The reluctant Canadian
Scrappy Dan Burke has plenty of politically incorrect things to say about his country and its special day
By BRETT CLARKSON, SUN MEDIAHere's the story of a pool hall-hustling, Irish-blooded kid named Dan Burke who grew up in the west end of Montreal and later found a lot of crack cocaine and a little bit of redemption in downtown Toronto.
http://www.torontosun.com/Video/2007/06/25/4289332.html
As the rock promoter at the Silver Dollar Room, he's one of the city's top independent nightclub bookers. He's brash to a point some would call obnoxious, always outspoken, defiant, crazy, brilliant, and very un-Canadian in his approach. Which is to say -- rarely polite, often loud, and emblematic of a fierce Quebecois pride.
"I think Toronto is very representative of the weakness of Canadian culture," Burke says. "Canadian culture is a colonial culture, and a colonial culture is subservient to authority, and it follows. It doesn't lead."
It's clear he misses the scrappy, streetwise character of his old Notre-Dame-de-Grace neighbourhood, and like fellow Montrealer Mordecai Richler, seems to relish pointing out austere Toronto's shortcomings.
He just can't seem to get along here, even if Eye Weekly and Now have at various points named him promoter of the year, even if he seems to know everybody on the thriving local rock circuit.
"I know about 3,000 people in Toronto, and It seems to me that 20,000 people know me, which makes me a big fish in a small aquarium in this city," Burke says. "And I don't have any friends."
After moving here at 20 to go to Ryerson, which he ultimately didn't finish, Burke was publishing articles in national magazines and Toronto newspapers while still a student.
TELEVISION JOURNALISM
For him, writing was in his blood. For decades, his father, Tim Burke, had been one of Montreal's best-known sports columnists.
The younger Burke proved his own mettle as a writer and soon became an investigative reporter for the likes of Saturday Night and Maclean's. He even earned a National Magazine Award nomination.
By 1992 he was working as a producer for CBC's the fifth e state. It would take a disillusionment with television journalism and an epic drug addiction to put a stop to that.
"I've done a lot of wrong," he says.
The beginning of the end of his previous life as a reporter arguably began in earnest in December 1992, when a high-ranking RCMP drug inspector named Claude Savoie shot himself in the head at RCMP headquarters.
Burke had been working on a story about Savoie taking bribes from gangsters in Montreal. The piece was set to air the next day. In a way, the corrupt drug cop's suicide validated Burke's investigative work. He was actually happy.
"How did it affect me? I'm sorry to say I was pretty excited when it happened," Burke says. "I wonder how other people would feel. The rest of the people at The Fifth Estate were really excited. But I actually knew him. I'd met him, interviewed him, been with him for hours. Three hours one day in Ottawa. So maybe I should've felt sad for him. But I didn't."
Soon after, Burke's world began to unravel. "I went on to become a 24/7 crackhead in Toronto," he says. "I was fortunate that I recovered somewhat from that."
But he hasn't recovered fully. Now 49, he doesn't do as much of it, but admits it's been difficult to go clean.
"I'd love to stop doing drugs," Burke says.
But he can't. He has his reasons, his weaknesses.
"You know, a whole buffet," he says when asked what he uses. "I use whatever drug it takes to get me through a lonely night, a tough day, and you know, I'll try to eat well, work out.
'I DANCE BETTER'
"The funny thing is, I may have consumed more drugs than the average housing project, but I still got a better build than these kids who are half my age. And I can dance better than any of them."
And chances are if you go to the Silver Dollar you'll likely see him dancing enthusiastically. Essentially, he books local, domestic and international bands at the club and then promotes the shows. It's a job he's had in one capacity or another since 1998, when he started booking at the legendary El Mocambo, before ownership changed in 2001 and he was turfed.
In the past few years he's booked everybody from local acts Action Makes, The Disraelis, The Easy Targets, Creeping Nobodies and The Miles to international acts like The Soundtrack of Our Lives and Tokyo's The Zoobombs.
In fact, it was during a Zoobombs show during Canadian Music Week at the Comfort Zone a few years ago, that Burke experienced one of those moments in which everything made sense.
In one precious moment, all the problems and trappings of a "lost and wayward" life spent battling addiction, cultural alienation, and loneliness seemed to fall away.
Burke was standing on the stage, looking into the packed club and sensing the raw anticipation. The Zoobombs' leader, Don Matsuo, had brought his 3-year-old son along and Burke was holding the youngster in his arms before the show started.
"The little guy, he's 5 now, Mifune is his name. At that time he was 3 years old. And I had him in my arms, and I was taking all this in," he says. "And there was a track from the Rolling Stones' Exile On Main St. playing. The band was just about to go on, and I realized -- this was one of the greatest moments of my life."
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