McCain spares no expense
ELEANOR MCCAIN PASSIONATE ABOUT MARKING CANADA 150 WITH ‘TRUE NORTH’ PROJECT
Eleanor McCain pulled out all the stops while making plans to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday. She envisioned recording a covers album that would be something spectacular. So instead of choosing a single orchestra to bring a selection of classic Canadian songs to life, she enlisted 10 of the country’s top symphonies.
Then she hired 23 photographers to shape a hefty coffee-table book chronicling her coast-to-coast recording odyssey. There’s also a documentary in the works.
“True North: The Canadian Songbook” is a breathlessly lavish project that McCain says is her gift to Canada. The daughter of McCain Foods founder Wallace McCain financed the whole thing herself.
McCain stands centre stage for 31 covers of Canadian favourites — including takes on Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind,” kd lang’s “Constant Craving,” and “I’ll Always Be There” by Roch Voisine — and one new original song.
She also recorded a new arrangement of Bryan Adams’s “Run to You,” substituting his guitar with a saxophone and heaping cymbals, and embarked on a major reworking of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” It explores octaves never tread by the late poetic songwriter.
“It’s always a risk when you’re taking these iconic songs,” McCain says. “(We wanted to) try to create something new but still honour the original.”
Her glossy 220-page book captures two perspectives. McCain mingles with her fellow musicians in some photos, while others capture her traipsing across Canada’s countrysides in fancy evening gowns.
In one image, McCain dons a red sequined dress to pose in a Saskatchewan wheat field. Another has her on the shores of Algonquin Park — with a canoe paddle in hand — adorned in a gown from Hamilton-based indigenous designer Angela DeMontigny.
It’s the kind of pageantry only mustered by an expansive budget — and one most Canadian artists probably couldn’t afford.
Those realities aren’t lost on McCain, who acknowledges her good fortunes in belonging to one of New Brunswick’s richest families. But her lineage comes with a downside, too, including the unsavoury nickname of “French fry heiress” in the media.
She rankles when it comes up in conversation.
“It’s an unfortunate label,” she says. “It doesn’t represent who I am ... The values (my father) instilled in me are not the ones that are attributed maybe to a label like an ‘heiress.’”
When asked how much she spent making “True North” she fumbles for a direct answer.
“A lot. I actually don’t even know,” she says.
“I don’t want to know. No, I do. I just don’t really talk about it that much.”
McCain prefers to focus on calling it a “pure labour of love.”
The project comes as the singer charges ahead with contentious, headline-grabbing annulment proceedings with her estranged husband Jeff Melanson, who was the CEO of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra before stepping down last year. His former symphony is notably absent from McCain’s album.