Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Toronto’s Queen Street, with its clothing jobbers, alternative art galleries and fringe music clubs, has become a major source of brave new musical talents. No group reflects that community’s diversity better than the Parachute Club, whose seven members mix radical social messages with eclectic musical styles. And lately the group’s daring formulas have reaped unexpected rewards. Its self-titled debut album has become a gold record in Canada, and its single, “Rise Up,” an infectious, carnival-style anthem of liberation, has earned the band nine awards and an international audience. This week the Parachute Club launches a second album, which promises to carry its fortunes to even greater heig...

The “Rise Up” singer has always crafted uplifting rhythmic music. Her latest solo album is no exception, featuring the joyous “Only Human” and the feel-good funk of “Who You Are (Be What You Be).” She also pays tribute to her late Parachute Club partner Billy Bryans on the moving ballad “Times Like This.”

Toronto’s Queen Street, the portion running west from stately University to cosmopolitan Spadina, was originally a jumble of greasy spoons, barbershops and clothing stores. Owners lived above their shops, while children played on sidewalks. There were even a couple of watering holes that supplied the mostly Irish, Jewish and Eastern European locals with cold, cheap draft beer. By the late 1970s, those bars had become part of a fertile breeding ground, a creative hothouse of forceful protest, stylish adventure and uninhibited experimentation that produced an explosion of musical talent. In many ways, it paralleled the city’s fabled Yorkville scene of the previous decade, with a tight concentration of clubs that served as a launching pad for a generation of future stars.

The catalyst for change was the nearby Ontario College of Art. Drawn by the lure of affordable housing and restaurants serving inexpensive meals, students from the college began moving into the area, rubbing shoulders with the district’s working-class denizens. Soon, artist-run galleries, theatres and other performance spaces sprang up, while music quickly took over the taverns and the illegal, after-hours clubs that surreptitiously opened