Caught in the Carousel

Mike Ford

By Alex Green

"If men could learn from history,” wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind." Although in many cases ignorance, reluctance and steadfast partisanship prevent us from learning the lessons of the past, sometimes it’s all in the delivery. In other words, I still remember the abject boredom of my eleventh grade U.S. History class, yet I remember an embarrassing little about the actual history itself. In the hands of my teacher, history came across as a stale retelling of how certain people won, certain people lost and all that was required of us was to memorize dates and throw morality out the window. In the hands of Canadian singer/songwriter Mike Ford, however, one can’t help but feel the vitality and importance of history and that learning about the past can be humorous and decidedly engaging. A former member of Toronto’s late, great Moxy Früvous, Ford’s solo career began with Stars Shone On Toronto, an album that in just eight numbers examined Canada’s past and present, while offering tracks about Jane Jacobs, environmentalist Tooker Gomberg, the Oak Ridges Moraine and the effects of SUV’s on the environment. On his next album, the Juno-nominated Canada Needs You, Volume One, Ford found himself focusing only on his country’s past, gorging on Canadian history up to 1905 and coming up with some catchy songs in the process. Containing tracks like “Turn Them Ooot,” a sprightly tipping of the hat to human rights activist William Lyone Mackenzie; the moving homage to women on the prairie (“A Woman Works Twice As Hard”) and the map-spitting speed folk of “I’ve Been Everywhere” the album is a lively and thoughtful mediation on Canada’s early history. Dubbing his new material part of the “Canada In Song” project, Ford took his act all over Canada, visiting as many schools as he could. His interactive concerts and workshops served as an educational and exciting way to teach young Canadians about their history. In the process, Ford also taught these students about the environment, humanity and the beauty and freedom of artistic improvisation. In addition to readying up two new releases—Satellite Hotstove, and Canada Needs You, Volume Two—Ford will be touring all over Canada this summer and hitting classrooms again in the fall. Here he sits down to discuss Canada Needs You, Volume One, the current state of Canadian politics and the concept of patriotism.

Oh, and he also agreed to play the Caught In The Carousel Canadian Speed Round….

Caught In The Carousel: What's so impressive about your work on the “Canada In Song” project is that you take historical figures and events and wrap them up in songs that are so appealing. It's one thing to do research and say, “Ah, these are the roots of a federal constitutional monarchy," but it's another thing to take that information and craft it into a catchy song. Is this something that presents itself as a challenge each time you write?

Mike Ford: Bingo! The whole challenge with this project of mine is to explore these historical themes in an exciting way; to have people hearing me live, or recorded, to be opened up to aspects of the past in a way that doesn’t feel like ‘study’. My twofold motives are to 1) get more people actively interested in Canada’s history (and therefore in Canada’s present and future) and 2) to encourage people to create songs and other art on these themes. There is no more satisfying moment in a school performance than when a student wants to debate or contest what I’m putting out there. If what I was doing was boring, their level of engagement wouldn’t present itself that way. One of the things I’m going to be making available to students in the future is a series of song template files, whereby those without musical experience can create songs over a variety of backing tracks--including no-vocal versions of my own Canada Needs You songs. This will help encourage students to create, say, their own garage-anthem versions of “Sir John A” wherein he’s definitely ‘Not OK’, and portrayed as the cynical, Riel-hanging, authority-drunk, native-ignoring, make-the-entire-prairie-uber-British, Graft-swimming corruptitian he truly was. Or was he? The corollary to having fun playing with musical styles is playing with history; much more desirable than memorizing charts and dates, I dare say.

CITC: But for you the songwriting challenge remains, right?

MF: Yes, the challenge is ever-present. I like to think that I am progressing in my ability to negotiate that fine balance between Enjoyable Music and History Lesson. A few of the songs on Volume One verge a little too far into ‘schoolhouse rock’, I think. I’m endeavoring, on Volume Two, to be a little more impressionistic, a little less didactic in lyrics and approach. Not too far, though.

