New chapter in the Eleanor McCain songbook
Her album comes accompanied by an artful book of Canadian landscapes and features the lady herself on the cover, lakeside
Eleanor McCain is taking steps to expand her family.
Having amputated a calamitous marriage (or at least, near-amputated that marriage), and emerged of late as a patron patriot (the force behind True North: The Canadian Songbook), her summer plans now include house-training a puppy.
“The dog is actually bred for companionship,” the chanteuse with one of the nation’s most famous surnames told me a few days back, re: the Labrador breed she was to receive this week. “They just want to be with you all the time.”
Possible subtext: Who needs a man when you can have a dog?
Make that two dogs. Planted beside her on a sofa in her sitting room in Forest Hill was her other Lab, the floppy-eared, made-herself-athome-already Audrey.
“As in Hepburn?” I asked, eyeing the beguiling beast.
Actually, no. Turns out this dog, who arrived in March, was named by McCain’s teenage daughter and the name Audrey is a nod to a character in Pitch Perfect (who was actually Aubrey). Got it.
“You have to name your new dog Marilyn!” I bellowed, as we moved into a free flow of other potential old-starlet names for her second pet. Ava! Judy! Zsa Zsa! The suggestion of mirth is not hard to locate in the 47-year-old scion today, any opaqueness previously detected replaced by a woman who is ruminative but looser all around. Almost precisely two years ago, I sat with her in this very room, where she publicly told the story for the first time of her marital collapse with then-Toronto Symphony Orchestra CEO Jeff Melanson, a marriage less than a year old.
A ticking tinderbox of money, music and machinations, it was a War of the Roses that led to much more media hullabaloo, resulting in cover story exposés like the one in Toronto Life (“Love and War in the House of McCain”) as well as Maclean’s (“The Heiress, the Impresario, and the Juiciest Divorce Ever”).
McCain did what came naturally during the storm: she poured herself into the music. The result? A 32song, self-funded double album, borne from a cross-country collaboration with 10 different city orchestras, and one that comes accompanied by an artful book of Canadian landscapes (and features the lady herself on the cover, lakeside, in a black gown, the hulking peaks of Banff behind her).
“To realize a dream and to feel the success of it coming together . . . I feel stronger and more confident,” McCain began to say about her multimedia project, which was unveiled with the requisite bang some few weeks prior. Held in Toronto at the Carlu (the same space where she first announced her engagement to Melanson during another event), it was about 1,000people deep and lavish by any standard (the catering, alone!). Held to benefit MusiCounts, a Canadian organization that boosts access to music programs in schools, it was an event attended by friends, family and society critters alike.
Don’t get mad, get melodious: the unspoken message of this I’m-stillhere party, from where I was standing that night. A theme amplified by the moment that McCain threw off her shoes and sang barefoot for a proper Eastern Canadian jig.
Having been raised in the bosom of french fries and philanthropy, the Juno-nominated singer concedes that The Canadian Songbook was a moment of great catharsis for her. Not to mention, properly ambitious.
“It was just a lot of moving parts,” she said. “It’s logistically very challenging. The cross-country logistics of working with 10 different orchestras from across Canada . . . all the licensing that goes into it. Then, doing the book with it and shooting the images. It was a huge team effort.”
Asked about the trauma of the last two years, she says, “It’s never easy having one’s personal life splashed across the front pages,” but is also equally philosophical. “It’s something I had to go through. It’s part of my life.”
One thing she does cop to being irked by? The word “heiress.” She explains: “I’m not a big fan because when you hear that word it comes with a connotation. It’s not representative of me. And that’s what’s unfortunate. It’s a label.”
Having grown up in a village of 800 people in New Brunswick, she was raised by her parents, Wallace and Margaret McCain, in an environment of small-town values and zero bling. “My parents chose to raise us there, when they could have easily moved us to Toronto and Montreal.”
To Florenceville she’s off again for the coming months, as is her usual summer rigmarole. The plan? To hang with her daughter and her mom, plus her best friend of 40 years. Also on the agenda: to get in some kayaking. In the fall, she returns to the concert stage at planned gigs across the country.
But about that D-word? McCain, when asked, confirms that the dissolution of her marriage is still chugging along and currently before the courts. “I am not divorced. And nor am I annulled,” she says, referring to the well-trod peculiarities of her legal case.
Why an annulment? “Let me put it this way: I’ve been married before and I’ve been divorced before and, because of that, I know what that feels like.” McCain says her marriage had “significant issues, ones that still have not been addressed. I felt like the only legal remedy that represented my experience was annulment.”
It is around this time that Audrey, the pooch, begins to snore. We both let out a laugh.
Caressing the dog, the woman we won’t call an heiress says: “I want to come back as her.”