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My Father’s Passing

At around this time, my friend Helen Gurinow, who ran the Canadian consulate in L.A., invited me to the premiere of a new film about Glenn Gould. I had recently been asked to write a book review to be printed on the back cover of The Secret Life of Glenn Gould, by Michael Clarkson, so after immersing myself in Gould’s life for a few days I was keen to see the documentary by Canadian director Peter Raymont.

A specific moment in the film somehow triggered another of my life’s epiphanies. It showed Gould, whose phenomenal performances had conquered adoring crowds in Moscow, driving back alone to Lake Simcoe through the Ontario countryside. It all looked so very familiar to me. If Glenn Gould could tour the world yet still love coming home to Canada, why couldn’t I? That was the exact moment when I understood that I was destined to return home, and tears welled in my eyes. The very next day I composed a heartfelt song called “Home to the Shores of Lake Ontario.”

A month later, Srdjan and I had more concerts booked in Ontario. As usual, we also visited my parents, and I played the song for them. I sensed their approval — their eldest daughter would be returning home after twenty years of living in the U.S.

Although I felt it was time to return home, my plan was not to completely uproot myself from America. Rather rashly, I decided that I would buy a winter retreat in Florida. I could divide my art, clothes, and household goods in two and live the “Canadian snowbird” lifestyle — spending summers at home, close to my family, while still being able to escape the long Toronto winters.

I flew to Palm Beach, where I knew nobody, stayed at the Chesterfield Hotel, and gave myself and a randomly picked realtor three days in which to find the casita (small house) of my dreams. Somehow nothing felt right, and as my time ran out I despaired. Fortunately, at the very last hour of the last day, my future house materialized, thanks to a guided moment when I smiled at a realtor whom I spotted in her office window on Worth Avenue an hour after closing time. She returned my smile, which encouraged me to go in and introduce myself. Miraculously, something had just come on the market that was not yet listed!

It had been the former home of Mary Alice Fortin, a much-admired philanthropist and the mother of actress Stockard Channing and of Lesly Smith, the former mayor of Palm Beach. The fates were kind to me, or perhaps the dear old lady answered my constant prayers. Within a week, the house with its tiled floors, soaring ceilings, Spanish archway, and courtyard of agave plants, geraniums, cacti, bougainvillea, and white statuary was mine.

It was the first house I had ever owned in the U.S., and I knew it would make me feel good to own a small part of America. The special powers that had once helped me buy what I considered to be the most beautiful lakefront house in Toronto were obviously still working!

• • •

In April of 2011 I flew with Srdjan to perform in Hull, Quebec, and then to Cuba for some of Bill Evanov’s Jewel Radio–sponsored concerts in Varadero. My sister, Vivien, tagged along to Cuba, where we celebrated her birthday and had fun strolling around cigar-scented Havana, soaking in the unique atmosphere that I remembered well from my previous concerts there. Well-maintained vintage automobiles in pastel colours still lined the streets, and infectious salsa music hung in the air as ever. The city seemed more crowded with tourists than before, and I knew it would soon be transformed by America’s inevitable influence.

Not only was Cuba different, so, too, was my experience of it. This time there was no international guitar festival to open; no choir of smiling children singing “Guantanamara” to me on the lawn of the national theatre; and no opportunity to spend time in the company of Fidel Castro. On this trip, there was no spending two hours on the couch beside him, no private serenade, no newsworthy kisses on both cheeks from “El Jefe,” and no presidential suite at the old Hotel Nacional as there had been in 1982.

On returning home, I found a letter from Prince Philip. The world had just celebrated the joyful wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton, and Prince Philip had written to tell me that, after the exhausting celebrations followed by his own ninetieth birthday and “a mountain of birthday cards,” he and the Queen were looking forward to recuperating in Scotland.

Prince Philip’s letter and his mention of Scotland brought back many memories. I recalled my command performance for him and the Queen in Edinburgh, and my Duke of Edinburgh Awards fundraising dinner performance in Glasgow.

