found ourselves onstage trying to determine if we all knew the same Gordon Lightfoot or Stompin’ Tom song. It was useless. None of us knew the words to anything the others did, and very few of us could remember Canada’s original unofficial anthem,“The Maple Leaf Forever,” now very dated. As a last resort, we stumbled our way through the only Canadian song we vaguely remembered, Quebec’s “Alouette” — how embarrassing. Our performance was, as they say, a “train wreck”! I swore to myself that one day I would write a patriotic song about Canada that future school kids and adult choirs could learn and sing together.
One winter evening many years later, while driving home from a Joan Baez concert that I had attended in New York with a few American and Canadian friends, someone suggested we sing a Canadian song, and I was again troubled that we had nothing to offer. The following day, the magic happened, and back home in New Canaan I sat down with pen and paper. Somehow I was able to channel the special energy and patriotic inspiration required, even though at that time, in 2008, I had no plans to return to my homeland.
The words and the melody came to me effortlessly, and the song seemed to write itself. Was my departed lover Pierre Trudeau helping me from “the great beyond”? He had always been so impressed by my songwriting, even though the demos I played for him had used a studio singer’s voice. I truly believe that this song, with its catchy melody and lyrics, flowed supernaturally into my pencil from some mysterious cosmic guide.
I remember thinking that my biggest gift to Canada, and the one thing I was sure would live on long after I had gone, would be this new song that I had just created, called “Canada, My Canada”:
The spirits of our lakes and rivers gently sing to me
The mighty forests add their voice with mystic majesty
I hear the rhythm in the wings of wild geese as they fly
And music in the Rocky Mountains reaching for the sky
Canada, My Canada
My country proud and free …
With the song written, I now had to find a way to record it and bring the music to life. Peter Bond suggested I approach Chris Bilton, who worked with Jack Lenz as a producer at his recording complex in Toronto. Chris hired several singers and musicians to work with me to produce a demo. Although I thought the result was good, I felt the arrangement had a little too much of a Maritime flavour and was too pop sounding to my ears. I remember returning from the studio with some doubts about what I had just recorded.
• • •
I approached Peter again about tackling “Canada, My Canada,” and producing a more “folky,” straightforward version. Recalling my participation in “Tears Are Not Enough,” Canada’s answer to “We Are the World,” songs both written to help raise money for the famine in Ethiopia, my vision for this patriotic song now expanded. I fantasized that the recording would include contributions from a variety of well-known Canadian singers, whom I would ask to join me. How can I ever pull off a similar effort without a Bruce Allan–style manager? I fretted.
At first Peter balked at the idea of tackling the production himself and tried to offer the project to Richard Fortin, but my powers of persuasion worked and I knew Peter would be my ideal collaborator.
As anxious as I was to get underway with the recording of “Canada, My Canada,” there were a number of other projects that also demanded my attention at the time, so we put the recording on the back burner for a few months. With that on hold, Peter and I started to record a song I had written in memory of my father’s life, called “Do Your Thing,” and another in a Leonard Cohen–esque style titled “Thank You for Bringing Me Home.”
Peter also created the powerful orchestration for an instrumental song I composed called “Spirit of the Canadian Northlands” that included my spoken words:
O Great Spirit of the Northern waters, of the Northern lakes and the Northern forests … I feel you in the rocks, the trees, the sky, the rivers, the earth, and the animals … in the heartbeat of this mighty land.
Next, I re-wrote a song about the life of Canadian artist Emily Carr, a folky ballad that I had first performed with Srdjan, but this time I gave it a waltz rhythm and changed the melody. The author of the Penguin Emily Carr biography, Lewis DeSoto, paid me a lovely compliment when I sent him a fact-checking demo. “Liona you have condensed all the major themes of her life into a beautiful five-minute song, something it took me a whole book to do!” I was touched by his praise and “Emily Carr” became one of my favourite numbers to perform.
I found that songs were flowing out of me so naturally. I loved compacting into poetry and music an entire life story, whether mine, someone else’s, or an imagined one. My songs tend to contain more words than most popular songs, and often include certain folk elements. I suppose this is no surprise as I came of age during that fertile musical decade, the sixties.
• • •
My social life in Toronto was starting to expand. I was happy to be back in the familiar surroundings and enjoyed strolls down Philosopher’s Walk and Sunday morning yoga classes, which kept me limber, with a new British girlfriend, Janet. Walks past the elegant Richardsonian Romanesque buildings of Queen’s Park and the University of Toronto, where I had spent four years studying music, ensured that I maintained the same weight I had been when I graduated from the Faculty of Music in 1972. Soon I had befriended Naomi, an attractive blonde doctor from Forest Hill, and her Israeli boyfriend. It felt good to have spirited and adventurous girlfriends again!
There were the nights out, too — a week of non-stop parties at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), where I rubbed shoulders with directors Norman Jewison and Christina Jennings, my fellow Missinaibi canoe adventurer, chatted with Brian and Mila Mulroney, Geoffrey Rush, Sara Waxman, and George Christie, and was welcomed home by the Toronto media. My friends Robert and Birgit Bateman invited me be their guest at the World Wildlife gala where the Tenors sang to us, and little by little I was made to feel that once again I was part of the Toronto cultural scene.
I revisited my dear old teacher Eli Kassner, at whose Gibson Avenue home I had enjoyed so many Toronto Guitar Society parties over the years. He and his wife, Ann, welcomed me back warmly, as did my old friend Bob Kaplan, who, now a widower, was appreciative of a companion with whom he could talk French and Spanish and reminisce about Pierre, to whom Bob had introduced me one sunny summer day in 1975. We shared memories of my one-time fiancé, Joel Bell, and the political life Bob had known as a member of parliament and as Canada’s former solicitor general. There was never any question of romance between us, but we welcomed each other’s company and I enjoyed having a buddy in Toronto, since most of my former friends seemed to have died or moved away. Bob was my confidant and a perfect escort to events. He drove me to events in either his Rolls Royce or his tiny Smart car, and I know I added a spark to his life that had been difficult after losing his wife of many years.
Sadly, Bob developed brain cancer that started to spread. He went for consultations to Sloan Kettering, a renowned cancer centre in New York, but he became weaker by the day, and his skin began turning grey. I encouraged him to seek help at the Hippocrates Health Institute, and his supportive family made arrangements to fly him there in a low-flying private plane to avoid any change in air pressure.
After a three-week stay Bob looked transformed! His colour had returned, he had hired a personal attendant to prepare his raw vegan meals, and he promised to take me to the top of the CN Tower to experience “Toes Over Toronto,” which I am sure would have scared us out of our wits. One day Bob called me to his condo to chat and listen to him attempt new pieces on his grand piano. He told me that he could not take any more of the vegan diet restrictions and that he was craving meat and desserts. Overnight Bob switched to eating steaks, cheese, pies, cakes, and ice cream. Although he did manage to make it in a wheelchair to hear me sing and play a concert for the Taste of the Kingsway festival, tragically Bob did not last much longer. I still miss my good-natured friend who passed away far too young, at seventy five, and I often wonder if he could have beaten cancer had he persisted with the vegetarian diet.
• • •
It