“If you don’t believe your country should come before yourself, you can better serve your country by living somewhere else.” — Stompin’ Tom Connors
He was Canadian through and through. He was “Bud the Spud from the bright red mud,” raised in Skinners Pond P.E.I., and now with no more highway left to run.
He’d been everywhere, man. “Tomagany, New Liskert, Hillbury, Cobalt, Timmins, Ansenville, Kirkland Lake, Cohran, Capuscasing, Hearst, Deralden,” and that’s the way he spelled them.
He sent his six Junos back in 1978 because the awards were getting too Americanized and “should be for people who are living in Canada.” The award with true meaning was his 1996 Order of Canada.
When the CBC decided against running a live-concert music special that Stompin’ Tom produced at his own cost in 2005, he wrote off a letter telling them where they could put it.
“As far as I am concerned,” he wrote, “if the CBC, our own public network, will not reconsider their refusal to air a Stompin’ Tom special, they can take their wonderful offer of letting me sing a song on some other program and shove it.” Music to the ears.
Stompin’ Tom Connors has no more Sudbury Saturday Nights left, and no more “bar hoppin’ sprees back in Sault St. Marie.” He was a Jack of Many Trades, which is why his back still hurt when he heard the word, Tillsonburg.
He is the last of the life-lived troubadours.
Canada was his Stompin’ Grounds, whether he was out meeting Muk Tuk Annie, or was on Tragedy Trail, or at the Gumboot Cloggero. These were his Roads of Life.
No one was tougher, except maybe Big Joe Mufferaw, who had “paddled all the way to Mattawa from Ottawa … in just one day.” There the music lives on, but no longer the man himself.
No doubt, therefore, they’ll be bashing the plywood thump board in Peterborough, Ont. on Wednesday evening, and raising the roof of the local hockey rink in memorial tribute to Stompin’ Tom.
They’ll play Canada’s unofficial national anthem no doubt, too. The Hockey Song.
“Hello out there, we’re on the air …”
R.I.P. Stompin’ Tom Connors.
Patriot.
RCMP Honour Guard carry the casket of Stompin’ Tom Connors during a tribute to to the Canadian legend on Wednesday, Mar. 13, 2013 at the Memorial Centre in Peterborough. (Clifford Skarstedt/Peterborough Examiner/QMI AGENCY)
Source: Toronto Sun