• Age: 15
• Grade: 10

A musical quilt, this unique guitar becomes a passionate metaphor for Canada.

The Six String Nation guitar, Voyageur, is made from sixty-seven pieces of Canadian history: Pierre Trudeau's canoe paddle is a tone bar, the Grey Nuns convent in Winnipeg-once a classroom to Louis Riel-makes up the back and sides, Paul Henderson's hockey stick from the 1972 Canada/Russia Summit Series is a detail on the pickguard, the sacred Golden Spruce of Haida Gwaii forms the top face and gold from Maurice Richard's 1955-56 Stanley Cup ring adorns the ninth fret.

 

Thanks to a crazed determination to share this guitar and his impassioned vision of Canada with as many Canadians as possible, Taylor has taken the guitar to festivals, conferences, schools and community events, from sea to sea to sea. Along the way, countless citizens have added their own definitions of what it means to be Canadian, either through music or the very act of engaging with this object that is at once artifact and living instrument. Six String Nation allows them to, literally, hold history in their hands-and add a little harmony of their own.

 

Illustrated with documentary photos and gorgeous portraits of the people that Voyageur has encountered, Six String Nation chronicles the journey of one special guitar, from conception through construction to the road it still travels across our land.

Jowi Taylor is the Peabody Award–winning freelance writer, host and producer behind such CBC Radio projects as The Wire, The Nerve, Global Village and "Invisible Cities." The 2009 summer tour of the Six String Nation guitar will start in June with Luminato festival in Toronto. He lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Jowi Taylor's profile page

"People seem to love Taylor and his patriotic axe."

Times Colonist

"The ongoing mission of Le Voyageur and the Six String Nation project is to encourage Canadians to tell the story of Canada from a multitude of perspectives, to know and embrace Canada's diversity as a kind of commonality and to celebrate the power of music."

Inside Toronto

"Collectively, these relics sound like the contents of a small and somewhat eccentric museum of Canadiana. And so they are -- except that this museum makes sweet music when it's strummed, because this repository of true-north iconography is an acoustic guitar.'"

Georgia Straight

"Jowi Taylor, a Toronto broadcaster...set out in 1995 to create an object more quintessentially Canadian then hockey, Tim Horton's doughnuts, insulin, the CN Tower and Lake Louise. Eleven years later, he was able to hold it in his hands -- an acoustic guitar made from 64 bits of Canadian history."

Vancouver Sun

"The Voyageur was a true labour of love for this writer, radio host and producer, involving some science, some alchemy, and a whole lot of hard work. Six String Nation, the book chronicling the Voyageur (and Taylor's) journey from an initial idea to a very tangible reality, was published just over two months ago. It paints a vivid picture of Canada through stunning portraiture and insightful interviews with a wide range of people who contributed to the project, or who had the opportunity to try their hand at playing the Voyageur once it was finally finished."

Pique News Magazine

"Braiding the stories of the guitar, its pieces, and its fans makes for a powerful back story, a kind of magic that is positively galvanizing."

Boing Boing

"Six String Nation is a reminder of the power and position of music in Canada today. Putting everything else aside, maybe it is music that holds this nation together, the magic of singing and playing that unites us: Acadians, Quebecois, Albertans, First Nations Peoples, Metis, Ontarians, men, women, professional musicians and amateur pickers alike."

Owen Sound Times

"Six String Nation, a marvelous and optimistic and quintessentially Canadian book."

Bill Richardson

Six String Nation

Taylor offers a distinct description of multicultural Canadian history through its music, using the guitar as the book’s metaphor. The author explores the pride of Canadians through the uniqueness of individual backgrounds within a contemporary history. Taylor’s guitar, Voyageur, is made from sixty-seven pieces of material of Canadian history. Pierre Trudeau’s canoe paddle, the classroom to Louis Riel, Paul Henderson’s hockey stick, the sacred Golden Spruce of Haida Gwaii, a sideboard in Sir John A. Macdonald’s office, and a walrus tusk from Rankin Inlet are examples of the some of the pieces of history built into the guitar. The guitar is physically made of Canadian history.

Taylor is the Peabody Award–winning freelance writer, host and producer behind such CBC Radio projects as The Wire, The Nerve, Global Village and “Invisible Cities.”