Dee
07-02-2006, 11:19 AM
Gretzky's stick, Trudeau's paddle mesh to form ultimate Canadian guitar (http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/01072006/2/entertainment-gretzky-s-stick-trudeau-s-paddle-mesh-form-ultimate.html)
TORONTO (CP) - Jowi Taylor spent more than a decade assembling a collection of quintessentially Canadian artifacts that define us as a nation:
Pierre Trudeau's canoe paddle. The ship deck of the Bluenose II. Paul Henderson's hockey stick. The Golden Spruce.
And when he finally found them, Taylor had the treasured icons torn apart, chopped up and mashed together until they bore no resemblance to their original forms.
The result was the Six String Nation Guitar - a uniquely Canadian instrument made up of symbols and stories from sea to sea.
The honey-coloured acoustic with the stylized Maple Leaf makes its debut performance in Ottawa on Saturday in the hands of Ontario singer-songwriter Stephen Fearing...
Rizsanyi built the guitar in his workshop near Pinehurst, N.S.
There's not one part of the instrument - inside or out - that doesn't reveal a piece of Canada's history.
Most of the front piece is cut from the Golden Spruce - a majestic 300-year-old tree revered by the Haida-Gwaii of British Columbia and cut down by a madman in 1997.
The guitar's neck is a laminate of several pieces including the Bluenose, a bagel shibba (used to move bagels in and out of brick ovens) from Montreal, and oak from the St. Boniface Museum in Manitoba, the building in which Louis Riel went to school.
The pick guard - a Maple Leaf in three parts - is stained with red ochre from Newfoundland and includes part of the homes of basketball inventor John Naismith and John Ware, a respected black cowboy who died just days after Alberta became a province of Canada in 1905.
The leaf stem is made up of one of Henderson's hockey sticks, a Wayne Gretzky hockey stick and a seat from the Montreal Forum.
Unseen inside is a piece of wood from Fan Tan Alley, Canada's first Chinatown in Victoria; Nancy Greene's childhood skis, and one of Trudeau's canoe paddles.
"The actual physical guitar is maybe even less important than what it's made of and what it represents," says Fearing, who will play his song The Longest Road before passing the guitar to Colin Linden, Tom Wilson and other musicians during the Canada Day performance.
(more ...)
TORONTO (CP) - Jowi Taylor spent more than a decade assembling a collection of quintessentially Canadian artifacts that define us as a nation:
Pierre Trudeau's canoe paddle. The ship deck of the Bluenose II. Paul Henderson's hockey stick. The Golden Spruce.
And when he finally found them, Taylor had the treasured icons torn apart, chopped up and mashed together until they bore no resemblance to their original forms.
The result was the Six String Nation Guitar - a uniquely Canadian instrument made up of symbols and stories from sea to sea.
The honey-coloured acoustic with the stylized Maple Leaf makes its debut performance in Ottawa on Saturday in the hands of Ontario singer-songwriter Stephen Fearing...
Rizsanyi built the guitar in his workshop near Pinehurst, N.S.
There's not one part of the instrument - inside or out - that doesn't reveal a piece of Canada's history.
Most of the front piece is cut from the Golden Spruce - a majestic 300-year-old tree revered by the Haida-Gwaii of British Columbia and cut down by a madman in 1997.
The guitar's neck is a laminate of several pieces including the Bluenose, a bagel shibba (used to move bagels in and out of brick ovens) from Montreal, and oak from the St. Boniface Museum in Manitoba, the building in which Louis Riel went to school.
The pick guard - a Maple Leaf in three parts - is stained with red ochre from Newfoundland and includes part of the homes of basketball inventor John Naismith and John Ware, a respected black cowboy who died just days after Alberta became a province of Canada in 1905.
The leaf stem is made up of one of Henderson's hockey sticks, a Wayne Gretzky hockey stick and a seat from the Montreal Forum.
Unseen inside is a piece of wood from Fan Tan Alley, Canada's first Chinatown in Victoria; Nancy Greene's childhood skis, and one of Trudeau's canoe paddles.
"The actual physical guitar is maybe even less important than what it's made of and what it represents," says Fearing, who will play his song The Longest Road before passing the guitar to Colin Linden, Tom Wilson and other musicians during the Canada Day performance.
(more ...)