Our friends from the Great White North have been great trading partners over the years. They send us timber, maple syrup, hockey, curling (ESPECIALLY curling), and a variant on our football that still jars me every time I see it.
One of the other great Canadian exports is music, and that brings me to the second name on my Voices Without Peer list. No, it's not Gordon Lightfoot or Geddy Lee, although both of them certainly qualify as distinctive voices unheard on today's radio or streaming services. No, I'm talking about a short, average-looking guy with pipes that go on for miles, and a great knack of interpreting songs as much as he sings them.
Frank Sinatra was like that-he would take an average song and make it great by his ability to inflect tones and set the mood. I first heard him doing a commercial for Foxwoods Casino way back when, and I had no idea who it was and whether he was just doing a one-off. Turns out he was already popular, just not as much so as he would become.
He was asked to contribute a track to a Spiderman movie sountrack a few years back. He took the theme from the show, backed it with a big band, and created my favorite version of the song ever.
No import duties on this talent. No tariffs or quotas. We'll take as much of Michael Buble as we can get. And go see the most recent Spiderman movie--even though the title character is a Brit. We do indeed import a lot...
Truly a Voice Without Peer. Another Canadian tomorrow...
Pete
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