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You are about to encounter a whole lot of stories wrapped up into one long dribble of typyness, so you’re gonna wanna either buckle up and settle in or simply move on.
Ahem [cracks knuckles].
Before I moved to Ottawa I always assumed that July 1st was just another one of the calendar’s too-few days off, that Canada Day was basically the same as Labour Day, with nothing to celebrate aside from a chance to sleep in on a weekday (five-sevenths of the time, anyway).
Not so for the nation’s capital city, as it turns out. Oh no, in Ottawa Canada Day is the biggest celebration of the year! It’s three Christmases piled on top of a half-dozen New Years Eve’s, an Easter or two, and at least five Groundhog Days, and it lasts from daybreak on every July 1st until the wee hours, or as long as one can keep at ‘er.
But you gotta make it at least until the fireworks.
My first real Canada Day was in 1990, the summer following my first year of university which saw me staying in Ottawa working a pretty sweet government gig in the Music Acquisitions department of the National Library of Canada. Meanwhile I was playing in an actual touring rock n’ roll band and just generally continuing along having the time of my life. When the summer-centre long weekend came I found myself inundated with school chums visiting from far and wide, all back in town to rip it up right for Canada’s 123rd birthday.
I remember quite vividly that my friend, my roommate for the summer, and the drummer in my band Pat drove our formidable crew downtown in my red Toyota minivan, dropping us off on Prince of Wales directly in front of the National Defence building. And when we all piled out of the van I was astounded to count…now let me just stop right here and acknowledge that there’s no way you’re going to believe this, but it’s true: I was astounded to count a full twenty-two of us standing on the sidewalk. So, including the driver (who left us behind and drove home) we had been twenty-three people in my minivan, a record that would be still standing when the van was declared deceased 200,000 hard kilometres later.
Anyway, I gathered our sizeable crew and took it upon myself to act as tour guide, herding us first to the windows of the nearby Rideau Centre foodcourt where I pretended I was leading my group through a local zoo. Everyone immediately caught on and played along, variously pointing at one luncher or another and tapping on the glass.
“Please don’t tease the animals!” I yelled, lifting my arm officiously in the air. “Right then, this way to our next attraction…” I really don’t know what came over me, but I ended up play/acting as a professional tour guide for the whole day, with the punchline being that I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing because this was my first time experiencing Ottawa’s massive Canada Day crowds. It was also very out-of-character for me at the time and very eye-opening, as were the many wonders that I beheld amongst the hundreds of thousands of fellow red & white revellers we met throughout the downtown core.
I believe it was the following Canada Day when I found myself arrive downtown with a small group of friends and a soft-sided cooler full of beers. There were maybe three or four of us sitting on the grass near the War Memorial under a thirsty sun when we noticed a couple of police officers going from picnic blanket to picnic blanket making people pour out their liquor. I thought this was quite odd as I had been under the impression that Ottawa liquor laws were cast aside on Canada Day, but clearly I was mistaken. We casually finished the beers in our hands (though we still had a bunch in the cooler) as the cops made their way through the park. When they got to us one of them asked, “You guys have any beers with you?”
Without thinking nor missing a beat I replied while reaching for the cooler, “Sure! You wanna buy some?!?” And I swear on all that is holy, those two cops just chuckled, shook their heads and moved on. The cops continued working through the remaining park-sitters, emptying everyone else’s drinks before strolling out of the park and down Elgin Street. We cracked more beers.
I had somehow totally mind-tricked them and I swear to this day I don’t know how or why that went down as it did*.
Needless to say, Canada Day in Ottawa became an unmissable event and while the feel and style of my annual celebration in the capital has morphed over the years it has always maintained a touch of glory that makes it stand out from all of the other annual celebrations. Maybe it’s because it’s the one day of the year where we as a people cast aside just enough of our clichéd (and utterly accurate) politeness to be able to show the pride in our country that most of us tend to feel but are loath to actually show. (It’s part of the whole “we’re Canadians because we’re not Americans” thing.)
Anywho, for a spell my Canada Day evolved to include an annual all-day backyard bands & beer party at the notorious Ottawa address of 40 Main Street, an event that I was asked to MC on at least two occasions. As you can see from the ticket included above, today’s missive is ostensibly (if not verbosely) focussed on one of those parties. Unfortunately not every Ottawa Canada Day I’ve experienced came with a ticket, not even the 40 Main parties, so the bulk of my deliriously celebratory nationalistic memories shall likely remain unrecorded except in my ever-eroding mind. Aside from those that spill out here, of course. And so I spill:
Even before 40 Main got in on the Canada Day act there was Spruce Street. Briefly:
Ottawa once had it’s own little Haight-Ashbury-like community, and it was on Spruce Street. Several of the local heady bands lived on the street, and a bunch of other freaks besides. There was no end to the parties and band practises, impromptu jams and a myriad of wacky going-ons, including two separate marriages that took place right in the middle of the street.
Of course an area such as this would have mammoth Canada Day parties and they did, out back in a parking lot. Barbecues, coolers, and bands would be hummin’ all day long, and afterwards everyone would head down to the fireworks.
