links to ten songs that make me proud to be Canadian. The land is strong.

CANO - Au nord de notre vie
Neil Young - Helpless
Ian Tyson - Four Strong Winds
Gordon Lightfoot - Canadian Railroad Trilogy
Rush - Lakeside Park 
Bare Naked Ladies - Lovers in a Dangerous Time
Murray McLauchlan - Down by the Henry Moore
Feist - 1234 (the most perfect pop song since Sir Paul McCartney joined that skiffle band)
Nelly Furtado - Hey, Man! (Anybody else hear Stephen Reich?)
Fraser and Debolt Them Dancehall Girls (more Brecht und Weill than Lightfoot)


Special thanks to guest blogger Richard RJ Guitar LCdr RCN (Ret'd) for his suggestions.

The sadness of sadness

I'm sad. I'm not going to say why I am sad right now because this blog is not a place for revelatory confession. Also the events involve others and I have no permission to expose their pain.

I had the great misfortune to have a happy childhood. To have been born during the postwar boom was entrée into the most privileged life any generation of what we now call "the 99%" has ever known. Houses cost a few thousand dollars. Cars a couple of thousand. There were more jobs than men to take them. Unions were making a difference. The doors of the Nation were wide open – please, come on in, this is Canada. Welcome!

And for a child life was an endless series of amusement park entrances in candy-coated red with the promise of all fun within! And sugary treats. And naps – many have written about falling asleep in one place (perhaps the car) to awake in another (probably your own bed). Anyhoo, a tapestry of squealing delight to the point of complete exhaustion.

The legendary Canadian supergoup Rush has a song titled "Lakeside Park". That was a real place. An amusement park in my home town. When I was 13 my friends and I rode our bikes out there (4.8 kms). We arrived and saw that the park was demolished. There was an atmosphere of disbelief. I walked to where the park should have been. I found the cement footings of what had been a ride called the Caterpillar. I sat in the sand and wept.

Like Holden Caulfield, I was weeping at the loss of my own childhood.

Me, in happier times

The Caterpillar Ride, today, at Idlewild: