Happy Birthday, Stompin’ Tom!

If Charles Thomas Connors had been a nickel richer in the 1960s, the world may have never come to know Stompin’ Tom.

After spending 13 years hitchhiking and working odd jobs across Canada, the 28-year-old Connors found himself a nickel short of his beer tab at the Maple Leaf Hotel in Timmins, Ont. The kind-hearted bartender, Gaet Lepine, agreed to let him off the hook if he’d play a few of the songs he’d been writing while on the road. That moment kick-started a career that has since spanned 5 decades and produced such classically Canadian tunes as “The Hockey Song,” “Big Joe Mufferaw,” and “Sudbury Saturday Night.”

Today marks Connors’ 76^th birthday, and Zoomer couldn’t be happier that one of Canada’s proudest patrons is still “stompin’” the stage as hard as ever.