Your Mommy paints the sunset.
Your Dad lassos the moon.
Their arms circle ‘round you,
They sing a goodnight tune.
You hug your friends together -
Cuddle Bear and Glow Worm, too.
Funny Monkey’s on the pillow,
Standin’ guard on you.

And everything’s okay.
There’s no monsters in the closet.
Your parents love each other -
They ain’t never goin’ away.*

In a Child’s Room, music and lyrics by Norm Hacking, from both the tribute album and his “Best Of.”

Norm Hacking, a much loved local Scarborough roots musician, died Nov. 25 at his Scarborough home of an apparent heart attack. He was 57
A memorial celebration of his music, poetry – and life – is planned for Thursday, Dec. 6 at the Renaissance Cafe on Danforth Avenue, just west of the Woodbine Subway Station.

“I invite you to come to the Renaissance Cafe from 4:30 p.m. onwards, to celebrate Norm and his legacy,” said his son Ben Hacking in a statement on Norm Hacking’s website.

“It was his wish not to have a formal funeral in a drab and stuffy parlor, but rather a night of song, spoken word, and story telling both on and off stage.

“Thus, the night will begin with a blessing of his ashes and some words of remembrance by our dear friend LiANA Di Marco (chaplain/celebrant), and then we will carry on into a night of open stage. So, feel free to bring your guitars, stories etc.

“He also requests no flowers please.”

The Renaissance Cafe has been Hacking’s east-end Toronto performance home for several years. His last performance (July 19, 2007) was as the feature of the Thursday open stage series, itself patterned after Hacking’s earlier open stages.

In fact Hacking was the first feature on June 17, 2004, when Brian Gladstone started this series.

So it’s fitting that this open stage – the entire evening – will be taken over for sharing remembrances in story, song, poetry.

Participant sign-up sheet for those who would like to perform starts at 4:30 p.m.

At around 5 p.m., a short non-denominational service led by LiANA DiMarco, chaplain/celebrant, will take place, followed by an open stage format celebration in story, song and verse.

Hacking was predeceased by his mother Katherine O. Hacking last year (2006) on Oct. 4 at Scarborough Grace Hospital with Norm at her side.

Hacking was so respected in the local Toronto roots community that he was the subject of a critcally acclaimed 2001 tribute CD called One Voice, A Tribute to Norm Hacking with such artists as Nancy White, Ron Nigrini, Chris Whiteley and even Michael Smith of Chicago (who wrote the Dutchman) who used to tour with Hacking.

Stated Smith in the liner notes of the tribute album:

“In the presence of Norm’s work, we become conscious of a consistent and loving attention to that which unites and defines us all. This level of involvement and honesty does not always result in (and some would say almost precludes) commercial success. Norm is living evidence of the reassuring fact that beautiful art exists outside the range of the jittery and impatient spotlight. Yet his charm and magnetism are such that I would not be surprised if one of these days he turned up on the hit parade.”

Many of the same songs can be found on Hacking’s own “best of” called Skysongs… A Writer’s Collection (1996).

Hacking was also thrilled to have a song he collaborated on with Kirk Elliott, When Cat’s Go Wrong, turned into a children’s book/CD last year by Cynthia Nugent that was well received both commercially and critically.

“I love this,” Hacking told The Mirror in an interview last year. “You can agonize for two years on putting an album together that barely breaks even and then you can be sitting around scratching your chin wondering what’s next and the phone rings and someone says, oh, we’re doing a book of your song.”

Hacking lived in the same house he spent his first six years in, that used to be his grandparents, in the Gerrard Street and Victoria Park area of Scarborough. When he was six his family “moved out to ‘Scarberia’,” he said jokingly.

“A sea of mud. There was nothing but polywogs and field mice and there was even a chicken farm on the corner of Kennedy and Lawrence …My old man was AWOL pretty early in life. He left when I was six.”

He called his mom “a saint.”

Hacking graduated from Winston Churchill Collegiate and then on to the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus where he could often be found strumming guitar in the halls when not in class. He got his first official gig when a representative from the student council, who had heard him play, asked him to perform at a concert.

“I said, you’re crazy, are you out of your mind. And he said 50 bucks, six songs..

“You got me! I got up and nobody threw anything. In fact, several women who wouldn’t normally speak to me came up after the gig and were cluttering about how they liked the music. And I said, wow, this is good.”

He then accepted an invitation to play the pub two weeks later, which he did with a lead guitar accompanyist.

“By the end of the night you couldn’t hear yourself playing, it was so loud. And the table in front of the stage, they had been playing euchre all night and screaming and yelling, and they all got up in unison and mooned the stage.
“I said, ‘Okay, so that’s how it is.’”