That’s it right there: $2,615.50, in all the colours of the Canadian Tire rainbow.  That’s me, in the hat Greg Cockerill gave me, and the DON’T SPEND IT HONEY shirt that Lindsay Fay McDougall made.  That’s Sandy McTyre on my chest, peeking out at all those portraits of himself…

I don’t know for sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion this might be the most CT$ ever gathered by a non-Canadian-Tire-affiliated citizen.  Five rows long, seven rows wide, and several bundles deep, this is just over a quarter of what I’m hoping to raise by July, 2012.

And when this coup is over, I’m going to walk into a Canadian Tire (which one, I wonder?) with James Paul, and we’re going to put all these bundles (and more) on the counter.  Funny thing is I still haven’t set foot in a Canadian Tire since all this ludicrousness began.  I can’t remember the last time I was in one.  I’m not avoiding them, or anything, and it certainly warms my heart in a strangely conspiratorial way when I see that red triangle with the green maple leaf on it.  But those fat brown rubber bands you see on some of these bundles?  I bought them across the street at Home Hardware, which is where I’ve purchased this caper’s only necessary supplies.

This is me, being twelve years old, shaking my children’s fists!!  And if I’m not mistaken, Sandy McTyre is laughing from his t-shirt vantage point:

Collecting Canadian Tire Money sure shaves the years off.  I think every time a new bundle arrives, I lose a few months.  Another couple hundred and I’ll be eleven again!  Speaking of which, half of that cornerstone bundle, the one nearest us in the picture, contains $82.50 which was brought and hand-delivered to me at Hugh’s Room last night by Debra Shushack, who along with her husband Ken Furman runs one of the best house concerts in Ontario: Music In The Alcove, up in my hometown of Cochenour.  Debra and Ken have been pooling at their concerts and last night she put the stash (which put me over twenty-six hundred dollars) in my hand.  Also with her was the Mayor of Red Lake, Phil Vinet, who incidentally is the one who gave me the phrase ‘the wrath of the law and the lonesome’.  True trivia.  More soon.  Don’t Spend It Honey!  Send it to me, and vicariously satisfy your inner Scrooge McDuck.  39 Oxford St. Toronto, ON. M5T 1N8.

ps.  It was when Jonathan Byrd and I were on tour with Kim Beggs in AB/YK in November that this madcap enterprise accidentally launched itself, so it’s appropriate that these photos were taken by Kim, who dropped by for a visit and documented the stash.

Sometimes beauty is anonymous.  A mysterious gal sent me this drawing along with her Canadian Tire Money, with two words which seem to sum up this whole caper:

Canadian Alchemy.  Exactly.  That’s the magic at work here.  A thousand pedestrian transactions– all those cashier/customer ‘have a nice day’ hand-offs, all this small-change made of paper– most of which has waited years, in junk-drawer chrysalis– is now being transmuted into beauty.  It’s morphing into love, music, community– the real stuff.  It’s converting beyond any exchange rate the Dow Jones will ever comprehend.

Another, anonymous donation of $5, was accompanied by a single note that said:

Music and Love, it makes the world go round.

$5 in CT money.  No postmark.  No return address.  No clue as to where it came from, but whoever sent it kissed the note with her lipstick lips and left them there for me.

Another anonymous donation had nothing for a return address but a heart.

Then, on Valentine’s Day, of all days, I received $5.85 in the mail, along with a Sea Nymph chocolate bar (dark chocolate, 64% cocoa, sea salt, english toffee, mmmm…) in an envelope that said on the back:

Love to Corin from all the ladies at Cocoa Nymph

CocoaNymph is a shop in Vancouver where they make their own chocolate, and I can tell you right now, each bite of that stuff is a minefield of pleasure explosions.  As if that wasn’t lovely enough, a couple days back CocoaNymph posted this on their facebook page: It’s Canadian Tire Tuesday! Bring your Canadian Tire money and buy some chocolate, it’s for a good cause!  How sexy is that??  A beautiful chocolate shop in Vancouver has introduced Canadian Tire Tuesdays and, ‘We’ll take it on par every Tuesday from now until our friend Corin Raymond funds his new album.‘  And they sent me chocolate!

They sent me chocolate.

That was the second chocolate bar of this campaign.  The first was from Seattle Washington, from my friend Leah.  She sent me a whole package of beautiful stuff, sixty-five cents she collected from some friends on Keats Island (off the Sunshine Coast of B.C), and a Trader Joe’s chocolate bar.  I’ll reprise the theme I started in my last post: there is no granting board on this grant-applying earth that will send you chocolate.  In the mail.  With love.  And art.  And lipstick lips.  This is a case of Canadian Tire Money being translated into love, love into chocolate (which is love), money into music, music into love, and round again.  These gifts are all acts of sorcery.  Canadian Alchemy.

