CANADIAN ICON ANNE MURRAY TO BE DESIGNATED HISTORIC LANDMARK?

BANGUS — She’s as Canadian as blueberry muffins from Tim Hortons, Royal Canadian Air Farce, truck stop pancakes and bad television crime shows shot in Toronto. She’s as Canadian as Sunday night Christmas specials, coniferous trees and mile high snow banks. She’s performed for royalty in some of the most prestigious venues in the world as well as for some of the most powerful people in the world (Ben Hur and Former Prime Minister Joe Clark being two of the more notables). She holds the World record for the most televised Christmas specials and is hot in an asexual kind of down home East coast way, like Ashley McIsaac.

It’s a quintessential late autumn evening in the small town of Nova Scotia. It was sunny in the morning, raining in the afternoon and began snowing and blowing hard in the evening. Canada’s most famous song bird Anne Murray sips lemon tea with her cat curled up on her lap, purring and licking at her own private areas like only cats can do, as well as a select variety of dogs and cockatiels. The fireplace is cracking and popping. On the wall of the recreation room, numerous gold platter discs are framed and mounted in perfect chronological order. They are polished.

“I’ve been blessed to have such a prolific career. I truly am,” Anne tells Bangus Online as she pets the
kitty. The kitty gags up a decent sized fur ball. “But I am saddened.”

What has saddened Anne Murray? Epilepsy? Back taxes? Curvature of the spine? No. None of the above. It seems that her hometown of Nova Scotia has surreptitiously greenlighted a plan to tear down Anne Murray herself to make room for a fancy mobile coffee shop and Anne Murray theme restaurant where the public could gorge on onion rings and unlimited soda pop refills. On Wednesdays, the museum would host Anne Murray lookalike contests. When Anne heard of this, she less than thrilled.

“CTV offered me a spot on a bad reality show where me, Rita MacNeil, Ashley McIsaac and Gordon Lightfoot live in a house. I had my agent turn them down flat. I’m still relevant. I play over 250 shows a year. People, especially in Canada, have this ridiculous tendency to forget about you and your accomplishments,
and the longer you’re able to maintain a career, the more you’re chided. I think it’s terrible. The press is the worst, but when I heard about being torn down I contacted my lawyer. I was outraged to be treated so badly. I notified the head of my American fan club, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who lobbied to have me declared as a National Landmark. Arnold used his mighty power as a Hollywood icon and political powerhouse. Now, the sad thing about this all is that fact that it took an American to have the passion to ensure that I was treated with respect from the country that had been so good to me in the past.”