One week into the Air Quality Alert, wrought by our Canadian neighbors\u2019 inability to adequately manage their timberland.<\/p>\n
But unless and until that happens, we\u2019re smothered by smoke saturating our atmosphere here in the States \u2013 again. May I suggest a reworking of Canada\u2019s musical catalog as a soundtrack to a perfect summer week lost to the blotting out of our temperate sun and the suffocating noxiousness of woodsmoke? No Celine Dion, I promise you.<\/p>\n
Let us begin Side One with Corey Hart, whose 1983 hit should be rewritten so that it only seems he\u2019s wearing sunglasses at night when it\u2019s actually high noon, and the sun appears like a faint orange wisp in the sky.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the Guess Who\u2019s \u201cThese Eyes,\u201d eyesight blurred not because Burton Cummings cries every night for an unnamed \u201cyou,\u201d but, instead, uncontrollably weeps from intense eye irritation. That \u201caching in my heart,\u201d Gordon Lightfoot sang about in \u201cEarly Morning Rain,\u201d could easily have been an early warning sign of COPD brought about by the Rush of atmospheric contaminants.<\/p>\n
And Leonard Cohen\u2019s \u201cSuzanne\u201d is now long overdue for her latest shipment of \u201ctea and oranges that come all the way from China,\u201d due to the difficulty of navigating blindly through the merciless fumes. The \u201cyellow curtains\u201d of Joni Mitchell\u2019s \u201cChelsea Morning\u201d are actually white but dulled by Canadian forestry incompetence, and the \u201clight pouring in like butterscotch\u201d is as thick and sticky on the lungs as it is the eyes.<\/p>\n
Bachman Turner Overdrive have turned the giddy anticipation of their original into an anguished lament that \u201cYou Ain\u2019t Seen Nothing Yet,\u201d because, yeah, you guessed it. The sun never goes down on Martha and the Muffin\u2019s \u201cEcho Beach,\u201d but is instead obscured by clouds of noxious smoke.<\/p>\n
And that closes Side 1 of our Canadian rewrite compilation of their flame and smoke invasion of our fair summer land.<\/p>\n
Side Two\u2019s opening track features Rush. In the power trio\u2019s revised \u201cA Passage to Bangkok,\u201d a simple tweak renders \u201cWreathed in smoke in Lebanon\/We burn the midnight oil\u201d to \u201cWreathed in smoke from Ontario\/We turn to midnight world.\u201d Because it\u2019s dark, get it?<\/p>\n
And what\u2019s a Canadian compilation without perhaps the country\u2019s greatest musical export, Neil Young? Ol\u2019 Shakey has many songs adaptable to our Summer of Smoke theme, but I\u2019ve settled on an unheralded classic from his Buffalo Springfield daze, \u201cOn the Way Home.\u201d If Blind Faith were a Canadian band, I would\u2019ve selected \u201cCan\u2019t Find My Way Home,\u201d but they\u2019re not, so \u201cOn the Way Home\u201d it is. \u201cWhen the dream came\/I held my breath with my eyes closed\/I went insane\/Like a smoke ring fading when the wind blows\u201d requires very little editing to squeeze its way onto our asthma-induced LP.<\/p>\n
Always seeking controversy, Alanis Morissette sings \u201cHand in My Pocket\u201d while emphasizing that the other is flicking the cigarette that could have caused the whole combustion of more than 16 million acres of Canadian forest. Isn\u2019t it ironic that she was forced to postpone her Soaring Eagle concert last weekend due to the smoke?<\/p>\n
The Cowboy Junkies climb aboard the mea culpa train with \u201cSpeaking Confidentially,\u201d not even bothering to change \u201cThe fire that burnt inside of me\/Has turned to ash the tortured tree\/That grows beside the anguished sea.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canadian-born smoke show Shania Twain sings about her birth country, \u201cWe got something they don\u2019t\/A fire burning deep in our bones\/Smokin\u2019 far, far away\/On fire when we get home\u201d on her revamp of her 2017 hit.<\/p>\n
Thus endeth Side Two.<\/p>\n
Canadian wildfire smoke has become as common \u2013 but far less welcome \u2013 as swallows returning to Capistrano. It would certainly be appreciated if our negligent neighbor (mostly) to the north actually solved the problem instead of blaming the climate change boogeyman.<\/p>\n
Only you, Canada, can prevent your own forest fires.<\/p>\n
Bruce Edward Walker (walker.editorial@gmail.com) is a Morning Sun columnist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One week into the Air Quality Alert, wrought by our Canadian neighbors\u2019 inability to adequately manage their timberland.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[46436,17,2863,2758],"class_list":["post-140708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-alanis-morissette-environment","tag-canada","tag-nature","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140708\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}