SummerStage hosted Montreal DJ Martyn Bootyspoon with hits from Welland, Ont.’s Julianna Riolino and pummelling headliner Death From Above 1979.Sara Hylton/The Globe and Mail
“Okay, you guys wanna hear a song about a … trade war? Pfffft.”
No, Sebastian Grainger, drummer of brilliantly abrasive Toronto punk-dance duo Death from Above 1979. They did not.
After months of 51st state provocations, here, at the Canada Day concert at SummerStage in New York’s Central Park, was the opportunity for rebuttal.
Some concert goers must have come with anticipation. On some level, they probably hoped for a political bench-clearer to defuse the tension and settle things. “Whaddaya call a roomful of Canadians?” goes the old joke. “An apology.” Not anymore, buddy. The irate great north. Elbows up.
Instead, they got – Canada Day.
The SummerStage show had been shifted to July 2 to avoid overlap with a Canadian Association of New York event.Sara Hylton/The Globe and Mail
The show was held on July 2, after President Donald Trump had slapped a 99 per cent tariff on Canada’s July 1 … Kidding. The delay was because of a scheduling conflict with a separate Canuck-themed shindig.
For the Canada Day concert, SummerStage hosted Montreal DJ Martyn Bootyspoon with hits from Welland, Ont.’s engaging ‘60s folk-rocker Julianna Riolino and pummelling headliner DFA. Fireflies bumbled in the humid evening air, twentysomethings trooped across the astroturf to the beer stand while Gen-Xers and boomers sat in the stands languidly waving wee flags.
But Canada’s Consul-General in New York, Tom Clark, made sure to address the GOP elephant in the room from the stage.
“I know you’re here to hear another speech…” he deadpanned to the kids milling in front of the stage. “And it’s safe to say that this Canada Day is a little… different from the ones we’ve celebrated here before.”
Indeed. It came months after Mr. Trump lobbed a fiscal firecracker over the border, announcing massive tariffs across the entire spectrum of Canadian goods, alongside belligerent statements that the U.S. “doesn’t need anything” from Canada. (Cough, four million barrels of crude oil per day, cough.)
Then, came talk of annexation and a “51st state,” and suddenly, a country with no enemies in the world found one on its 8,800-kilometre doorstep. Canadians reeled from baffled to outraged – and Jack Daniel’s and Tito’s were yanked (sorry) from the shelves. And so we had a narrative for this first Canada Day in the new cross-border era.
SummerStage was the wrong place to get a generational perspective on the cross-border issue.Sara Hylton/The Globe and Mail
But Canadians living in NYC tend to be dug-in, as Clark well knows. “We are lucky to have friends all over the U.S.,” he said, “but especially right here in New York City! We’ve been here for 100 years and we’re going to be here.” Reconciliatory, he looked toward political efforts to lower the temperature. “That’s what diplomats do – we ‘diplomat.’ And the best compliment our New York friends can give us is inviting these great Canadian artists to play SummerStage!”
As Riolino opened her set with Against the Grain, you might have thought, here come the politics. And you’d have been mistaken.
For fiftysomething Melanie Ash of Kamloops, B.C., here on a work visa for the better part of 20 years, the trade war is “ridiculous.” It awakened a “steely reserve” within Canadians and while “we’re not showy about it,” when Canadian sovereignty is threatened, she doesn’t hide her feelings, she said.
Mark Weisdorf, a 65-year-old former Torontonian, said he feels Canadians in the city are “under the microscope, if not actual attack” by Mr. Trump. Admittedly, New York is “a bubble, lots of Canadians here who know lots of Americans, and we love one another. People in Toronto are angry, but that’s not the right word here… What is that word when your lover scorns you?”
“Betrayed!” shot in Israeli friend Gabi Haberfeld, 68.
While lamenting the “heightened” atmosphere between neighbours, Sandra Pike of St. John’s said that the national pride generated in Canada “has been incredible. And it will have far more longevity than what triggered it.”
Likewise, Kayla Weisdorf, Toronto ex-pat now U.S. citizen, said, “I’m not into rah-rah nationalism, but I’m happy people want to protect what differentiates us. Canada should’ve been looking after its sovereignty long before this happened.”
Engaging ‘60s folk-rocker Julianna Riolino opened her set with Against the Grain.Sara Hylton/The Globe and Mail
Pike, Weisdorf, Ash are all genially patriotic ex-pats who have lived in New York for about two decades, just slightly less time than the fans in front of the stage have been alive.
But this was the wrong place to get a generational perspective on the cross-border issue. As DFA ground through the sinewy squall of Going Steady, every interaction with some two dozen young fans throughout the venue went the same way:
“Hey. Can I ask – are you guys Canadian?”
Each responded with the facial flinch of mild regret. The girl with the maple leaf tucked into her scrunchie, the one fanning herself with the Canuck mini-flag, the dude in the Niagara Falls T-shirt – these were American fans.
Grainger and bassist/keyboardist Jesse F. Keeler traded cheeky trivia about how New York’s Shake Shack was somehow inspired by the Burger’s Priest and self-deprecating gags about “my home suburb, Mississauga,” and there was a squeal from the centre of the crowd. A Canuck! False alarm, upon investigation. Another Yankee gal here for the raw scuzz sound on a summer night.
And perhaps there was a lesson here: Americans, Canadians, young, old, co-existing in the safe space of cultural intercourse, where no politics dare irrupt.
Back to that scheduling conflict. The SummerStage show had been shifted to July 2 to avoid overlap with a Canadian Association of New York event at the City Vineyard club.
Working for the Weekend (Loverboy) and Summer of ’69 (Bryan Adams) soundtracked the soiree on the Hudson River, with folks sipping whatever-tinis and taking photos with the Celine Dion and Drake life-sized cutouts. Where Michael La Fleur, board member of CANY, offered the salve that “initial fears are subsiding, leaders are talking and people are feeling positive.”
And is there anything more Canadian than Canada Day stepping aside for another Canada Day? For a short while, the putative 51st state held sway in Manhattan. Peace on the Hudson, peace on the plains of SummerStage. Eleventh province, anyone? In Central Park, as DFA drove to its visceral close, fans were making their way to the exit turnstiles. You could pick out the Canadians, the ones stopping by the recycling bins.
Sara Hylton/The Globe and Mail