CITC: What I like so much about Canada Needs You is that it makes history come alive and gives it this kind of movement that just studying dates of discovery can't really provide. I guess what I mean is that it individualizes events and people and in many ways gives them back their identities. That being said, what do you think the main function of history is?

MF: Stories. Stories. Stories and more stories. What we are here for is to tell each other stories. Perhaps fewer stories about Anna Nicole Smith and more about ourselves. Our Elders. Their elders. And on and on. Stories are the backbone of humanity. Ideally they teach us compassion, ingenuity, strength; but their only requirement is to captivate.

CITC: What’s been your favorite moment from your classroom visits?

MF: I was showing grade 5's (a younger lot than I'm used to) the song “Bud The Spud” by Canadianna Tavern Troubadour Stompin' Tom Connors. I asked students to imagine they were doing exactly what the song described--driving a truckload of P.E.I. potatoes from the Maritimes to Toronto--and to imagine that they turned on the truck radio and heard this very song. How would they feel? I asked. Amid expected responses of “funny,” “famous,” and “surprised,” one lad stood up and in the most determined voice said he “felt needed”. Wow. Three words from a 9-year-old redefined my future.

CITC: Looking back on your own history, you certainly have some American roots. That being said, do you have an affection for American history as well?

MF: Three of my grandparents were French-Canadian, and the fourth was Montreal-Irish (hence my last name). Two of these made their way to Michigan (one at the turn of the century, for food, and the other in the twenties, for work). So my dad was born in Detroit and grew up there. He met mom while at school across the river in Windsor and ‘repatriated’ himself, along with six Detroit-born kids in his early 30’s (three more of us ‘arrived’ once in Canada). So, although having deep Canadian roots, we have been a border-straddling family. Dad’s passion for U.S. history is a wonderful thing, and I must confess that most of my knowledge of U.S. history comes from him. And all the books he has around. I have on the wall of my “Canada In Song” research/recording office the words of Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Address that my Dad did up with four pictures of Abe (taken in four consecutive war years wherein he ages about eight years per picture). I sometimes sing in Ontario High School U.S. History classes and have a wonderful time, dipping liberally into the song-bags of Guthrie, Seeger, Dylan, and David Rovics.

CITC: How much of your own history as a Canadian were you aware of when you began this project? Did you stumble onto any biographical knowledge that was particularly surprising or illuminating?

MF: There was a yearly batch of Canadian History in grade school, but quite minimal, and quite often put for in a really dry manner. Field trips to a local Pioneer Settlement recreation told us much more than the textbooks. On television we would learn about the big names and events of U.S. history, but Canadian stories were hard to come across. This situation, by the way, has VASTLY improved. In high school, things got better, but because of the lack of groundwork, we didn't have much context to put the new info into. My own awareness of themes, events and personalities in Canadian History came about much closer to home. My dad has always been a massive history buff. He in fact made it his career for a few decades, producing Canadian History filmstrips (depending on one's age, one may have no idea what a filmstrip is. They came with a cassette (ditto) soundtrack that went “BEEP” when it was time to change to the next picture). So, besides being a major library-boy, I also had dad's home office to wander around in; and of course there were always scads of photos and images around, portals into the past.

CITC: When did you know you were hooked?

MF: I remember one night when I was about 16, when I found a book about Louis Riel (the biggest 'watershed' individual in Canadian History) in dad's office. All I read was the opening page, which described what the Great Plains of the Canadian west looked like in full Buffalo run--the numbers. I was hooked. (“Dances With Wolves” recreates this image quite wonderfully, I dare say). What I experienced then was that moment when you feel the echo, or more accurately, the palimpsest of the past superimposed upon the present, or vise-versa. Since then, much of my reading and imaginings have been all about that kind of experience.

CITC: What are your current interests in the field of Canadian History?

