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A storied life of art and activism: James Gordon takes a musical aim at climate change

In this Arts and Culture feature we join musician, songwriter, playwright, activist and politician James Gordon as he rehearses for his Emergency Climate Musical

In his song Frozen on Frobisher Bay, James Gordon tells the fateful story of a whaler longing for the love and warmth of home while trapped with his crewmates in the winter sea ice of the arctic.

“I was obsessed with reading about arctic explorers and it was a very common story of these greedy whaling boat captains,” said Gordon. “They would just want to get one more whale and then they’d be rich and they would tempt the ice too much and get stuck.”

It is one of Gordon’s most requested and covered songs, having been recorded by more than 100 different artists around the world, but curiously not by the person who compelled him to write it, his good friend Jane Sibbery.

“She called me up and said she was asked to perform on a benefit album for saving the oceans that Peter Gabriel was putting together,” said Gordon. “She said I want to do a song about the Arctic Ocean. Do you have one? I wrote it overnight and sent it to her the next day.”

The song didn’t make the cut for the benefit album but three years later it became the title track for a 1993 album by Tamarack, a band Gordon co-founded in 1978.

“Its first performance was in the arctic at the Dawson City Music Festival and the backup singers were the Barenaked Ladies,” said Gordon. “They had just made a hit with If I Had a Million Dollars but were still playing these small festivals.”

That is the story behind just one of the many songs in Gordon’s catalogue of tunes.

He has written and co-written hundreds of songs many of which were captured on the eight records he recorded with Tamarack and the 20 solo albums he has released. He has, among other things, contributed music to movie soundtracks, collaborated in the production and performance of musical plays for children and has written and performed six musicals.

The musicals have allowed Gordon to combine his song-writing and storytelling skills with his environmental and social justice activism.

“It did seem like an effective way to communicate the message and it was fun,” he said. “We musicians have big egos and we like to think we are making a big difference but sometimes you can say, I think I did make a little bit of difference.”

His latest Emergency Climate Musical is a one-man show that – spoiler alert – raises the alarm about climate change.

“From a theatrical standpoint, these are one man shows,” he said. “I thought what can make this less boring than one man with his guitar. So, there are props and things like that.”

One of those props is a puppet wearing a Hallowe’en mask of Donald Trump that he first introduced during his production of Stephen Harper: The Musical.

“Stephen Harper is under there,” said Gordon. “I recycled him, which is the environmental thing to do. The big part of my thesis in the Harper show was that Harper is just a puppet to big oil and so is Trump.”

Gordon plays a video segment in the show produced by his son Evan that shows Trump, Boris Johnson and Doug Ford as the Three Stooges singing backup vocals.

“They sing a new version from the Harper musical called ‘We’re Just Puppets’ and I dance with the puppet so it is pretty fun,” said Gordon. “When I put those three faces together it stimulates conversation and people ask, ‘Why are we electing dufusses all over the world like that?”

Gordon, who describes himself as a "poetician" is no stranger to politics having run, unsuccessfully, as the provincial NDP candidate for Guelph in 2011 and 2014. He is also a two-term city councillor for Ward 2 in the city.

“I was tired of standing outside city hall with a placard in my hand,” he said. “I wanted to see what I could do from the inside.”

Gordon made his first entrance into the world in Toronto in 1955 the oldest of two sons and a daughter born to Donald and Katherine Gordon. The family moved to Guelph when he was 12. He graduated from high school at Centennial CVI before studying music and English at the University of Guelph.

“I am the oldest but still the least mature of my siblings,” he said. “I have never had a real job. When I got elected to council that was the first paycheque I’d ever had. I was 59 before I got a job.”

in 1977, while still in university, Gordon opened the Carden Street Café and it became a meeting place for many musicians in the city. He and his wife Val Morse have been together since 1980 and they have two sons Geordie and Evan who are also professional musicians and music producers.

Gordon was a co-founder of the Hillside Festival in 1985 as well as a co-founder of the Wellington Water Watchers, an organization first established in 2007 to challenge Nestle’s water-taking operations in Aberfoyle.

The presentation of the Emergency Climate Musical Friday, Oct. 18, at Royal City Mission on Quebec Street is a fundraiser with 50 per cent of the proceeds going to Wellington Water Watchers.

Gordon said the response to the show especially among young people has been inspiring and he hopes to reach people on all sides of the political divide during the tour.

“If we are all sharing this planet together and this planet is in jeopardy, we have to find a way to do this together,” he said. “We’re on the same side.”

Gordon said that after nearly 50 years in the music business he still has stories to share and new and better songs to write.

“At my shows I have my albums out and people ask what one should I buy,” he said. “If my latest one isn’t my best, I shouldn’t be doing this anymore.”