Welcome to Season 2, Episode 5 of Something Like Love.  And hey, Merry Christmas, too!

Like many Canadians of a certain age, the soundtrack to a few decades of my life has been the music of the Tragically Hip. I saw them perform several times, and used a line from their song “We’ll Go Too” (from the album "Fully Completely") as an epigraph to my long-ago-published novel, Tell Me Everything. 

This is that line: “Museum’s locked and it’s long since past closing, you cannot know, you cannot not know what you’re knowing.” I wrote to the band’s manager for permission to use the line, and she granted it. I paid a nominal $50 fee, and was asked to send each member of the band a copy of the book, which of course I did. The manager surprised and delighted me when she told me that when the Hip came to perform in Saskatoon  - where I was living at the time -  that year,  I was invited backstage and meet the band. 

I consulted Wikipedia to get some information about one of the Hip’s best-loved songs, "Bobcaygeon," which I used to plan this week’s episode of my podcast.

"The song is named after Bobcaygeon, Ontario, a town about 160 km northeast of Toronto. The song's narrator works in the city as a police officer, a job he finds stressful and sometimes ponders quitting, but [he] unwinds from the stress and restores his spirit by spending his weekends with a loved one in the rural idyll of Bobcaygeon, where he sees 'the constellations/reveal themselves one star at a time' in contrast to the city's 'dull and hypothetical' skies that are 'falling one cloud at a time'.

In live performances, Tragically Hip singer Gord Downie (RIP) typically explained 'Bobcaygeon' as a 'cop love song,' though the sex and identity of the narrator's beloved change from performance to performance.  According to Downie, the song was not specifically written about the town itself, but rather any small town would have worked for the theme and he settled on 'Bobcaygeon' primarily because it was the only place name he could find that came close to rhyming with 'constellation.'" The song is also about racism and anti-semitism. It’s a powerful and emotional song about serious things. 

The cover band "The Tragically Hits" put out a call for Canadians to come together to sing  “Bobcaygeon” at 6 p.m. on  Sunday, April 5th, 2020.  Richard Kyle, a Bobcaygeon resident and member of the cover band asked people around Canada to  “Sing Bobcaygeon From Your Front Porch” asa show of solidarity with the town after more than two dozen residents of its Pinecrest Nursing home died of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020. I didn’t play it on my porch, but I did play it for the first time on my guitar this spring. 

The word "morning" appears several times in the song … and Morning is my theme this week. 

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Are you a morning person? I’ve certainly become one as I get older. I start almost every day with a morning walk, hike or run in Ladysmith, where I am surrounded by the woods, waterfalls, and wild things. I moved here in 2014, and I am in love with this community.

This week  I’m sharing an essay from a manuscript called "Wet and Slippery and Breathing." This essay, titled "Ladysmith," was written one spring, on a golden morning …

At the end of this podcast you'll also find a very brief meditation idea. Hey, it's late December. Take a little time for yourself. xo
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If you enjoyed this podcast, please tell a friend. And go well, wherever you are.