MF: My present studies are attempts to pursue various paths--paths that exist in ghost-image, simultaneous to the present. I'm regularly being surprised by what leaps out of the readings or paintings or maps I study. The entire Thanadelthur tale, which I briefly allude to on Volume One, really astounded me. I go into it a bit more on my website, but WOW. Especially when one is generally force-fed stories about white men of constitutionally-based authority (and especially when you write a lot of songs about said), the tale of this seemingly superhuman Dene (Chipawayan) teen-aged heroine comes like a bolt of lightning. For me, the history of Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A. Macdonald, yields all kinds of surprising biographical info. One that jumped out at me was the fact that his daughter Mary was born with Hydrocephalus, and that despite the fact that the very gin-fueled John A. was busy almost single-handedly creating and keeping together the world’s second largest state, he had hours and hours to spend reading to, playing with, caring for and loving his beloved daughter. Once again, WOW.

CITC: Like America, Canada has a large population of immigrants (from China, the Ukraine, Holland, Japan) and some have even speculated that Toronto might very well be one of the most international cities in the world. In your research, how has immigration helped shape Canadian history?

MF: There are the migrations of 8,000 to 20,000 years ago, that we try ignoring. Then the colonization period (the French, the British) that make for the whole ‘two nations warring in the bosom of a single state’ nature of Canada’s political existence. Then the last 150 years of pluralistic immigration, accelerating to the present society that calls itself Multicultural. Before the 1960’s, those not of British or French heritage were given pretty short shrift in the national narrative. Since then, however, the ‘Mosaic’ concept has become less about festivals and more about daily reality. Some view our burgeoning multicultural-ness as a strain on an already decentralized federation. Others, myself included, see it as a great adventure and in some ways a potentially world-leading example. As the years go by, the claim of fifteen generations here or eight generations here, means less and less in comparison to more recently arrived communities (and will remain insignificant compared to multi-millennial inhabitants). Each stage of migration to Canada informs our present scenario. One could say that many immigrants, whether they be United Empire Loyalists after the 1780’s or coming from Afghanistan this week, are specifically choosing Canada over the USA. This will continue to often echo in Canada’s foreign policy.

CITC: How does pre-1905 Canada differ from post 1905? In other words, why did you initially decide on that as a point of demarcation on Volume One?

MF: The Volume One CD was meant to stop at 1900, but I realized that the songs “Canada Needs You” and “A Woman Works Twice As Hard” dipped into the 20th century a bit. Also, because the album was released in ’05, it made sense to draw the line at 100 years prior. Now that I am immersed in researching, writing and recording Volume Two (20th Century Canada), I am finding that there is a big difference between the two periods, for the composer. It’s that now I’m exploring and writing about times and events that people I know, or knew, directly experienced. For some reason, this makes ‘cartoon-ish’ songs like “Les Voyageurs” and “Turn Them Ooot” to be much harder to come by. Alan Alda’s character in Crimes and Misdemeanors expresses this hilariously: “Comedy is tragedy plus time.” It is harder to be black and white about more recent historical events and issues, making my 3-minute songs a little more challenging. At the same time, the passion with which I can approach some of the subjects is greater, due to more visceral connections (One of the songs for Volume Two is called “Canada Doesn’t Need You”, about, among other things, the interment and treatment of Japanese Canadians in the 40’s--an issue with which my wife’s family have intimate experience).

CITC: What inspired that song?

MF: It’s inspired by the book None Is Too Many, documenting Canada’s total lack of openness to Jews escaping Hitler--no country worked harder to refuse refugees and had more success doing so. On a similar theme, students today learn about the Kamagata Maru incident--a great boatload of Sikh passengers arrived at Vancouver harbor 87 years ago and were left sitting offshore for two months. These passengers, British subjects all, were left to starve and dehydrate, then sent back to India, to be shot at by British forces upon arrival. So today we have an interesting dynamic; a country becoming more and more multicultural, and proud of it, while incrementally learning about its past transgressions.