As I have mentioned elsewhere in these writeups, I used to manage an instrumental rock trio called nero. Back when the band was just starting out those Spruce Street Canada Day parties were important gigs. The guys were always really excited to play them and I was always really excited to be there drinking beers, eating hot dogs, and watching the band make new fans. And bless their hearts, when nero grew into a pretty serious act touring throughout the US and Canada they insisted I continue to make room for them to play Spruce Street every Canada Day, even as the parties faded to little more than a small backyard barbecue.
By the time July 1st, 2004 came around Spruce Street was just a ghost of what it once was (by now even the ghosts have moved on), but there were still enough freaks around to keep the Canada Day tradition alive.
And just like that I am finally ready to begin today’s ticket tale. Yes, that was all just the warmup.
I started my 2004 Canada Day peering out of my window and finding ominous skies. I headed over to Spruce Street in time for nero to start their mini-set at 2:30 in the afternoon. They were set up under a makeshift covering that was merely a tarp that was lashed to a tree, a fence, and the two speaker cabinets. As soon as nero started playing it started to rain, if only lightly.
After no more than a minute the rain started to get serious and within three minutes the storm had collapsed the tarp and pulled down the speaker cabs with it. The band and I scrambled to keep the gear under wraps while a dozen others jumped in to help. As hailstones the size of pennies fell amidst a formidable wind and torrential rain we all cowered under the tarp, each person acting as a human tent-pole in an effort to keep ourselves and the equipment dry.
After a half-hour the storm had abated enough for the crowd of us to simply cover everything up and get out from under the tarp, and before long the sky turned on a dime and just like that it was the nicest day that could be.
It was under miraculously sunny skies that we loaded up the van, and while the guys headed to Café Dekcuf to set up I popped into the raging party that was happening at 40 Main. When I got there I found at least three hundred people packed into the backyard along with fifteen kegs of beer, a whole pile of soul-drenching sunshine, and good live music.
I saw Huxtable at this 40 Main party for sure, I remember that. I’m sure half of the band members were living at 40 Main at the time, along with Jason from Comfort Station; it’s not like these guys were hiring a booking agent or anything. And I saw The Grant Buffett Experience too…I remember him having a pretty funny novelty song (which is also my main schtick I guess) that I’ve been spending this whole writing exercise trying to remember (sorry if I have seemed distracted). I’m pretty sure the song was food-related…it’ll come to me. I’ll probably yell it out in the middle of some other ticket story. Hope you read this one first.
Believe it or not, despite all this blatant fun I only managed to stick around for about forty-five minutes – an hour tops – as I simply had to go home and sleep off some of the afternoon’s booze before working the door at nero’s pending show at Cafe Dekcuf.
(Canada Day is always a long day, and if you wanna make it to the end, sometimes a nap is necessary. I mean, sure, I could have made it to the fireworks without taking a nap but with a full-on bar show in the works and serious afterparty potential taboot, well, I needed the nap.)
I slept for about two-and-a-half hours and woke up late, so I raced down to Dekcuf on my bicycle and arrived sweaty, out-of-breath, and a bit hung over, and all this with a head full of Neo-Citron and Contact C to battle a nasty tour-hack I had picked up during a weekend of Phish at SPAC. I set up my merch area and nicked next door to grab a slice of ‘za. I was out there when the fireworks started so I scurried across the street to watch. My gosh, the Canada Day fireworks always knock me out. They just keep going and going. And going and going.
And going.
I tells ya, I’ve never seen fireworks like Canada Day fireworks. They were still going off when I went inside and took my place at the door of Cafe Dekcuf.
Once the fireworks were finished the bar filled up in a hurry. Though my wits were nowhere to be seen I managed to nail at least forty people trying to sneak in. But soon enough the capacity was hit, the door was closed, and we all settled in for a night of great music. And that’s what we got. nero really tore it up; I could tell that they were having the best time playing that they’d had in some time. During the second set they sprung a surprise tune that they had learned for the upcoming Come Together Music Festival, plus they cranked out a killer version of Pink Floyd’s Echoes, a rare vocal tune with the bass player doing the singing. The crowd loved it and for good reason.
When the band called it a night I decided to do my body a favour and did the same, bowing out of that inevitable afterparty in favour of a half-decent sleep in my own bed.
My goodness, I have always loved Canada Day. Once I moved to Ottawa, that is.
(Was that Grant Buffett song about pickles? If so it would make for some good novelty rhyming…or maybe it was about spaghetti**, which also has good rhyming-potential. Heck, these are both great ideas but I’m afraid to try to write them myself lest I subconsciously channel the Grant Buffett song I can’t remember and get nicked for plagiarism.)
*I pulled a similar trick at a RIDE program once when I merely slowed my packed van to a crawl, rolled my window down and, gesturing with my thumb to the gear piled high in the back I yelled to the officer, “I’m with the band.” He waved me through without a second glance. I swear I might as well have told him that these weren’t the droids he was looking for. I wish I knew how I did that.
**I yelled it out at 3:45am last night. The song was indeed about spaghetti***.
***I’ve since been reminded that the song was called Pasta Pasta, so I think I was at least technically correct/incorrect and/is was/were at least in the ball park if not nailing it completely, which I basically did, with “spaghetti”. I’m sure you agree. Right?
Todd Man Out 