Dusting off a surprise hit song from the '70s for Canada 150

The legendary Wheat Sheaf Tavern, on the corner of King and Bathurst in Toronto, opened in the mid-19th century. It is by most counts Toronto's oldest bar, and by the mid-1970s, it was a regular spot to catch local bands like Grampa, and maybe even sing along to their 1975 hit, Canadian Way of Life. 

Now Grampa's lead singer and keys player Frank St. Germain is dusting off the tune for Canada 150.

St. Germain, who got in touch with us as part of our What's Your Story project, says the band's name was inspired by the number of songs from the '20s and 30's the group played during their weekend sets. "Stuff that somebody's grandfather might have liked."

"I could hardly play the piano at the time, but people came in and after couple drinks they thought we were really good, and we built a band around it," St. Germain jokes. Grampa built enough of a following that they performed together for 13 years — a pretty decent run for most bands — before band members moved on to other jobs or to raise a family.

St. Germain is the only Grampa member still in the music business. While his childhood dreams were to be a hockey player, a knee injury set him on a path to music. "Did I ever think I'd make a living at it? No. Have I done that in the last 40-some-odd years? Yes."

Back in the days and nights at the Wheat Sheaf and in amongst the cover tunes, Grampa also performed original compositions. One in particular became quite popular live: the catchy, toe-tapping Canadian Way of Life, co-written by St. Germain and the band's guitarist Stan Drozdowski.

St. Germain shared "a lousy version" of the song on a cassette with a cousin who worked at RCA studios in Toronto, and — RCA liked it. They liked it enough to record and release it as a single in 1975.

It charted into the top half of the top 100 on CFRB and was a "turn-table" hit, meaning "everybody listened to it, but nobody ran down to Sam the Record man to buy it." The french-language version that they released concurrently also did well in Quebec.

Do we have maple syrup? Yes. Do we have beavers? Yes. Do we have music? Definitely.- Frank St. Germain

But after the song's run on radio, "we kind of forgot about it," St. Germain says. Now with Canada 150 the hot topic of the year, the refrain "Canadian way of life" came back to mind. St. Germain dusted it off and has been performing it during his solo shows. "Some people have actually come up and said, 'you know I heard that years ago on the radio!'" (Proving a hit song is never really forgotten.)

While the Canadian Way of Life lyrics speak to landscapes and communities from coast to coast, one thing, more than anything else, comes to mind when St. Germain thinks about Canada: music.

"There's so many great Canadian artists of the past. There will be great Canadian artists for the future," he says. "We have so many different styles of music and yet it seems to be Canadian in its own certain way. I think that's really part of what Canada is all about."

"Do we have maple syrup? Yes. Do we have beavers? Yes. Do we have music? Definitely."

Catch Frank St. Germain every Friday night at The Custom's House in St. Mary's, Ont., and on cbcmusic.ca.