Christmas Time in Canada

Growing up, I loved being with my grandparents. They were wonderful people who knew how to have fun. I have fond memories of being with them in their Legion Manor apartment while they threw on a record and enjoyed a Wildcat lager or two until Hockey Night in Canada started. I could never understand their taste in music, though. Country, Western, and Bluegrass – that is all they ever listened to and I thought it was laaaame. Stompin’ Tom Connors, Humphrey and the Dumptrucks, and The Yodelling Cowboy Wilf Carter were some of their favourites.

It wasn’t until years later, after they were gone, that I began to appreciate and then love country music. When I was a teenager my mom began to wonder if Wilf Carter’s Christmas album was available on CD. I didn’t really recognize the name but after a search on YouTube I definitely knew the voice. Then began our search for the Holy Grail of Christmas albums in my family: Christmas in Canada by Wilf Carter.

Released in 1965, Christmas in Canada features some wonderful Christmas songs that are funny (Ting-A-Ling-A Jingle), touching (An Old Christmas Card), and just plain Canadian (Christmas Time in Canada) with lyrics like: “It’s Christmas time in Canada / Be merry while we can / It’s Christmas time in Canada / God bless our native land.” It even includes a commercial theme song, Punkinhead (The Little Bear), who was the store mascot and plush toy for the Eaton’s catalogue from 1948 to the early 70s.

This album seemed to be a rare one, and only available on vinyl. Most record store clerks had barely heard of Wilf Carter, let alone his Canadian Christmas album. I tried to burn a couple of CD copies from YouTube and weird mp3s but something always went wrong. There were copies available online, but I was determined to find it in person (also, I did not have a credit card until I was 27).

One day my family was shopping at County Traders in Bloomfield, Ontario when I heard my mom say my name from the other side of the store. While I was walking over she lifted up the album cover of Christmas in Canada and I was so shocked I had to sit down on the nearest second hand couch. Alas, we had found the cover, but the vinyl inside was missing. My mom purchased it anyway. She framed it and it goes up up year at Christmastime.

After years of flipping through vinyl at every thrift store, yard sale and record swap I would come across in my travels, I decided to go into a dusty old consignment store that is one block away from my house in East York. I had walked by it almost every day for three years but had never gone inside.

The store had a mess of records piled absolutely everywhere amongst books and random housewares, but they were not organized in any fashion. After a few minutes, I asked if there was a country music section. He pointed to a cardboard box under a bunch of old dishes. Christmas in Canada was the sixth record I flipped to, and it was priced at $1. I couldn’t fucking believe it. I hugged it tight to my body as if another customer was going to barge in and try to make a claim to it. I slammed down a loonie and babbled at the store owner about how I had been looking for this record forever. And the vinyl was inside too - what a concept!

Since then I have got a tattoo of the Christmas tree illustration on the back of the album on my wrist, and when I find Punkinhead dishes in thrift stores and buy them all, even though they were obviously meant for children. My husband believes I am the only person on earth who knows every word to every song on the album and I (not so) secretly take pride in that.

I love Christmas in Canada for the campy, old time feel, for the classic use of recitation songs, and of course because it “brings back sweet memories dear to me”.

Christmas in Canada, as it turns out, is not an extremely rare record. When I became a grown up with a credit card I purchased it from Groove Garden Records on Discogs for a Christmas gift. I came across it at X-Disc-C Music in Kitchener and bought it for $9.99 for no reason. Although I am no longer looking for the record on an active basis, I am sure I will still become unreasonably emotional whenever I see it in store. Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas everybody.

This story originally appeared on the I Love XMas blog by RetroFestive.ca in 2014.

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