During a recent weekend visit with our son and daughter-in-law in Toronto's Leslieville neighbourhood, I asked whether they'd care to join me for a Sunday morning stroll to the corner of Laing Street and Memory Lane. Puzzled, they asked what would draw me to that particular address.
I told the tale - or at least a version of it - of Alexander Muir, the teacher and proud Orangeman who, in the fall of Canada's Confederation year, was inspired to write the song The Maple Leaf Forever after a leaf from the maple on that street corner landed on a coat and stuck there. Whose coat it was is somewhat up for debate. Some sources say it was his own; others say it was that of Muir's friend George Leslie, after whose family the former Toronto suburb was named.
Regardless, the resulting tune won second prize in a poetry contest sponsored by the Caledonian Society of Montreal and, for several generations of Canadians, became de rigueur as part of the patriotic songbook of most elementary and secondary schools, alongside God Save the Queen and O Canada.
As an emblem of the country, the maple leaf had a history that preceded Muir's October encounter. It had been used as an emblem of the St-Jean-Baptiste Association in Lower Canada as early as 1834. It adorned songbooks and literary journals during the mid-1800s, signifying the aspirations of an emerging nation.
According to Canadian music historian Helmut Kallmann, however, it was Muir's song that, more than any other artistic endeavour, knitted the maple leaf into the fabric of Canada's national identity. As an emblem of the country, it has been unsurpassed since. It appears on our coins, flags, books, signposts and backpacks, and is an ineluctable part of Canadiana.
The visit to Laing Street and Memory Lane that bright April morning was brief and uneventful. The tree stood stark against the clear blue sky. To call it stately would be too generous; it looks the way one would expect a silver maple to look after more than 150 years in an urban environment, its limbs hacked and shorn by both human hand and nature, branches yielding a right of way to utility lines. At its base, though, a worn metal sign recalls its historic significance.
A week after that visit, as I called on my parents in Leamington, Ont., I told the story of my pilgrimage to the tree and offered that, one day, I hoped to pick up a few of its maple keys to try to grow a sapling of rich Canadian vintage.
It was at this point that my father's eyes grew bright with excitement. A retired greenhouse farmer, the project manager within him suddenly engaged, as he imagined tending a small forest of "Canada tree" saplings, each with a small scroll documenting its royal Canadian ancestry. The Maple Leaf Forever had been a mainstay of the music repertoire of his school days during the 1930s and 1940s and, after my visit, the tune rambled around in his mind for the better part of a week.
Last weekend, the exchange took place: My Torontonian son handed my octogenarian father a bag of maple leaf keys, picked from the pavement of that Leslieville corner, in various states of dehydration. And to my father, the little samaras are like bright Canadian currency. By next summer, he hopes to see seedlings sprout in the makeshift nursery in his garage.
He hasn't said as much, but I suspect there's another reason for his enthusiasm for this project. The son of Russian Mennonite immigrants, he was the only one of 10 siblings to be born in Canada. And Canada, his home and native land, opened its doors to his family amid the horrors, religious persecution and famine that followed the Russian Revolution. It was the fertile soil of Canada that nurtured them and gave them a second chance at life.
Unlike the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, whose totem poles recalled shared legend and lineage and culture, our postmodern spiritual sensibilities no longer yearn for places of gathering, worship or celebration. But given its impact on Canadian heraldry and emblems, the maple at Laing Street and Memory Lane is a national totem, considerably more important to the history of our symbols than the scuffed and fading sign at its broad base might suggest.
Larry Cornies is co-ordinator of the journalism and new media programs at Conestoga College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Kitchener, Ont.