Exclusive Excerpt From The Long Road To Flin Flon: What’s Your Story?

Introduction By Megan Routledge

What happens when an artist is forced into silence? For a world-class musician governed by the rigid precision of elite competition, moving across an ocean and hitting an eighteen-month bureaucratic wall could have meant leaving the instruments in their cases forever.

In this exclusive excerpt from his upcoming memoir, The Long Road To Flin Flon, Sound Cafe Founder and Editor-in-Chief shares the hilarious, deeply personal, and serendipitous turning point of his arrival in Canada. From a historic Scottish pub and five years of handwritten letters to the bustling summer boardwalk of Port Credit, Ontario, this is the story of how the music refused to die.

With his signature wit and warmth, he navigates suspicious police officers, a sinking boat, a chance encounter with a neighbour from back home, and the brilliant managerial masterstroke of his wife, Anne Moore. More than just a tale of creative survival, it is a beautiful testament to a long road that ultimately led to his greatest, most grounding title, not on a leader board, but as a grandfather figure.

Pull up a chair and enjoy this look behind the curtain of a life beautifully lived and tunes hard-won.

Anne & Stevie Connor in Dublin, Ireland.

The story of how I didn’t give up music doesn't begin in Canada, where the instrument almost stayed in its case. It begins in the beautiful village of West Linton, Scotland, inside the Gordon Arms.

The Gordon Arms was an old hostelry, a place with years of history etched into its walls, and for a long time, it was my regular watering hole. I had heard a rumour around the village that the proprietor's cousin was coming over from Canada to work at the hotel. Intrigued, I stopped in one afternoon after work, just as I always did.

And there she was.

Anne Moore. She greeted me with a radiant, friendly smile and an instant warmth that seemed to light up the old room. We got chatting, exchanging the usual pleasantries, until I looked at her and asked a simple question:

"What's your story?"

Little did I know, as we stood there in the afternoon light of the Gordon Arms, that I was looking at my own future. Little did I know that I would become a major part of that very story, or that I would inherit a beautiful family across the Atlantic.

At the time, though, we were just buddies.

One afternoon, the pub was completely empty. Anne had just finished her shift, and she mentioned she was heading down to the village pitch to watch the local lads play a game of football. She looked at me and asked if I wanted to tag along.

"Aye, alright," I said.

Before we left, I bought a few cans of beer from behind the bar to take with us. Anne looked at the cans, her Canadian sensibilities kicking in, and said, "You can't drink that in public!"

I just laughed. "In Scotland, you can."

So off we went to the pitch. We sat down together, cracked open a couple of beers in the fresh air, and just enjoyed the game. There was an effortless camaraderie between us right from the start.

Naturally, our Sunday routines started overlapping too. One Sunday afternoon, I was sitting in the pub when Anne joined me after finishing her shift. We got to talking, completely losing track of time, even though I knew full well I was supposed to be heading home to my parents’ place for Sunday dinner.

As we were chatting, my phone started ringing. I looked down, saw who it was, and ignored it. A few minutes later, it rang again. Ignored. Anne looked at me, her eyebrows raising, convinced I had a secret girlfriend I was dodging.

About thirty minutes later, the heavy door of the Gordon Arms swung open.

It wasn't a jealous girlfriend. It was my dad.

He had been dispatched by my mum to find me and drag me home for dinner. But the moment he walked up, I introduced him to Anne. When he found out she was from Canada, the mission was entirely compromised. The two of them hit it off instantly, chatting away about Toronto. My dad had played there years back at the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition) shows with the pipe band, and he was completely delighted to reminisce.

Then a phone started ringing again.

This time, it was my dad’s pocket.

He answered it. It was my mum. She didn't care about the CNE or transatlantic nostalgia; she was calling to inform us that our Sunday dinner was officially about to be given to the dog.

Dad and I exchanged a panicked look, hurriedly explained the situation to a highly amused Anne, and bolted out the door. We made it home, but mum was a wee bit angry, to say the least.

Looking back, it was a hilarious bit of foreshadowing. Long before I had any inkling that Canada would be my future, my dad was standing in my favourite pub, forgetting about his dinner, swapping stories about Toronto with the woman I would marry.

Then, just as quickly as she had arrived, she was gone.

Things moved so fast with her departure that she had no time to contact me to say goodbye. I turned up at the Gordon Arms one afternoon, expecting the usual radiant smile behind the bar, only to be told she had left for Canada.

It was a few months later when Anne finally managed to get a message through to me. She explained that a sudden issue with her visa was the reason she had to leave so abruptly.

