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The Return ...To Canada with Love

I had first approached Peter Bond back in 2008 about producing a song I had written in Connecticut called “Canada, My Canada.” The idea of composing a patriotic song had been marinating in my mind ever since Jack and I had attended a World Presidents’ Organization conference in Berlin. It was there I realized that we Canadians had no patriotic song, apart from our “O Canada” anthem.

We were about three hundred delegates from all over the world, and one of the WPO organizers had the idea that we should group ourselves by country and each sing something from our homeland as a way of entertaining the others. The Germans belted out a famous drinking song, the Mexicans serenaded us with “Cielito Lindo,” and the Americans sang, “This Land Is Your Land.” Twenty or so Canadians 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 was now important for me to find the ideal accompanist with whom I could tour and record. How would I be able to find a duo partner in Toronto? Once again fortune was my friend, and through the University of Toronto guitar teacher, Jeffrey McFadden, I was introduced to Michael Savona. A good-looking thirty-seven-year-old with a wife and two rambunctious little kids, Michael was a fine classical player who was also experienced in the rock world, playing electric guitar as well. Just as important, he had a good singing voice.

I called Srdjan to apologize and to explain the practical reasons why, unfortunately, our duo was not going to be able to continue. Having to fly him up to Canada for every concert or television show that came along would have been impossible. I deeply regretted disappointing him, but Srdjan understood that besides the logistics of our living in different countries, the hassles with work permits and the inability to rehearse and record new material would cause problems. Srdjan and I had a different vision for our duo. He was pushing to do more folk cover songs and “entertain,” whereas I felt more driven to create new, original repertoire. In a sense, our chapter together had run its natural course.

Srdjan and I still keep in touch. He has formed a duo that plays every weekend in restaurants and for special parties, and on occasion he happily performs in his beloved homeland of Croatia on occasion.

Over the summer of 2011 Michael familiarized himself with the repertoire I had been playing with Srdjan, and we started to record some of my new “Canadiana” pieces. “Death Divine,” a powerful song I had composed right after losing my father, morphed into “Aurora Borealis” as I decided to concentrate on creating more Canadian-inspired repertoire. I had experienced the mystical Northern Lights while on tour in Saskatchewan, and my melody and lyrics combined with Peter’s magnificent 120-track score captured in music the majesty of this natural phenomenon of light in the northern skies. Peter referred to one challenging section of my vocal as my “Sarah Brightman moment.” While I could never come close to being like Sarah, I revered her as one of my special musical muses.

I located a Cree teacher at the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto and hired him to translate some of my lyrics into his language. Samme Hunter taught me how to pronounce the words so that I could sing the chorus in his beautiful language. Wawate, the Cree word for the Northern Lights, was so perfect in its onomatopoeic simplicity. I imagined my beloved poet Longfellow must have been familiar with Cree when he named the fireflies in his Hiawatha poem “wah-wah-taysee.”

Soon I had composed another song, with lyrics that evoked the landscapes of Muskoka and Lake Superior that I had always loved.

Silver birch, scent of pine, lakes and forests, land of mine

Silver birch, harvest moons, golden maples, calls of loons

Silver birch, morning haze, flaming sumach summer days,

Silver birch, winter night, silent snowflakes, white on white….

It seemed appropriate to dedicate this song to those internationally renowned painters whose art decorated most Canadian classrooms (if only in reproduction), and to me symbolized Canadian art: the Group of Seven.

In a tribute to Canada’s First Nations people, I used for the bridge “Nehiyawaskiya,” a significant word, meaning “aboriginal lands,” that had been taught to me by an off-duty police officer I had randomly located by telephone near an Ojibwa reserve in northern Ontario.

For this evocative chorus Peter was able to layer multiple takes of my voice in the style of the Irish singer Enya, whom we both adored for her unique, creative music. Enya’s albums usually take several years of constant work before their release, but somehow Peter and I managed to complete our album of fifteen original songs in less than two years.

Unless one witnesses the complex orchestration process involved in layering the instruments and creating all the sound textures for such songs as “Silver Birch,” its sophistication can be lost on the casual listener. There are multiple percussion tracks, some of which involve layers of my guitar, played using the tambora technique. As well, there are various drums. The two of us even jumped up and down on the floor of the drum room at Zolis Audio to add special weight to one track!

Multiple instruments, choirs, reverb chambers, and specialized electronic effects make this record one of Peter’s most masterful productions. Even a full symphony orchestra could never reproduce some of these ethereal sounds. Vangelis is another composer of this genre whom we greatly admire. If one listens to his score to the film 1492, it is easy to recognize the musical influences that inspired us.

I am fortunate, however, that my songs and instrumentals have a special element that sets them apart, even from the work of Enya and Vangelis. My songs have the addition of what I consider to be the world’s most beautiful instrument: the classical guitar — my instrument, which my producer always insists we feature at every possible opportunity.

Peter was still able to tap into the magic that he had used to create the Seven Journeys: Music for the Soul and the Imagination album, and we were both intent upon making the best music of our lives. Nothing was too much work for either of us. When inspiration struck, I would obsess over a melody or lyric until I felt it was perfect, and when Peter was “in the zone,” he would stay up night after night, searching for the exact blend of sounds he had in his head. Much of this creative process involved trial and error as even subtle additions or subtractions of sounds can alter the final blend. Never had my guitar sounded so resonant, nor my voice so expressive. I loved the recording process, the way I could manifest a timeless piece of music from what had started out as one small spark of an idea, purely in my imagination. Nobody before had ever “gotten” my musical vision the way Peter did, and time after time he far surpassed my expectations.

The technology was extraordinarily complicated. The tools of the trade had become overwhelmingly complex, and not being very technical myself I could sympathize with some of my past arrangers who had used paper and pencil. The great Maurice Jarre had expressed his frustrations to me, and he hired young computer whiz kids to collaborate when needed. With Peter Bond I had a brilliant producer, engineer, and collaborator in every way, and we sensed that some predestined soul connection empowered our creative process.

My friend Ron Korb, a talented flutist who in 2016 would be nominated for a Grammy, came into the studio to add the sound of his Western and ethnic flutes to many of my songs, and at some points, Peter sang harmony lines, just as he had done on “Reflections” from Seven Journeys. His voice harmonizing with mine added a special colour that would have been difficult to replicate. We were off on another musical journey together, and the making of The Return … To Canada with Love consumed our days.

In November Michael and I played ten concerts from Oakville to Victoria, including a couple of appearances at the Zoomer show in Vancouver and a few dates promoted by my longtime friend, Ben Werbski. We enjoyed staying at Ben’s oceanside house, walking his Labrador dog along the driftwood-strewn beaches, and through the Emily Carr landscape of mossy, treed pathways and dark overhanging branches. Our new duo was off to a good start, we both took pleasure in the warm audience reception and scenic ferry rides, and Michael seemed to enjoy being back on the West Coast where he and his wife had once lived.