CITC: Getting back to the interment and treatment of Japanese Canadians in the'40s, do you think that the sins of Canada's history have in some cases been swept under the carpet? I'm sure you’ve run across some rather unsavory folks in your research—and when you do, how do those translate into songs? Are they harder to incorporate, given their nefarious origins?

MF: Sweeping things under the carpet is a major industry up here. Especially being next to the U.S., whose (no offense meant) problems, warts, mistakes, indignities and atrocities are so easy to research, learn about, generalize about, stigmatize with, etc.--thus our under-carpet-sweeping is abetted by a fairly prevalent smugness. Many Canadians identify their Canadian-ness in being NOT U.S.A., thus if race is a huge problem in U.S. History, well then surely the opposite must be the case here. Luckily in recent years a combination of increased access to marginalized voices and better practices in history and civic education, this edifice of smugness is being dismantled somewhat. Anyone not of North Western European heritage has faced (sometimes huge) challenges and discrimination, no matter what the decade; through almost all of our history, being French Canadian meant you were not a full partner in this thing called Canada (ironic given that the term ‘Canada’ once referred to French-speaking North America); and if we are to talk of the aboriginal population, we are talking of a legacy of such shameful treatment it almost defies description. I don’t know if this has made the news in the States, but the living conditions and hopes for opportunity on many of the First Nations reserves in Canada, specifically Ontario, rival almost any 3rd World country on the planet, and in some cases the suicide rates are the highest in the world. So, how to create songs about any of this without sounding like I’m lecturing? I guess one way I’m trying, as I mentioned before, is to try painting pictures and tell stories, rather than tell people what I think they should think. This is a challenge, as my nature is to be more finger-pointing. I also resort to sarcasm and satire a fair bit, as we often did in Früvous. The ragtime-ish “Canada Needs You” is one example, as is “Open For Business” off Volume Two, in which I more or less turn “Subterranean Homesick Blues” into a commercial for the wonders of Canada’s Free Trade initiatives (initiatives that basically swap ‘market access’ for sovereignty; Chapter 11 of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas in effect makes corporations de-facto arbiters of Environmental and Labour policy. Parliament is impotent, the banks have got Viagra). Given that much of the time I’m singing these songs to teenagers in social science classes, I try to find a good balance of inspirational and anger.

CITC: How is the concept of patriotism different in Canada? In America we dangle our flags out of SUV's and say "support the troops" a lot, but it's no deeper than that in many cases. In other words, jingoism reigns supreme, but the details are a bit sketchy....

MF: Although I’ve used it a few times here, I try to keep the word “We” out of my songs. I can’t really speak for a Canadian sense of ‘We’. As I mentioned, this is a very decentralized federation. That, and geographical stretched-outedness, have kept jingo-ism to a minimum. Plus not having been territorially attacked since 1812… Patriotism here gathers around a few totems: “We’re Not The U.S.”, “Look At All This Geography!”, “Expo ’67 was Great!”, “The Shining Mosaic”, “We’ve always punched above our weight in global conflict except for the last few decades!”, “Nice Flag, yes?” would be a few examples. By and large, patriotic outbursts are still a little surprising when they occur, and one almost always remarks if one sees a Canadian flag on a house or car. This is starting to change. In the last World Cup, when Toronto became a sea of international flags, some people were starting to say that perhaps folks should put one Maple Leaf on the car as well as the other flag. Maple Trees, by the way, only really grow in Ontario, Quebec, and bits of the Maritimes.

CITC: With Früvous and certainly on your own, you must have touched every corner of Canada--is there anywhere in the country you haven't been or plan on going?

MF: I would love to visit The newest Territory (created from the eastern part of NWT) Nunavut, I would love to camp in the laird River area of south-west Yukon...but as I'm from Ontario, where I mostly want to go is to the shores of James Bay (Moosonee, Moose Factory, Kasheshewan; I want to go to these places with a huge truckload of books, clothes, musical instruments, money, etc. I know charity isn't the answer, but the poverty up there is staggering, from what I read. I also want to experience the largely ignored fact that my home province has a huge salt-water coast.