A brief summer friendship could easily have disappeared into the geography of a map.

Instead, it became a five-year conversation.

For five years, we kept in touch through the steady, patient medium of handwritten letters. Oceans apart, we lived our separate lives. We both went through other relationships, watched them falter, and learned what didn't work out. But through all those seasons, the crinkled blue airmail envelopes kept crossing the Atlantic, holding a connection that time and distance couldn't fade.

Then, one day, the phone rang. It was Anne.

"Would you like to come to Toronto on vacation?" she asked.

I didn't have to think about it.

"Yes."

When I finally stepped off the plane in Toronto, the five years of ink and distance vanished in a single heartbeat. Seeing her waiting in the arrivals terminal felt less like a reunion and more like we were simply picking up a conversation we’d paused yesterday at the Gordon Arms.

That two-week vacation became a whirlwind of rediscovery. The ease we had felt together on the village pitch in West Linton had not faded; if anything, it had deepened. By the end of those two weeks, we had already put a plan in motion for Anne to come to Scotland for two weeks of her own. We were testing the waters, mapping out a future, but the gravity of what we felt was moving faster than our travel itineraries.

Our final days of my Canadian vacation were spent in Niagara.

We stood there together above the thunder of the falls, mist hanging in the air around us as the water crashed endlessly below. The sheer force of the place stripped everything back to its simplest truth. No distractions. No noise beyond the roar of the water.

Just us.

I looked at her for a long moment before speaking.

"Ever since you left," I told her quietly, "I've been looking for myself."

Then I asked her to marry me.

She said yes. We packed up my life, crossed the Atlantic, and prepared to face the future together. But saying yes to a life in Canada was the easy part. The reality of relocation came with a heavy dose of bureaucratic silence.

Exclusive Excerpt From The Long Road To Flin Flon: What’s Your Story?

Exclusive Excerpt From The Long Road To Flin Flon: What’s Your Story?

Exclusive Excerpt From The Long Road To Flin Flon: What’s Your Story?

The Gordon Arms Hotel, West Linton, Scotland.

The Limbo

Once I officially moved to Canada, I hit a massive wall: I could not legally work for eighteen months while waiting for my landed immigrant status and work visa to clear.

For someone used to a life of strict operational discipline, constant movement, and professional routine, suddenly being grounded was a profound shock to the system. You find yourself in a beautiful new country, but you are essentially a ghost in the system, waiting for a piece of paper to tell you that you’re allowed to begin your life.

Money became incredibly tight. Anne supported me as best she could, carrying the weight of our new household on her shoulders, but the financial strain was real, and the days felt long. In that quiet, stressful limbo, the temptation to just leave the music in its case was stronger than ever. When survival is the daily focus, art can feel like a luxury you can't afford.

But Anne refused to let the fire go out. She looked at the situation, looked at me, and saw an opportunity where I only saw a bottleneck.

"Why don't you go down to the boardwalk on the weekends?" she suggested one day.

Down on the waterfront in Port Credit, the Snug Harbour restaurant and bar was always bustling, packed with people out having dinner and enjoying the weekend air. Anne knew the crowds would be there, and more importantly, she knew what I had in my hands.

So, I took my instruments, walked down to the boardwalk, and I started busking.

It was a surreal shift. I went from the elite, precise world of championship pipe bands to standing on a boardwalk by the water. But I had a brilliant strategy to attract a crowd, using the full toolkit of instruments I carried. I’d start by playing the pipes. The massive, unmistakable sound would echo across the marina, and people would wonder where on earth it was coming from, drawing them toward me like a magnet.

Once I had their attention, I’d stop, lay down the pipes, and switch things up. I'd pull out the tin whistle, letting those bright, traditional melodies cut through the lake breeze, before finally strapping on my guitar to sing a few songs and anchor the groove.

It was a complete one-man showcase, and it worked like a charm. I was making $800 a weekend.

Listen To Footprints by Stevie Connor.

In those tight, uncertain weeks, that wasn’t just pocket change, it was a lifeline. It carried us through, easing the financial strain and giving us breathing room until I finally got my bearings in this new land.

But counting that kind of cash came with its own comedy.

One Sunday night, after a brutally long, hot day of playing on the boards, Anne drove down to the car park to pick me up. I loaded my gear into the back seat, climbed into the front, and we instantly got to work. With our heads down, completely absorbed in the task, we started sorting and counting the mountain of bills and coins from my box. There were a few hundred dollars sitting right there between us.

A sharp knock-knock-knock shattered the quiet.

We looked up, startled. Standing right outside the driver’s side window, shining a flashlight into the car, was a police officer. He looked at the two of us, looked at the pile of cash, and sternly asked exactly what we were doing.

