Celebrating Canada, the USA, and the Friendship We Will Help Preserve
- Rebecca Burnham
- 4 days ago
- 8 min read
If you’re reading in Canada or the USA, I’m wishing you a joyous celebration of liberty this week. Celebrations are important. No matter how far we feel from our goal or how much more we want to achieve, there is delight and power to be found in noticing and savouring the blessings that already fill our lives. This week, I’m struck by what an incredible blessing it is to live in a place and a time that offers us both the power to make a difference and enough of the necessities of life that we can even turn our attention to entertainment and building bridges across our divides. Today, I'm celebrating that, and treasuring the hope that we can indeed make a difference at a time when domestic and international friendships are being strained.
As a dual citizen of both Canada and the USA, I get two national holidays this week, Canada Day was Tuesday and Independence Day is Friday. I wanted to focus on a couple of patriotic musicals in honour of both. But I ran into a little trouble. While there’s a whole list of patriotic musicals for the USA, (Hamilton, 1776, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Starlift, This Is the Army, and more), Canada doesn’t have any of those. Patriotism in the form of celebrating a unique national identity that we hold as somehow superior to others, is not really a Canadianism. Or at least, it hasn’t been until the President of the United States started talking about making us the 51st state. Now, suddenly, there’s a flowering of patriotic music, with more than one title owing a debt to Mike Myers’ “elbows up” moment on Saturday Night Live.
Lots of these seem to be AI made or AI assisted. But after last week’s newsletter, who am I to turn up my nose at songs that have been helped along by AI? So, of the music I sampled, here’s my favourite, with lyrics that sound human-created to me:
I decided that Come From Away was about as close as I was going to get to a patriotic Canadian musical. I’d never seen it, but it kept being recommended to me as something I would love. It was written by two Canadians about what happened in Gander, Newfoundland on 9/11/2001 when almost 7 thousand people on 38 US-bound flights got grounded for four days at the small town’s outsized airport.
I decided to watch that and 1776, because I actually love the film A More Perfect Union, and I thought 1776 would have a similar feel but be even better with the addition of music and dance. Perhaps I should have tried watching 1776 first, in which case I might have gotten past the first song. But after Come From Away, the opening of 1776 was just painful and this newsletter was going to wind up so unbalanced in its appreciation of the Canadian show that I put on Hamilton instead as a more sure bet.
Come From Away surprised me, even though it had come so highly recommended by people who had a good sense of my tastes. The thing was, I knew it didn’t follow a classic Broadway structure. It couldn’t. It was telling a whole bunch of different, true stories in one narrative about a town of less than 10K giving shelter to almost the same number of frightened and disoriented outsiders. That’s great fodder for a documentary. But a musical? How can one pull that off, successfully?
I’m still puzzling that over, but pull it off they did, spectacularly. The show (filmed on Broadway and available on Apple TV) kept me, my son, and my friend spellbound. As the final credits were rolling, my friend said, “I have a new favourite musical.”
Her reaction is far from unusual. The musical has gathered a following of “superfans” including one who’s watched it live more than a hundred times. Not far behind is Beverley Bass, the pilot whose story is highlighted in the musical. She went to the debut performance in La Jolla, California, got as far as the line "Tom, I'm fine," started sobbing and wept so hard she missed 75% of the show. But, by July 2017, she'd attended another 72 performances.
And best of all, the beautiful, heart-warming stories it tells are true. From the generous donations of second-hand clothes, toothbrushes, baby formula etc, to the mountain of home-cooked meals that were brought to the halls and schools and churches where outsiders were housed; from the school-bus drivers who paused a strike and drove the stranded passengers to shelter, to the SPCA lady who defied the powers that be and rescued the animals in the cargo hold; from the families that took strangers into their own homes to the precious friendships that were formed and continued to give comfort in the months ahead. All of them came from interviews that creators Irene Sankoff and David Hein had with the people who actually lived the story. These were gathered in 2011 at a 10-year reunion between Gander locals and those from away who’d returned to thank their friends for giving them solace and safety when the bottom had just fallen out of their world.
It’s not a larger than life story. It’s real. And there’s power in that. Writer and longtime theatre buff Joe Guay recalls how the show affected him: “I was humbled. Transformed. Reinvigorated. I’d almost given up [musical theatre] for dead. As soulless and commercial. Yet I’d just witnessed an original story — not one based on a movie, not a “jukebox musical” — and it reaffirmed the power of storytelling, stagecraft and the transformative catharsis of live theater.”
I think the magic starts with the opening number, “Welcome to the Rock,” that pulls us into the proudly unsophisticated world of small-town Gander. It’s oozing charm and so are all the 12 mostly middle-aged and multi-sized actors and 8 musicians that fill the stage. Their dialect is charming. Their relatability is irresistible. These are people just like us. And then, when disaster strikes, we’re right with them.