CITC: In your estimation, what's the current state of Canadian politics? Seems things have gone a bit...conservative. Does that surprise you?

MF: No surprise there. Corporate/Transnational power has been working for years to yank Canada’s policies to the right--the decade-plus of ‘Liberal’ government we recently tossed was a center-right version of its old namesakes, and the minority Conservatives now holding the reins are easily the most ‘rightist’ pols we’ve ever had on the federal level (they saw fit to wipe the word ‘progressive’ from their party’s name). So, massive efforts usually pay off. Social Conservatives are making inroads with this government as well. The best illustration of their bent is that Dubya calls Stephen Harper (our Prime Minister) ‘my pal Steve’--and the PM just loves this. Spooky, spooky times. All that said, if one wants a majority government, one has to get the heck over into the Canadian Center of the polity, which is often called ‘socialist’ south of the border. So already the Conservatives are tabling a Please Elect Us With a Majority budget, full of cash-give-always and apparent environmental concern. Those on the right are screaming ‘What happened to our champions?’ All they have to do is wait for that majority to happen, then their cherished leaders will quit the charade and fulfill Head Office dreams. All THAT said, these times do have a way of concentrating and inspiring activists on ‘the other side’ (sorry I’m slipping so far into Spectrum-ese here). We’re just getting started. An interesting ‘poll-based’ (oh, Christ) insight is that if you take away Quebec, the average opinions slant decidedly one way, and if you take away Alberta, average responses go way progressive, pluralistic, international, etc. I’ll refrain from the obvious “Hey, wanna trade Alberta for Madison, Ann Arbor, Burlington and some other chunks of the Northeast, cousin?” remarks. Sorry, that wasn’t very good refraining, was it? In any case, it’s a funny country. The Bumblebee Nation, it is sometimes called. Apparently the bumblebee, aerodynamically, should not be able to fly at all, but low and behold, it does. Is Canada really a country? Beyond all reason, evidently, it is. Which makes it fun to sing about.

CITC: There's certainly a fervent and adorational Preservation Society out there for your old band--do you find that they have been supportive of the new material?

MF: What I presently am doing is virtually invisible to the throngs of Früvous fans we once knew. There are about 13 people who have been super-supportive and wonderful, but beyond that, I’m not aware of any stateside Frü-folk having any idea that I make CD’s or perform or anything. I was a bit surprised by this at one point, but c’est la vie. I have no complaints--I’m doing fabulously career-wise, and real happy artistically, and if we didn’t have those amazing supporters through the nineties, I wouldn’t have been able to keep music going as a career and morph into what I’m doing now.

CITC: What are your future plans--do you anticipate more volumes in the series?

MF: Not as in Volume 3, 4 etc, but I’ll definitely continue to make recordings of the songs I’m creating; most often with a particular theme or educational aspect involved. In a few months I’ll be releasing an album called Satellite Hotstove, a follow-up of Stars Shone On Toronto, I suppose--stuff I’ll be singing at this year’s Vancouver Folk Festival, among other places--some more environmentally-inspired things, songs from my Laker adventure (got to live on a Great Lakes Freighter last year. My colleague David Francey, a phenomenal singer-songwriter, and I did this together, and in ’09 we hope to do a CD of all our Laker songs, along with an extensive Great Lake towns tour. Also on the back-burner, slowly boiling, is my first French album, tentatively entitled Le Retour d’Étienne Brûlé--he was apparently the first European to see Toronto/southern Ontario (1610)--so I’ll be having fun exploring his story in song, and then having him return to this place in the present day and make comments. And a few musical theatre projects beckon, so VERY occupied is me.

CITC: Can you talk for a bit about Canada Needs You, Volume Two--what are some details you can reveal?

MF: Oh, what the heck, here’s a track listing (as I see it so far).

