09/04/2026
Greg Keelor
Hasn't Hit Me Yet
Greg Keelor of Blue Rodeo was travelling back from the nation’s capital when he fell in love with the undulating landscape of Durham Region as he neared Toronto.
“Once you get to Belleville there’s all these ravines and hills. I was dying to get out of the city, I had my fill, and I thought this was beautiful. I looked at the names as I was going along, Cobourg, Port Hope, Bowmanville. When I got home, it was Sunday afternoon; I looked at the Star real estate and on the page it said ‘Bowmanville rent to buy’. My girlfriend at the time, Michelle (McAdory) and I drove out, in my ‘82 Cadillac, a big blue boat, to Kendall Valley. I knocked on the door — we phoned first of course — and the lady answers the door and said ‘oh hi, Michelle, how are you?’ They had been neighbours in the Beaches when Michelle was a kid. She would have been a friend of Michelle’s mother. We went in. The guy’s name was Doug Moffatt. He offered me a two-year, interest-free mortgage. So I said, I’ll take it.”
“It was my infatuation with the land around me, the valley. Because of that infatuation I was inspired. I was writing tons of songs. Because of the infatuation I experienced, I just thought the whole band would experience it as well. I thought there would be this communion of band, sky, the drama involved. And it did. It worked out that way. The first recording done in that old farmhouse was Five Days in July. That did bring together all the things I was saying: the songs, the natural groove around us, and the band was very tight and playing sympathetically together. Yes, it’s been a very beneficial move for me,” says Keelor.
The Canadian Music Hall of Famer started out around Toronto’s Queen Street but he says he has always had a love of nature. From his time working on the lumber crews of Northern Ontario to his present pleasant valley jaunts, he says he has “had great epiphanies just walking through forests. I’ve always found it very inspiring. Songwriting to me is many different things but part of the distillation, when it’s not settling in the way you want it to, is to go for a nice long walk and somehow it will sort itself out.”
After Five Days Blue Rodeo next recorded Nowhere To Here at the farm, over the winter when the valley takes on a much bleaker veneer. Perhaps the cold nature of both the electric guitars and the surroundings led to the vibe of that record. It was a grumpier affair, yet remains his favourite, says Keelor.
Regardless of season it seems this favourite place of his will continue to inspire one of Canada’s finest songwriters to create, record and produce some of Canada’s favourite songs.
“You call it Durham or Clarington, that’s just its name,” he says, “but it is the land that I love.”
