Few musicians have captured the essence of Canada quite like Stompin' Tom Connors. His impact and legacy are rivalled perhaps only by the Tragically Hip, making him a true icon of the nation's music fans.
The folk singer-songwriter wrote hundreds of songs in his long career—virtually all of them focussed on the trials and tribulations of the Canadian working class. A number of those songs include locations of note in Northern Ontario, where Stompin' Tom spent a good deal of time over his years (including a famous 14-month stint performing at Timmins’ Maple Leaf Hotel, which according to legend began when he found himself a nickel short for a beer and sang for his supper).
Here are seven Stompin’ Tom Connors songs inspired by real places and events in Northern Ontario.
One of Stompin’ Tom’s most famous songs, this one offers a peek into the hard-partying lives of Sudbury’s nickel miners. First released in 1967, the song describes how after a long week deep in the mines, the workers cut loose — or get “stinko” as he puts it. While nickel mining is not as robust an industry as it was in Stompin' Tom's day, there are still plenty of great gathering places to “drink the loot we borrowed and recuperate tomorrow.” Plus the famous Big Nickel, of course.
Another tale of hard-working miners eager to get to the end of their shift, this classic focuses on the workers digging for uranium “on the shores of Elliot Lake,” about 150km west of Sudbury. The men head home for supper and then out to the Algoden Hotel (the first hotel in Elliot Lake and a well-known hot spot in the 1960s). This tune of “hard hats, boots and oilers” is best summed up in one of Stompin' Tom’s own lyrics that's become the unofficial name of the tune: “a damn good song for a miner.”
This tune about miners focuses less on cutting loose after a shift and squarely on the risks of the work itself. It tells the tale of the McIntyre Mine fire, in Timmins, that broke out in February 1965 and drew in rescuers “From Sudbury to Noranda,” but proved impossible to extinguish (the fire actually led to the adoption of a new apparatus that allowed for four hours of breathing, versus the two that was standard at the time). While Connors discusses the death of a miner that resulted from the fire, he also emphasizes the economic risk of the job—thousands of workers wait in fear that the fire won’t be extinguished and they'll be forced to “see our children hungry” and “have to leave the town.”
This song tackles “the bloodiest labour battle” in Canadian history, in which 11 union members were shot and killed during a confrontation in the small town of Reesor Siding. Taking place “Just a little bit west of Kapuskasing,” as Stompin' Tom says in the first line of this song, violence erupted between the farmers and Ontario Provincial Police on one side, trying to load cords of lumber onto railcars, and the union members on the other side who declare, as the lyric puts it “You’ll never load that pile of lumber.” Though Reesor Siding is a ghost town now, the tragic event is marked by a roadside monument and plaque—and memorialized in song, of course.
The closest thing to a love song on this list, in this one the narrator expresses his regret at leaving his sweetheart in Sault Ste. Marie while he headed north on the titular Algoma Central Railway line. After hearing stories about her being “on a bar hoppin’ spree,” the speaker tries urgently to get back to the Soo, getting impatient as he waits for the return train to take him back, regretting that “because of me, she’s now a fallen star.” As anyone who has been to the Soo in recent years can attest, while it’s hardly the den of temptation Stompin' Tom presents it as, there are certainly plenty of great options for a “bar hoppin’ spree.”
This is a tragic love story about a Canada goose named Little Wawa whose lover, Gander Goo, is shot down with an arrow. Rather than continue flying south, Little Wawa stays behind and eventually “died of heartbreak.” Though as Stompin' Tom explains in the song, out of this sad tale, “A legend she became,” with a famous roadside statue of the goose off Highway 17 “In a town that bears her name.”
Sure, Neil Diamond has “Sweet Caroline,” but this tune gives us “sweet Carolyn”—the sweetheart of the song’s protagonist, a man working hard in a mine to make enough money to buy his girl a diamond ring. As he begins work in Timmins’ Hollinger Mine (Stompin’ Tom even kicks off the tune by spelling out the city name and later says they will “paint this Timmins town fine”), the song’s narrator admits “I don’t care if my back gets sore,” as long as he can make Carolyn’s “blue eyes shine.” Stompin’ Tom always reminded us that hard, risky work had its rewards.
