My Leafs Song was written for a contest organized by CBC Radio’s Here and Now connected to the Toronto Maple Leafs Eastern Conference Final Series with the Carolina Hurricanes in May, 2002. My wife is a big Leafs fan. I’m a Montrealer and a Hab fan, but she looked at me in that special way and said, “Please.” Contestants had to sing their song into the phone. Anita held the phone while I strummed and sang into the receiver. Real high tech. Over 300 songwriters participated. Somehow I won. My song was played repeatedly on the radio and I was interviewed by Andy Barrie twice on CBC’s Metro Morning program. After I won CBC needed a CD right away, so my son, Marcus, helped me record it and played tambourine. It was a rushed job but we did it up proud. A CBC producer drove to my place of work and picked it up. I took flak from my Montreal friends and relatives, but it was worth it.
We flew to Raleigh for game 5, which Toronto won 1-0. I was never prouder to be Canadian than when the Toronto fans sang O Canada so loud that they blew the roof off the place. Tucker scored the winner. The photos in the YouTube video are ours. The tail gate parties before the game were a treat.
We partied after the game with some friends of mine who had driven from Toronto to Raleigh on Friday night for the game.
Then we visited beautiful Raleigh on Sunday.
mightyturk 