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Canadian icon in the making quietly dropped into Squamish Monday (Sept. 28) as part of a tour launched in 2006 with the idea of uniting the country's diverse cultures.
As Dustin Boyes of Noisy Boyes Music strummed away on the patchwork of Canadian heritage, the "Six String Nation Guitar" owner, Jowi Taylor, pointed out a few of the 63 culturally significant items that make up the instrument.
"I really want to get the guitar in the hands of as many people as possible," said Taylor, a writer and broadcaster from Toronto.
The front consists of a piece of the Golden Spruce, the Yakoun Valley's legendary 300-year-old albino Sitka spruce that was held sacred by the Haida people and loggers alike, but cut down in a bizarre environmental protest in 1997.
Near the sound hole is a piece from Paul Henderson's hockey stick with which he scored his famous winning goal against Russia in the 1972 Summit Series.
And if Boyes paused his strumming long enough to peer inside the guitar, he'd see a piece of shelving from the office of Canada's first Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald, helping to hold the instrument together.
The list goes on.
Taylor is on a national journey to share his guitar, named Voyageur, after spending more than a decade researching and gathering historically and culturally significant items from all over the country. It was built in 2006 by George Rizsanyi and, so far, hundreds of Canadian musicians and thousands of Canadians have played or simply held the acoustic masterpiece, said Taylor.
Gordon Lightfoot even played it on his 70th birthday last fall.
Although he has yet to have the guitar appraised, he estimates investing about $300,000 into the project since starting in 1995, while a number of other sponsors have made contributions. He received no government support although the Royal Canadian Mint created guitar pick-shaped coins commemorating to instrument.
"There are so many things in here that are completely priceless and there are things that would be super important to a particular community but would mean nothing to an appraiser. It literally is priceless at this point," he said.
The Voyageur sounds slightly quieter than most purpose-built guitars, likely because it is made out of so many random materials, noted Boyes, still strumming away. He said he's impressed by the concept of building a musical instrument out of so much history.
"I think it's a wonderful idea. I certainly would never have thought of it myself," said Boyes.
For more information on the Six String Nation initiative, including an interactive tour of its cultural components, visit www.sixstringnation.com.
