Canadian legend Stompin’ Tom Connors dies
— Canadian country-folk legend Stompin’ Tom Connors, whose toe-tapping musical spirit and fierce patriotism established him as one of Canada’s strongest cultural icons, has died. He was 77.
Connors passed away Wednesday from what a spokesman described as “natural causes.”
Brian Edwards said the musician, rarely seen without his signature black cowboy hat and stomping cowboy boots, knew his health was declining and had penned a message for his fans a few days before his death.
In the message posted on his website, Connors says Canada kept him “inspired with it’s beauty, character, and spirit, driving me to keep marching on and devoted to sing about its people and places that make Canada the greatest country in the world.”
Connors is survived by his wife Lena, two sons, two daughters and several grandchildren.
Dubbed Stompin’ Tom for his propensity to pound the floor with his left foot during performances, Connors garnered a devoted following through straight-ahead country-folk tunes that drew inspiration from his extensive travels and focused on the Everyman.
Although wide commercial appeal escaped Connors for much of his four-decade career, his heritage-soaked songs like Canada Day, Up Canada Way, The Hockey Song, Bud the Spud, and Sudbury Saturday Night, have come to be regarded as veritable national anthems thanks to their unabashed embrace of all things Canadiana.
Minutes after his death was announced Prime Minister Stephen Harper tweeted, “We have lost a true Canadian original. R.I.P. Stompin’ Tom Connors. You played the best game that could be played.”
And the NDP’s Thomas Mulcair tweeted, “Today Canada has lost a true musical icon — Stompin’ Tom Connors. My thoughts are with his friends and family.”
Connors often complained that not enough songs were being written about his homeland.
“I don’t know why I seem to be the only one, or almost the only one, writing about this country,” Connors said in a rare one-onone interview at his home in Halton Hills, Ont., in 2008.
“It just amazes me that I’ve been going so long I would think that somebody else (would have) picked up the torch a long time ago and started writing tons of songs about this country. This country is the most underwritten country in the world as far as songs are concerned. We starve, the people in this country are starving for songs about their homeland.”
Connor’s fervent patriotism brought controversy when his principles put him at loggerheads with the Canadian music industry.
In 1978, he famously returned a handful of Juno Awards he had amassed in previous years, complaining that some artists were being awarded in categories outside their genre while other winners had conducted most of their work outside of the country.