1. “Creeping Barrage” (watershed Canadian WW1 battle at Vimy Ridge)

2. “In Winnipeg” (General Strike of 1919--an entire city
shut down for 6 weeks)

3. “Tea Party” (Suffragist movement earns women the
right to be declared ‘Persons’ by law, 1929)

4. “Talkin’ Ten Lost Years” (The Depression in a mix of “Talkin’ Blues” and “Goon Show”)

5. “Let’s Mobilize!” (Early swing take on the war effort, 1939/40)

6. “Canada Doesn’t Need You” (described a bit above)

7. “Joey Smallwood” (Napoleonic-Civil-Servant Father of Newfoundland)

8. “Maurice Richard” (Hockey’s most passionate player ever and the riot he triggered)

9. “Expo 67!” (A Psychedelic Montreal Global Party for Canada’s 100th B-Day)

10. “Open For Business” (Free Trade and the dismantling of Canada)

11. “Clayoquot” (Pacific First Nations and Greenpeace fight to save the forest)

12. “I’m Gonna Roam Again” (looking back out at the world, backpack packed)

There’ll be a few others in there, and probably a change or two to what’s above, but so far I’m quite excited with the results.

CITC: Ready for the Canadian Speed Round?

MF: Can’t wait for the speed round!

CITC: Here we go: Favorite Place To Camp In Canada:

MF: Lady Evelyn Smoothwater Provincial Park, near Temagami, Ontario, 6 hours north of Toronto. Must be in early Autumn. Ground will be kissed.

CITC: Favorite Canadian Band Of All Time:

MF: The Rheostatics. About to play their farewell concert next month. Poetic outsider art-rock hewn from the pre-Cambrian shield.

CITC: Favorite Place In Canada To Get A Bagel:

MF: Umpteen places in Montreal, but closer to my home, Gryfe’s Bagel Bakery, 3421 Bathurst St, Toronto.

CITC: Canadian Historical Figure You Most Admire:

MF: I’m going to go quite recent and say Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Yes, yes, all kinds of arrogance and corruption became associated with him, but I admire him just for the fact that he could have had a much more enjoyable life outside politics, but chose to dive in (Prime Minister from 1968 to 1984, less a brief hiccup) and challenged the population to think differently about things.

CITC: Deplore:

MF: Even more recent--Stephen Harper. For tearing up the Kelowna Accord (an historic agreement between Provinces and Ottawa to make massive financial investment into the lives of aboriginal Canadians). Our new PM seems to have ripped up the agreement for the lone reason that ‘The Other Party Thought of It.’

CITC: Favorite Album By A Canadian Band:

MF: Beau Dommage, by Beau Dommage (1972). The Abbey Road of Quebec.

CITC: Favorite Canadian Poet:

MF: Felix Leclerc.

CITC: Favorite Line:

MF: I won’t be able to translate Felix in a satisfactory way, so I’ll quote the last three stanzas of my favorite Irving Layton poem, written after his mother passed away. It’s called “Keine Lazarovitch 1870-1959”:

“And I record she was comfortless, vituperative,
Ignorant, glad, and much else besides: I believe
She endlessly praised her black eyebrows, their thick weave,
Till plagiarizing Death leaned down and took them for his mould
And spoiled a dignity I shall not again find,
And the fury of her stubborn limited mind;
Now none will shake her amber beads and call god blind
Or wear them upon a breast so radiantly
O fierce she was, mean and unaccommodating;
But I think now of the toss of her gold earrings,
Their proud carnal assertion, and her youngest sings
While all the rivers of her red veins move into the sea.”

CITC: Favorite Canadian Television Show:

MF: “Magic Shadows” was on Ontario public TV when I was a lad; it would show 1/5th of a movie each day after school--a movie per week. All black and white classics. And the show’s theme song sounded a bit like “Across The Universe”. Sweeeet.

Discography:

Canada Needs You, Volume Two (October, 2007)

Satellite Hotstove (Summer, 2007)

Canada Needs You Volume One (2005)

Stars Shone On Toronto (2004)

Mike Ford’s recordings are available at www.maplemusic.com

Further Reading:
www.mikeford.ca
www.fruvous.com