Stompin

e844Charles Thomas “Stompin’ Tom” Connors, OC (February 9, 1936 – March 6, 2013) was a Canadian country and folk singer-songwriter. Focusing his career exclusively on his native Canada, he is credited with writing more than 300 songs and has released four dozen albums, with total sales of nearly four million copies.[1]

Connors’ songs have become part of the Canadian cultural landscape. Three of his best-known songs are Sudbury Saturday Night, Bud the Spud and The Hockey Song; the latter is played at various games throughout the National Hockey League; including at every Toronto Maple Leafs home game.[2][3] In 2018, the song was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in a ceremony at a Leafs game.[4]

Charles Thomas Connors was born on February 9, 1936, at the General Hospital in Saint John, New Brunswick, to the teenage Isabel Connors and her boyfriend Thomas Joseph Sullivan.

Isabel’s family were Irish Protestants, and his maternal grandfather, John Connors, was a sea captain from Boston, Massachusetts, who had died before Charles was born. His father was a Catholic of Irish ancestry, and “may have been Métis or … Micmac.” Isabel Connors and Thomas Joseph Sullivan did not marry until 30 years later, as Sullivan’s family were devout Catholics and did not want him marrying a Protestant; they later divorced.[5] Sullivan’s mother gave him $10, and he was told to leave home.[6] Connors was also cousin of New Brunswick fiddling sensation, Ned Landry.

Connors’ first home was on St. Patrick Street, in the “poorest and most rundown part of Saint John”. He lived there with his mother, his maternal grandmother Lucy Scribner, and his maternal stepgrandfather Joe Scribner[7] When Connors was three, Lucy and Joe died within weeks of each other. This forced Isabel to move to a two-bedroom apartment.[8] Around this time Isabel got pregnant again by Tom’s father when he briefly returned,[9] and Tom got a taste of hitchhiking when he and Isabel went to visit relatives in Tusket Falls, Nova Scotia. This trip was the first time he saw his mother steal to feed them, when she stole food from a Chinese restaurant in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. When they returned to Saint John, they moved in with friends of Isabel[10] and she gave birth to Tom’s sister Marie, who had to stay in hospital to have a birthmark removed. Later, Isabel and Tom moved in with her new boyfriend Terrence Messer at the corner of Clarence and Erin Streets. While they did not marry, the family would take on his surname. Terrence and Isabel did pretend to be married to find a place to live, due to the moral standards of the time.[11] The family was quite poor, and Terrence was a neglectful stepfather, who spent most of the family’s money on wine. When they missed paying rent, the family was evicted and moved to a house on St. Patrick Street.[12] Marie finally came home from the hospital then,[13] but she died when Tom was four, following more surgery to remove another birthmark.[14] To make ends meet, Isabel got a job scrubbing floors and Terrence did odd jobs.[15] The family was evicted again after a spat with the landlord when Tom started a fire in their apartment.[16] Their next home was a basement apartment on King Street.[17]