Stompin' Tom Connors

The new millennium came in with a loud bang for Stompin' Tom Connors, the most successful country artist in Canadian history and Dr. Stompin' Tom Connors to you, since he received an honorary doctor of law degree from the University of Toronto. This was not the only award bestowed upon the board-stomping fellow in the year 2000. He also received a Governor's General Performing Arts Award. This and the doctorate are among the first awards that Connors didn't ship back, as he has done with six Juno awards for Male Country Singer of the Year, and a 1998 Lifetime Achievement prize at the East Coast Music Awards. The Juno trophies, Canada's equivalent of a Grammy, were packed up and sent back to the office, because Connors said he never asked for them, while he asked that the Lifetime Achievement Award be re-dedicated to unsung heroes of the Canadian Maritime music industry. Connors wrote "...for all the folks out there who quit the business a long time ago, I ask for them to write in and let the people know the work they have done, their recordings, and the bands they were in. I would like that list to go along with this award." This generous, uncompromising artist is the composer of more than 300 songs. He has released in the neighborhood of four dozen albums, which have sold nearly four million copies. He has done it all without ever leaving Canada and thus is the total opposite of every other Canadian country artist of renown, all of whom went to great lengths to become established in the United States. An example would be the extensive string-pulling from Ernest Tubb to get the Canadian Hank Snow on the Grand Ole Opry. Connors has not only never toured outside of Canada, he also has never embraced the typical subject matter of popular American country songs and instead...