My grandfather William Haig Boyd had traced our family back to Mary, Queen of Scots, through the registry of births and deaths in Somerset House. Perhaps my ancestry explains why I enjoy oatmeal and marmalade!

Prince Philip has often commented on the love that he and the Queen feel for Scotland. I am sure that having a chance to take a break from royal duties, live a more rustic life, and breathe in the fresh air of the Scottish Highlands at Balmoral is one of the secrets to the royal family’s stamina and longevity.

• • •

The happiness I experienced reading Prince Philip’s account of his birthday was soon forgotten. My poor father had not been doing well and underwent surgery for removal of his bladder and prostate, where they had detected cancer. For years he had delighted in creating heavy metal sculptures, but he had paid a high price for his art. The doctors told him that the likely cause of his cancer was all his years of inhaling welding fumes, a known carcinogen due to high levels of such elements as manganese.

My dad, in his cheerful and accepting way, told us how much he enjoyed the wonderful staff at Toronto General Hospital and how he did not miss those body parts whose removal had, in some ways, freed him. But as we know all too well, cancer does not always disappear, and in April of 2011 he was admitted to Mount Sinai hospital.

With a pain in my heart, I realized that my father was in trouble. Srdjan and I had returned from the concerts in Cuba, and I had just flown back to Los Angeles when my father took a sudden turn for the worse. I rushed back to Toronto to find that he had suffered a stroke the day before and was unable to speak. My beloved father, looking so frail in his hospital bed, could only respond by squeezing our hands. If only I had booked a flight two days earlier …

I sat beside his hospital bed, still hoping that he would recover. I talked to him, thanking him for being such a kind and loving father and telling him he would soon be back home. I told him about my new songs, my house in Palm Beach, where I hoped he would visit at Christmas, the condo in Toronto’s Yorkville that I had just rented, my recent performances with Srdjan, and my hope that he would soon be back at our family house on Canterbury Road, sitting in his armchair nursing a cup of tea in his favourite mug.

My sister had been an angel, cancelling her patients and keeping vigil night after night at the hospital, and my mother sat stoically by my father’s side for days. His mouth was dehydrated, yet because of the danger of him choking they did not allow him to drink any water. Poor man. All the nurses allowed was for us to place a small, dampened sponge inside his mouth.

It was heartbreaking to see him in such a helpless state, yet I still believed that somehow he would pull off a miracle. But on May 3, just seventeen days before his eighty-fourth birthday, eased into slower and slower breathing by the intravenous morphine that was suggested by the doctors and nurses, he passed away peacefully, and we were left alone in the room with his motionless body.

In tears, I draped myself over him, knowing it was the last time I would ever be able to hug the man who had cared for me and loved me ever since I was a baby in his arms. I remembered the wooden toys he had crafted for my sister, brother, and me as children; the guitar he had carried on his back from Spain that had changed my life; the many swings, rafts, and rabbit and hamster cages he had cobbled together for us; the skates he had taught us to lace; the yearly long-distance camping holidays he had taken us on; the hundreds of canvases he had painted; the thousands of miles that he had driven through North America, navigating our small family around during the summer holidays. I remembered our life-changing year living in Mexico that he had arranged as a schoolteacher. I remembered the way he had driven me to ballet and guitar classes as a teenager; the philosophical talks and the walks we had taken together around Etobicoke; the books and magazines on spirituality that we had shared as adults; the beautiful speech he had given in Beverly Hills on my fiftieth birthday party; all the countless times he had helped me pack for tours, carrying my heavy bags, meeting me with my mother at the Toronto airport; the way he had tirelessly parcelled up boxes of CDs to ship out of our basement; and the one concert in Oakville at which he had finally heard me sing.

What a kind and exemplary father he had been.

