What Gary LeDrew Means

There is a temptation, when writing about someone like Gary LeDrew, to treat his life as primarily a series of amusing anecdotes. The Rolling Stones in the booze can. The Commodore 64 winter on a sailboat. The professional Santa Claus credential. These things are genuinely funny, and LeDrew — a natural storyteller who has spent decades refining these tales — tells them as well as anyone alive. But there is something more serious underneath. LeDrew's life is, among other things, a record of Toronto's transformation from a buttoned-up provincial city into a genuine cultural capital — and the role that artists, bootleggers, and bohemians played in dragging it there. The booze cans weren't just illegal bars. They were the infrastructure of a scene, the connective tissue between musicians and painters and writers who needed space to exist on their own terms after the law said the night was over. LeDrew built and ran that infrastructure for five years, and the global touring circuit took notice. His pivot to digital art was equally prescient — an early recognition that the computer was not just a tool but a new medium, one that demanded total commitment. Most artists of his generation never made that leap. He made it completely, abandoning oil forever and never looking back. And the late career in Cape Breton represents something else again: a serious engagement with the question of what gets remembered and what gets lost. Louisbourg is a place of tremendous historical weight — a French fortress town whose fall in 1758 changed the course of North American history, now the site of a major heritage reconstruction. LeDrew paints it, and the lighthouses, and the heritage buildings of Uxbridge, and the mills and churches of rural Ontario, with the particular urgency of someone who has watched too many things disappear. He has, it turns out, been painting the same subject his entire life: people and places that exist at the edge of disappearance, captured just before they go.

Jail on St Patrick's Day


In 1962 St Patricks day came on Saturday. I was 20 and just got out of the navy and four of us decided to go to Buffalo for the weekend. We had lots of beer and I taught them a couple of songs I learned in the Navy.(SONGS BELOW)


So Mike, Hans Orville and I get Buffalo and get a couple of hotel rooms and head for Santisaro's for a famous pizza and a bottle of chianti in a basket bottle. Pizza was a rare commodity in those days.



We had a few drinks and a case of beer and went back to the hotel had a few drinks and went to bed.
We went for breakfast and then 10 pin bowling.
As the day wore on and since it was St Patricks Eve we decided to get serious and started to hit the bars 1 drink in each bar.
At one Irish bar a pretty lass talked into some regalia and we soon had our shamrock buttons and were having a good time.
We hit the street and Mike decides to swing on a sign pole.
I guess a car had hit it because it snapped off at the bottom and came down on Mike's head and he collapsed on the pavement.
I looked back at him just as it happened and went rushing back to help him. Before I could pick him up a buffalo policeman hauled him to his feet.
'where are you from ?" He demanded.
"Canada" mumbles slightly stunned Mike.
"Do you do that in Canada"
"yYah " but the poles are stronger."
"Oh a smart guy."Says the cop.
I say "Come on officer it must have been a weak pole.'
"Oh another smart guy."Says the cop and whistles.
A police paddy wagon k9 division pulls up and takes us off to jail.
"What are we charged with?"
"Him with drunk and you Drunk and disordlerly
"How was I disorderly? i asked, "I did everything you asked of me."
"You were still standing." laughed the cop.
Mike was drunk but I really wasn't.
they took away our Irish ribbons and buttons AND We are put in the drunk tank, the usual large dank cell with 3 irish drunks and about 20 black guys and one toilet etc.

Mike starts singing
Oh the Eri-e was a risin' and the
Gin was a gettin' low
And I did not think we'd get a drink
Till we got to Buffaolo ho ho
Till we got to  Buffa lo
the irishmen join in.
Mike fumbles the words and switches to

Sambo was a lazy coon,  Who used to sleep in the afternoon,
I managed to choke him quiet before the black guys heard it.    

After a terible night we are taken Sunday court. We now have a half a dozen more irish drunks and they all got to keep their buttons and ribbons. It is an Irish judge and he has about a half a dozen grand children in the first row dressed in green and white. they are all going to church after court.
The judge is in a hurry. Every drunk with a St.Patrick button is released. They come to us  Mike pleaded guilty $25.00 or seven days. me Not guilty, remand $100.00. what I dont have time for that I have to go back to Canada and my job. "Canadians? says the judge, "I'm tired of you undesirables coming down here and..
"Who the fuck are you calling an undesirable." I say,
"We come down here as good visitors, just out for a bit of we spend our money  caused no trouble started no fights, We weren't drunk, My buddy grabbed a pole and it snapped off and hit him. I don't believe you fucking people.
The judge Went apoplectic, he could believe his ears he sent his grand kids out.
"Get them out of here" he fumed
"Not in my court." he could hardly speak"You cant talk like that here." Take them to Canada! Take them to border. Get them out of here!"
That was it, no money, no fines, We were put in a crusier and taken to immigration.
it was sunday and this guy was filling in. He could't figure out how to fingerprint us so he took us to the border where Hans and Orville were waiting.
'This doesn't mean anything" he says "you come right back if you want to."

We were forty miles from Albany and
Forget it I  never  shall
What a hell of a storm we  had one night
On the Er-i-e Canal
On The Er-i-e Canal
Our Captain he came up on deck
With a spyglass in his hand
And the fog it was so fuckin thick
That he could not spy the land
That he could not spy the land

chorus
Oh the Eri-e was a risin' and the
Gin was a gettin' low
And I did not think we'd get a drink
Till we got to Buffaolo ho ho
Till we got to  Buffa lo


Two days out of Syracuse
Our vessel struck a shoal
We foundered when we hit a chunk
Of Lackawanna Coal ho ho
Of Lackawanna coal lo

Chorus


Our cook she was a grand old gal
She wore a ragged dress
We hoisted her upon a pole
As a signal of distress
As a signal of distress

chorus

When we got to Syracuse
The off mule he was dead
The night mule had blind staggers
So we cracked him on the head
And we cracked him on the head

the captain he got married
and the crew was tossed in jail
And I'm the only Son of a bitch
That is left to tell the tale
That's left to tell the tale

And unfortunately this one too.


Sambo was a lazy coon,         
Who used to sleep in the afternoon,        
 So tired was he, so tired was he.         
Off to the forest he would go,         
Swinging his bollocks too and fro,         
When along came a bee, a fucking great  bee,        
 Buzz, buzz, ubzz,
fuck Off you bumble bee,
I ain't no fucking rose,         
get off my fucking nose.                           
Arseholes rule the Navy,
 arseholes rule the Sea        
If you want a bit of bum, 
 better get it from chum,         
Cause you'll get no bum from me.
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