Some days the mailbox is made of stars and hearts and kittens… I got this from Greg and April Hamilton, along with their stash of CT bills, which you’ll see pictured below:

Yes, cocaine does have an ‘e’.  But how beautiful is this note?  When was the last time you had that much fun with a dollar eighty-five’s worth of coupons?  I love:  ’… any more than is artistically necessary.’  It’s like, ‘… do it if you have to, but, you know…. not unless there’s just no other way…’  Got it, Roxy.  I promise.

Hey friends, while we’re still in kittens-and-hearts territory, I’d like to redeem myself a little.  At one of the live album shows at The Tranzac, I read aloud from a card sent to me by little Will Snedden in Kelowna, BC.  It said:

Hey Corin heres $1.55 I’ve been saving for a soccer, it’s not much but it will still get you that much closer

Will

I thought he meant ‘soccer ball’, which is what I read when I shared the card, and of course the crowd was like, ‘whoa dude, now you’re taking soccer balls from children???  Hey, it was fun up till now, but that’s not right…‘  I was thinking, ‘man… before this caper is through, I’ve gotta send this kid a soccer ball…’ but recently, I received this note from his mom:

Mom suggests you keep the $1.55 because he was actually saving for a bouquet of those suckers they sell at the till! That’s Canadian Tire gold to him.

Suckers!!  That’s what he meant by ‘soccer’!!  So, please.  Don’t think of me as someone who steps on the soccer dreams of children to get to my album.  The case was reopened; new evidence was received; the sucker-truth came out, and the file can now be gently closed.

More Canadian Alchemy soon.

ps.  Last night, counting up the latest donations on the bar at The Cameron House, we broke twenty-five hundred Canadian Tire dollars!!  The new total is $2,508.95, and it was the $14.20– handed to me by various fans and friends at The Cameron last night– that put me and my caper over the quarter line.  Twenty-five hundred and eight dollars and ninety-five cents, in Canadian Tire money.  And counting.

Alchemically yours, CR.

In the past month I’ve received over 250 personally addressed packages from everywhere in this country.  Folks, friends, fans, and fellow freaks from afar have been opening their hearts right along with their kitchen junk drawers and glove compartments.  My mailbox is a Christmas stocking and every night has been Christmas Eve.  How long has it been since you got a letter in the mail?  Yeah, me either, until now.  But in the past month I’ve gotten letters, cards, drawings, artwork, notes of encouragement, gifts, random beautiful objects, and actual money to boot– and love!!  An avalanche of love.  Never have I been on the receiving end of this much love, of so many Vivas!  Every single package I opened cheered, and every 10-cent contribution was an Excelsior.  Over the next while I’m gonna share some of that mail with you, like a kid bringing his show-and-tell treasures to school.

Speaking of which, I got this from a kid!!  The only donation which– mysteriously– was sent to The Rogue Studios:

Mystery Donator sent a few bucks in CT$, along with a note on the back of a torn Marvel Comics postcard:

This kid is after my heart!  Here’s what the note said:

Innovative… plus cool.  Encouragement does not get better than this.  I promise you that no granting board in the world ever sent anyone a torn Marvel Comics postcard that congratulated the recipient for being Innovative… plus cool.  This kid also sent me a very large band-aid.  Yeah, not sure about that either.  I guess that’s what makes it a mystery package.  Maybe he’s not a kid.  Whoever he is, I love him.

Some of the greatest, and most entertaining, encouragements I’ve received have been from musicians.  I got this note from Winnipeg’s Andrew Neville, who’s got a song on the album which the Tire Money is helping me to make:

Subtitles, if you need ‘em:

This should help some.

I’ve had this pile of bills sitting around for a long time, might as well spend it on something that’s worth it!

Love the song man, but then again, I love all your songs.  You are often played over the house system late at night at the Times.  Everybody knows ALL the words.

Anyway, talk to you soon my friend.

OH!!! The next thing I send you will be our new CD.  Check your mail around spring time.

STAY HARD!

Andrew Neville

Again, no granting committee ever tells you that they listen to your records after hours, that they know every word– and they definitely never tell you to STAY HARD!

