Damn Flag Flap - Only In Canada you say?

The Fleur de lis on the Maple Leaf?

My Good Times With Stompin’ Tom - Chapter 4 - Flag Flap

I learned early on during my first tour in 1990 that Tom didn’t particularly welcome ideas on how to improve the show. Tom had his own agenda and that was all there was to it. If he didn’t think it was his idea, he wanted nothing to do with it.

After watching a few shows, I naively concluded that some of the show was a bit hokey. At breakfast one morning, I looked across the table at Tom and made a suggestion regarding the stage lights that I thought would add some drama to the “flag segment.” The segment I’m referring to involved an enormous Canadian flag that was designed to slowly unfurl as he walked on to the stage each night. What made it a political statement was the little Fleur de Lis printed in the middle of the maple leaf. Subtle, but the message was clear.

When the unfurling mechanism worked well, it was quite dramatic and always triggered an “ahhhh” from the crowd. The mechanism had its problems.

The flag represented Tom’s belief that Quebec and Canada were the best of friends if only Mulroney and his pals would leave well enough alone. His message was clear: Mr. Canada, the Right Honourable Member from Skinners Pond, had arrived with his piece of plywood and Bud the Spud. All was going to be good in Canada.

Mostly, the unfurling worked flawlessly. But occasionally, it would get snagged on something and it would drop down crooked, or worse, not drop down at all. Sometimes it would be hanging there, all askew. If you were the kind of person who just had to get up and straighten a crooked painting, regardless of who’s wall it was on, this would have had you on the edge of your seat, like the feeling we get when someone scrapes their nails across a piece of glass. Whenever this happened, the entire theatre tensed up… you could feel it in the audience, crew and the band. I spent my time sitting on the edge of my seat trying to use psychokinesis to make the damn thing unfurl properly.

The only person who didn’t know this was happening was Tom. With his back to the flag, he was busy stompin’ and singing what was always his first song of the show, Bud The Spud. Some nights it was like watching an aerialist almost losing his balance on a high wire. No one moved. Eventually, someone from the crew would have to run on stage and straighten it out. My job description might have been pages long but I didn’t see this written anywhere. I just sat on the side of the stage and watched the drama unfold.

What the audience didn’t realize was that the setup, the framing and the rolling up of the flag consumed much of the afternoon. It sometimes took a crew three or four hours to assemble this home made contraption. It was more a pain in the ass than anything.

I suggested we unfurl it before he walked out on stage but that fell on deaf ears. As did my stage lighting idea.