We are kept on the edge of our seats as the folks of Gander scramble to figure out how they can accommodate the growing thousands of strangers, as one jumbo jet after another lands and parks on their tarmac. Horrified by what’s on their televisions, they feel compelled to do something, and they get to work. Then we meet the passengers, who haven’t been given any information about what’s going on, and who don’t understand why they’ve been grounded in Gander, or why they aren’t allowed to disembark for 7-12 hours. (Security officials had to carefully check each plane and the passenger rosters before the doors could be opened). By the time both sides meet, the people of Gander (who call themselves Islanders) have spent hours opening their hearts with loving preparations while the passengers on the planes have become increasingly disoriented and frightened. The contrast between both groups' state of mind is dramatic. And the Islanders’ efforts to put the passengers at ease are deeply touching.
Then everybody is in a state of suspense for days, waiting for US airspace to re-open as relationships develop among and between Islanders and passengers. These are real people, grappling with petty concerns alongside life-and-death worries. We are taught to care for every story. Then, when US airspace reopens, there are mechanical difficulties with a hurricane about to make landfall. It’s a race to get the passengers off the Island before nature adds to the already-overwhelming destruction. Yet, once everybody’s safely home, there’s a sense of loss; there was so much magic in what was shared. Fortunately, the musical doesn’t end there, but at the 10-year reunion, where the people from away come back to say thank you and reconnect.
It’s a profoundly touching story. It made me proud to be Canadian.
Then I watched Hamilton the whole way through. Until Tuesday, I’d only ever seen bits and pieces. This, too, is a mighty story, powerfully told. I’ll be writing a whole lot more about it in the coming months, since it features in the Building Blocks of a Musical series. But its depiction of Alexander Hamilton and others of the Founding Fathers seems mostly focused on their driving ambitions and political maneuverings, occasionally softened by glimpses into their nearer and dearer relationships. Despite Burr’s powerful lament, “I should’ve known the world was wide enough for both Hamilton and me,” it felt disappointing. In order to compare favourably with Come From Away, there was too much attention to Hamilton’s desperate need to prove his worth (including in battle), and too little to a love of others, or a longing to make the world a better place. There were moments when we glimpsed those, and I prefer to believe that they drove his inexhaustible efforts more than did his self-serving ambition. But the character that warmed me most was his wife, Eliza, as she was revealed in the final song.
So, I want to circle back to what all of this means to me as I celebrate Canada Day and Independence Day at a time when the lengthy best-friendship between both of my countries seems to be falling apart. I prize the hard-won right to self-government that both my nations enjoy. And I have growing misgivings about our ability to protect our freedoms as our society becomes more and more polarized. The more we see each other as enemies, instead of neighbours, the less able we are to cooperate, the more vulnerable we are to outside forces, the more likely we are to wind up senselessly dueling among ourselves.
I don’t think the answer is to pay more attention to the political machinations of ambitious people who may see conflict as an opportunity for personal advancement. I think it is to see people as people. To remember their humanity, meet them in their distress, deeply listen, and find ways to communicate across that barriers that would divide us.
There are two situations in Come From Away that demonstrate this particularly powerfully. One is when a number of passengers from Africa are taken to a Salvation Army camp for shelter. The Salvation Army members want to give them a warm welcome and dress in uniform. But the passengers from Africa only speak Swahili and are unfamiliar with the Salvation Army. They are confused, disoriented, and frightened. The uniforms suggest they’ve been taken to a military complex and they refuse to get off the bus. Then, their bus driver notices one of them clutching a Bible. He knows his Bible, so he points them to Philippians 4:6: “Be anxious for nothing.” That gives the Swahili speakers courage to get off the bus and go to their shelter.
The other situation is much more fraught. Ali, originally from Egypt, is among the passengers and suddenly regarded with suspicion as a possible terrorist. First, he’s shunned. Then, when he’s heard speaking on the phone to his family in Arabic, people accuse him of plotting where to bomb next. He repeatedly offers to help with the cooking only to be brushed off. Pretty much everyone avoids him except Beulah of Gander, who makes sure he has a place where he can pray. At last, he tells her he’s a chef with an international hotel chain and she welcomes his help with the cooking. Their friendship will help to sustain him through the racial profiling that follows, including a mortifying strip search before he’s allowed back on the plane, and when he gets home and finds that his little girl is now afraid to go to school.
I remember these scenes when I read blogger Guay’s worries, “Will a show that celebrates shared humanity, teamwork and empathy land differently going forward, now that Canadian/American relations are cracked, now that our globe is more prone to suspicious isolationism and is leaning towards no longer trusting (or even caring much) for anything remotely American? Will the loving-Canadian connection now seem forced? Or sadly like it’s all coming from another time, a time ‘before?’”
The answer I’m determined to give is, “No! Come From Away is an early example of a new movement in musical theatre, one that’s focused on helping us to see each other’s humanity, and to build genuine bonds of caring between us. Stay tuned and join us, because we need to, and will create many, many more.”
Thanks for your support for Summit Stages! If you liked this story, please consider sending it on to a friend.
If you are not already subscribed to my weekly newsletter, I'd be delighted if you'd do so here.
And a deeply, heartfelt thanks to those who've contributed to my tip jar Your support is greatly appreciated!
Comentários