I’m getting letters like this from my favourite songwriters in the land!!  You can’t apply for that kind of support, man.  There is no substitute for it whatsoever.  Only a community is capable of it.  I guess that’s what happens when you’re Innovative… plus cool.

ps.  I shouldn’t leave without letting you know the latest total, which is $2,462.20…. just thirty-seven dollars and eighty cents away from a brass-ring total of $2,500.  Who’ll put me over the quarter mark?  Wouldn’t you like to see what $5,000.00 in Canadian Tire Money looks like, all in one place?

I just got home from a beautiful weekend in Simcoe and Port Dover (thank you, Claire Senko!), where I performed my show Bookworm at the Simcoe Public Library, and hung an evening of songs in the air at the Twisted Fish Yoga Studio in Port Dover.  I came home to this video, put together by Nelson Phillips, who was one of the three cameramen catching the two nights my band The Sundowners played at The Tranzac last month.  Hope you enjoy it:

I’ll post more very soon.  For now, let me just tell you that I’ve broken $2,500, thanks to the good folks in Norfolk County.  We’re now entering the realm of Canadian Folklore, and we’re doing it together, one crinkly nickel at a time.  You might have heard the rumours that Canadian Tire is planning to take the fun out of the funny money, that the Sandy McTide is turning; that Rewards Cards are the way of the funless future.  I’m not worried.  It’ll be a while yet before the cute little Scotsman ceases to be legal tender, and in the meantime, we’re perpetrating what might be the last poetic act committed with Tire Money on a national scale.  I’m blowing the Canadian Tire Money Conch now, long and low, so that my plea reverberates like a fog horn in the cold atlantic east, blasts loud as a thousand eighteen-wheeler horns across the prairies, echoes in the Kootenays, and round the bays of the Sunshine Coast.  I’m raising the Tire Money Conch and blowing it so that it shakes the dust off every shoebox and every kitchen drawer; so that it’s heard by every wrinkled dime in every forgotten coat pocket, and in the cramped dark of every glove compartment from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back.  I’m calling my flock now.

Corin Raymond
39 Oxford St.
Toronto, ON
M5T IN8 (My 5 Tortillas I Never

Just a quick note, friends.  First to say that the new total (which changes by the hour) is $2,284.90.  This total will be old news tomorrow.  Tonight I play the Kingston Folk Club, and who knows what’s waiting for me there.  Last night I played a beautiful house concert in Eganville, at which I performed both my one-man show Bookworm as well as a proper set of songs, and when the Sandy McTyres were added up at the end of the night they came to $93.80, which I have to say, is a record for what was collected at any single event.  Huge thanks and love to Kilmeny Heron for putting together a fantastic night, and for rallying all those portraits of the Cute Little Scotsman, and to Kim Elkington, for providing such a beautiful sanctuary for me and my loot.  Here’s a glimpse of the end of the night:

Furthermore, a fella named Adam fed me maple syrup whiskey, from Quebec, mixed with equal parts apple cider (the kind that still has bits of apple in it… and I have to say, if you want to turn your children onto booze, this would be the way to do it– it was like dessert in a glass).  I was sipping maple syrup whiskey while the Canadian Tire money was being counted and tallied up, and this is what I love about this project: it just gets more Canadian every day.

Speaking of Canadian, like many of us, I grew up on the poems of Dennis Lee and the drawings of Frank Newfeld, and, as for many of us, the words ‘In Kamloops I’ll eat your boots.’ have stayed with me.  What’s happening with this project is as Canadian as that poem, and it brings those words back to me.  For instance, I got this photo a couple of days ago from Kamloops, BC.  It was taken at Erwin’s Bakery (which is full of deliciousness, by the way), where the owners, Robyn and Shawn Haley, have instituted ‘Canadian Tire Tuesdays’, which means that on Tuesdays they’ve been accepting CT$ at par.  How incredible is this?

Robyn also sent me this photo of what they’ve collected so far:

In Kamloops they’ll fill your boots!!!  To paraphrase Dennis Lee.

As soon as I can do it (I’m hoping tomorrow), I’m going to post some of my favourite letters, cards, and messages I’ve received in the mail recently.  In the meantime, keep feeding your kids maple syrup whiskey while you read them those poems from Alligator Pie.  And thank you, again, for being so Canadian with me.  In the Gatineaus I’ll eat your toes, and in Kingston I’ll play the Folk Club!  Tonight, between 930 and 10pm, at 193 Ontario St.

ps.  Huge thanks to Deanna MacDonald at the Kingston Frontenac Public Library, for putting on Bookworm (its first ever public library appearance!) and thanks to the Kingstonites who brought their CT cash… see some of you again tonight!!  Oh, and in Napanee I’ll eat your knee.  But you knew that.  C.