Stompin’ Tom Connors

Stompin’ Tom Connors was a renowned folksinger, an ardent nationalist and spokesperson for ordinary Canadians.

In the 1995 CBC The National interview with Laurie Brown he says, “That’s what I’m trying to do for Canadians. I’m trying to uplift my country…I’m trying to make the young people realize we have something to sing about.”

Many Canadians know the lyrics off by heart of his best-known songs.

Bud the Spud

It's bud the spud from the bright red mud
Goin down the Hiway smiling-
The Spuds are big on the back of Bud's rig
And they're from Prince Edward Island they're from PEI

The Ketchup Song

There was a guy from PEI they used to call Podato
He met this young Leamington Ontario Tomato

Man Moon Newfie

You might think its goofie, but the man in the moon is a Newfie
And he's sailin on to glory, away in the golden dory....

Connor’s songs were always about the places where Canadians worked and lived and he paid tribute to their efforts, successes, and difficulties.

Ressor Crossing Tragedy is Tom’s version of events that happened in 1963 when three members of the Lumber and Sawmill Workers Union were shot and killed and eight others injured.

The Spruce Falls Power and Paper Company, which was the main supplier of newsprint to the New York Times who were part owner of the mill, had proposed a wage freeze. The union went on strike and tried to stop loggers from supplying wood to the mill.

Although there were 12 OPP officers present no criminal charges were ever laid against those who killed the strikers, but the strikers, in turn, were charged with unlawful assembly and rioting. The Judge was critical of the OPP’s method of investigation.

“You'll never load that pile of lumber"
Said the Union men, when they came
Though they numbered about five hundred
The 20 farmers took rifle aim

Reesor Siding Memorial, Kapuskasing, Ontario

Charles Thomas Connors was born on February 9, 1936, at the General Hospital in Saint John, New Brunswick, to Isabel Connors and Thomas Joseph Sullivan. It was a poverty-stricken family and Tom lived a hard life until his singing began to give him stability.

Laurie Brown, in her CBC interview, narrates, “When he was eight years old the Police and the Children’s Aid caught up with Tom and his mother who had stolen food to feed her kids. He was literally torn from his mother’s arms, and they wouldn’t be together again for 11 years.”

He was put in an orphanage and from there in an adoptive family in Skinners Pond, Prince Edward Island where he left at age 13 and travelled nearly everywhere in Canada for the next 13 years.

The true story goes that at his last stop in Timmins, Ontario, he found himself a nickel short of a 35-cent beer at the city's Maple Leaf Hotel. Connors told the bartender to put the cap back on the bottle and he'd head for the Sally Ann, but the bartender, Gaëtan Lepine, accepted the 30 cents and offered him a second beer if he would open his guitar case and play a few songs. These few songs turned into a 14-month run at the hotel, a weekly spot on CKGB in Timmins, eight 45-RPM recordings, and the end of the beginning for Tom Connors.

From his book The Connors Tone Tom writes, “…our actors, singers, writers, musicians and producers were moving out of Canada.

The result of this is that most of our Canadian children, getting up in the morning and going to school, are humming and whistling the lyrics and melodies of songs that not only don’t remind them of who they are as Canadians, but continually bombard their minds with the notion that their opportunities in life are far greater in a foreign country.

Canada deserves a people who know exactly who and what they are and where the hell they are going.”

In the early 1970’s Tom launched protests against the governments lack of support for artists telling Canadian stories. He directed his views at the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) and also boycotted the Juno Awards in protest of the qualification guidelines set by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS). He strongly opposed artists who conducted most of their business in the United States being nominated for Junos in Canada.

Tom sent back his six Juno awards with a letter that included, “I feel that the Junos should be for people who are living in Canada, whose main base of business operations is in Canada. Until the academy appears to comply more closely with aspirations of this kind, I will no longer stand for any nominations, nor will I accept any award given.”

The CBC made numerous requests to Tom to have a concert of his recorded that they would air. At a cost of $200,000.00 of his own money Tom recorded his 2006 Hamilton concert.

But when it was sent to the CBC, Connors says he was told the network was moving away from music and variety shows and that it was not interested in airing the performance.

In an open letter, Connors says the network added insult to injury by suggesting he perform a song on the CBC series Hockeyville or be interviewed for a segment of the biography series Life and Times.

"As far as I'm concerned, if the CBC, our own public network, will not reconsider their refusal to air a Stompin' Tom special, they can take their wonderful offer of letting me sing a song as a guest on some other program and shove it.", Connors wrote.

Writing in The Connors Tone about his 1972 Massey Hall sold-out concert he says, “The illustrious reputation of the great Massey Hall would never be the same again. She had never seen this kind of crowd before, and neither did a lot of these people have previous cause to come here before. It was like some kind of revolution had taken place.”

He is credited with writing more than 300 songs and has released four dozen albums, with total sales of nearly four million copies.

He won 6 Juno awards, became a Member of the Order of Canada, was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from The Society of Composers (SOCAN), received a Doctorate from St. Thomas University, became an Officer of the Order of Canada, awarded a Lifetime Artistic Achievement award for Popular Music from the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards, given honorary LL.D.s from the University of Toronto and the University of Prince Edward Island and a SOCAN award for Lifetime Achievement.

In 1993, he declined to be inducted into the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame.

He wrote two books. Before the Fame, about the first 30 years of his life and Stompin’ Tom and the Connors Tone.

To promote Canadian artists, he formed several recording companies.

Liona Boyd recalled in 2013 about the time Connors signed her to his 1971 Boot Records label. “As I understood it, he wasn't really a fan of classical music, but he had heard Canada had no classical label. So, bless him, he went and decided he'd be the first one. And he signed myself and the Canadian Brass. It's like me deciding, ‘Well listen, maybe I don't know much about rap, but hey Canada's doesn't have a rap label, I'll go and do it.’ So, he was a bit of a pioneer with classical music.”

There is a road named after him in PEI and a commemorative statue in Sudbury.

The Stompin’ Tom Centre in PEI opened on July1, 2017 in Skinner’s Pond, Prince Edward Island. From the Centre’s website, Chad Matthews, who sings Tom’s songs at the Centre said, "Every song that Tom wrote and played, told a story - you don't get that a whole lot now."

Some of Connors' better-known songs include Bud the Spud, Big Joe Mufferaw, The Black Donnellys, The Martin Hartwell Story, Reesor Crossing Tragedy, Sudbury Saturday Night, and The Hockey Song. This last, often incorrectly called The Good Old Hockey Game, is frequently played over sound systems at National Hockey League (NHL) games.

He probably stomped his foot to keep time and after numerous complaints about damaged stage floors he used a piece of plywood. The stompin board became one of his trademarks and it’s reported that when asked about it he replied, "It's just a stage I'm going through."

Canadians loved to hear these songs in simple language and colourful images. It’s rare that the people’s weal and woe is heard in song. Here’s another example.