Another story with me travelling Dad in the van. This time I’m a lot younger, awake and joining my father in song. The song in question being Two Little Boys. Quite why my Dad and I would be singing an American Civil War song as we bumbled through the English countryside is due to an Australian. This particular Australian was, at least at that time, known more for his songs about Kangaroos and men with wooden legs!
What he wasn’t known for was time he spent in Vancouver, Canada of all places, right at the start of his career. I am of course talking about Rolf Harris. It turns out that after his first big hit song (about the kangaroo) he ended up spending a year in Vancouver around the same time as a new Cruise Line called P&O was launched back in 1961.
I heard this part of Rolf’s story in the same way he originally came to the city, by accident. Rolf was back in town to give a free concert at the PNE, something I learned by a serendipitous listen to CBC. Sadly I wasn’t able to catch the concert or hear Rolf’s new verses of his Vancouver song, but then he hasn’t heard my the version of Two Little Boys my Dad and I used to sing!
Rolf is one of the few ‘famous’ people I always have time for. His career is far to extensive to go into here but I will say I was clued to the TV set watching him painting those huge canvases which only became clear right at the end! Skies, clouds, maybe some water, a beach … which reminds me: the beach was the last place I ‘saw’ my Dad.
We’d gone there with his ashes. It seemed the right place and we thought it would be quiet. It wasn’t. Turns out a new cruise liner was coming by and people had come en masse to see it. We even commented that maybe it would take my Dad to Vancouver before I got there! It wasn’t P&O or Australian, but …
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