It saddened me no end that my father’s only son, Damien, who had estranged himself from our family, had been informed about his father’s impending death yet refused to even send a message. John Haig Boyd died wearing two rings, one his wedding ring, and the other his own father’s ring, which he had hoped to give to his son as a parting gift. But it was not to be.

I gave him a silent blessing, asking forgiveness as I cut a small lock of his still-abundant silky salt-and-pepper hair; my sister did the same. We wanted something physical to remember him by.

As we exited Mount Sinai Hospital, I could hear my father’s British voice reciting lines from his favourite Dylan Thomas poem, “And Death Shall Have No Dominion.” I recalled the words from another of Dylan’s poems, “Do not go gentle into that good night … Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Yet my father had never raged against anything. He was a man of quiet acceptance, and he had gone gently “into that good night,” like a ship slipping over the horizon.

Although years earlier, my father had insisted there be no funeral, a few months later the Dorothy Ley Hospice held a lovely memorial service paying tribute to the man who had selflessly volunteered there weekly for the previous ten years. I still regret that I was unable to play my father Mahler’s Symphony No. 5, Bach’s cantatas, Beethoven’s Ninth, and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, the pieces he had often mentioned that he would like to hear when his time on earth was drawing to a close. The hospital did not allow music in the rooms out of consideration for other patients, but why had I not thought to bring him headphones? Oh, Daddy, I’m so very sorry we all let you down.

• • •

Srdjan, who had grown to enjoy his tea-and-biscuit chats with my parents, returned to Toronto the day following my father’s passing as we had a few more concerts to play. It was hard for both of us — neither of us felt like singing after such a huge loss, but the shows had to go on.

I knew my mother needed me after losing her husband of sixty-two years, but I could not stay. It was time for me to leave her and for Eileen Boyd, with her daughter Vivien’s help, to cope as best she could. I needed to fly back to California and face packing up my household in Santa Monica. As usual, it was an overwhelming job to move house on my own, and this time it was even more challenging as I was relocating to two places at once. Coordinating the moving vans, selling or donating certain items of furniture, dividing and packing up my racks of clothes, my guitars, paintings, and sculptures was a daunting task.

How many more times would I have to do this, I wondered, before I felt settled and had both a life partner and a place that truly felt like home? Was Toronto going to work out for me? Was it not the same city I had escaped from twenty years ago? Even if I did find a way to fit back into life in Toronto, how was I ever going to replace Srdjan once I was based in Canada? I had no idea.

Had I really become a “global orphan,” never feeling completely rooted in one special place after having lived in so many? I tossed and turned night after night, praying I was making the right decision and knowing that leaving California would change my journey — both musical and personal — forever.

The most common type of house move seems to be simply to a different part of the same town, but with me it always seemed to involve crossing continents, and this time I was moving south and north simultaneously and also switching countries of residence. How I longed for help, a mate with whom to share the tasks, the decisions, and the memories.

At the suggestion of my late girlfriend Dale Mearn’s former boyfriend, Don Carmichael, I had rented a furnished sixteenth-floor two-bedroom condo, well-situated in downtown Toronto’s Yorkville. The corner unit, it had plenty of light and a distant view of Lake Ontario and the CN Tower, as well as a view of Cumberland Avenue. Conveniently, there were two subway stops a stone’s throw from the condo’s back entrance. I could hop on the subway and arrive at my mother’s Royal York stop in only twenty minutes.

Most of my furniture was sold or shipped to Palm Beach, and having an already furnished place in Toronto suited me just fine. I arranged my five Juno Awards on the guitar-case coffee table, and Don kindly helped me hang the gold and platinum discs that I had been dragging around the U.S. with me for the last few years.

Canada was going to become my home again! Now that I was actually back, I enjoyed the homecoming feeling and felt determined to embrace all the positive aspects of life in Toronto. As the lyrics of my song “Home to the Shores of Lake Ontario” say, “The world has been my playground, but how was I to know, I left my heart beside the shores of Lake Ontario.”