I wasn’t a fan of Stompin’ Tom Connors in the early-‘70s. In those days I was into folk music with a message.
I didn’t think Stompin’ Tom’s music had a message. I was wrong about quite a few things back then.
The truth is that Stompin’ Tom knew something fundamental that I didn’t.
Like a lot of people with a university education, I thought that the most important people in a society were people like me, people with a degree or two.
After all, everybody said that education was important, essential in fact if a person is to make a contribution to society. Most politicians had university degrees; the movers and shakers in business and industry all had them.
Everyone said you couldn’t get ahead without one. I thought that a society was defined by the well educated – Stompin’ Tom knew better.
It took a few years of teaching in public schools to set me straight, along with a few summers of manual labour shovelling sand, putting in sewer lines, building rock waterfalls in retirement developments.
I met a lot of interesting people, people without university degrees. It occurred to me then that nations aren’t defined by their political leaders as much as by the average working persons in their society.
They certainly aren’t defined by the well-educated, who seem to be pretty much the same in every culture: insular, introspective and possessing a tendency to retreat from controversy and conflict.
Likewise the politicians and business leaders are indistinguishable from one country to the next, all willing to flow with the political and/or social tide, as long as their power is maintained and business is uninterrupted.
No, it is the people Stompin’ Tom wrote about and wrote for who define society: working people, the people on salaries, the factory workers, fishermen, loggers, roustabouts, truck drivers, farmers.
He knew that Canada is blessed with an abundance of independent, clever, good-humoured men and women who are close to the land and don’t mind working hard.
They have common sense, these working Canadians, and they think for themselves. They are the ones who maintain and define the nation. They are why Stompin’ Tom wrote and sang the songs he did.
Many Canadians love the songs of Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot, Ian Tyson, and Stan Rogers; their lyrics are a little more sophisticated than: “Yeah, the girls are out to bingo, and the boys are gettin’ stinko / and we’ll think no more of Inco, on a Sudbury Saturday night.”
But those four artists can’t generate the same emotion that Stompin’ Tom’s passing did, no matter how talented, admired and well-loved they might be; Stompin’ Tom loved us back.
Here’s to you then, poet laureate of the working man, thanks for your vision, your faith, your confidence in Canada and in us that never failed, and thanks from me for confirming a message learned late, but learned well.
– Jim Holtz is columnist for the Grand Forks Gazette WEEKENDER