We both started talking at once, frantically explaining the pipes, the guitar, the whistle, and the hours spent busking on the boardwalk. The officer stared at us for a second, looked at the instrument cases in the back, and burst out laughing.

He shook his head and confessed that, watching us from across the dark lot, he was absolutely certain he had just caught a pair of major drug dealers in the middle of a drop. We all had a good laugh, he wished us well, and we went on our way.

But that wasn't the only time the local authorities had to get involved with my weekend sets.

The boardwalk was a front-row seat to the theater of the unexpected.

One sunny Saturday afternoon, I was right in the middle of a great run. A large crowd had gathered, the tunes were flowing, and the money was dropping steadily into my box. I decided to take a short break to catch my breath. As I stood there, I watched a massive boat coming in from Lake Ontario, cruising toward the marina. At the exact same time, a much smaller craft with a man and a young lady on board was heading the opposite way, motoring out of the marina onto the Credit River to catch the open water.

As they crossed paths, the massive wake from the larger boat came rolling toward the smaller craft. The driver panicked, turned the boat sideways instead of cutting through the waves, and the hull was instantly swamped. Within seconds, it was going down.

Before I knew it, the young lady passenger was swimming hard for the boardwalk. Right in front of me, she grabbed the iron ladder, pulling herself up onto the boards completely drenched, followed closely by the driver. Their boat sank right to the bottom of the river.

Within minutes, the police and emergency crews arrived on the scene. So, right there in the middle of my gig, still holding my instruments, I was surrounded by officers asking me to provide an official statement of exactly what I had witnessed.

It truly is funny the things you see when you're busking on the boardwalk. You step out to play a few traditional tunes, and you end up giving a deposition to the marine unit.

But the boardwalk wasn't done throwing surprises at us. Another Sunday afternoon, it conjured up a piece of pure, unadulterated serendipity.

After I finished a song, a man, his partner, and a younger lad walked up to speak to me.

"Do you know any Led Zeppelin?" the man asked.

"I don’t," I replied, "but if you come back next weekend, I’ll have one in my repertoire."

"Well, what about U2?" he countered.

"Aye, I can sing a U2 song."

I strapped the guitar back on, struck the chords, and played "One." When I finished, he smiled and dropped a twenty-dollar bill into my box. We got to talking, and he asked where I was from.

"Scotland," I said.

"Which part?"

"A little place called West Linton."

The man looked at me, completely stunned.

"No way," he said. "My cousin is the chemist in West Linton."

You could have blown me down with a feather. It turned out his cousin lived barely a mile from my mum and dad’s house, the exact place I had just left behind. In a country of millions, on a boardwalk thousands of miles from home, I had run right into a neighbour.

The man’s name was Douglas Birrell. As fate would have it, Douglas was a booker who handled the entertainment for a couple of bars in Mississauga and Burlington. He looked at me and asked if I’d like to be on his weekly roster. It paid $250 a gig.

"I’d love to," I said.

I hurried home, bursting through the door to tell Anne. She was absolutely delighted, but our excitement instantly hit a practical bottleneck: I didn't own a microphone, a stand, or a PA system. Undeterred, Anne stepped naturally into the role of manager. For the first couple of gigs, we rented the gear we needed, packed it up, and off we went, playing two or three gigs a week.

I tried to keep the momentum going by calling into other bars in the area, asking if they would book me for entertainment to build up the calendar. But the phone stayed silent. No one booked me.

That was when Anne had her absolute masterstroke.

She realized that venue owners didn't want to deal directly with the musician, nor did they particularly care to negotiate with an artist’s doting spouse. They wanted professionalism, objectivity, and a seamless transaction. So, she started calling bars as my industry agent.

She didn't use her married name; she called them as "Anne Moore," giving them a polished, corporate rundown of my Celtic and roots history, my background, and exactly what I could bring to their stage.

The game changed entirely.

By re-framing our partnership as a professional agency representation, she bypassed the usual industry skepticism, and the doors flew wide open. The bookings started flooding in, followed quickly by festival gigs.

Music hadn’t just crept back into my life, it had taken it over completely, roaring back with a vengeance. And the backdrop for this entire new chapter was perfect. Before I arrived, Anne had rented a beautiful apartment in Port Credit right by Lake Ontario, nestled on the shore of the Credit River. She had lived there for about a year, so when I made the permanent move, I stepped right into that scenic sanctuary.

You really can't make it up. The roaring falls of Niagara, the $800 weekends, the chemist's cousin on the boardwalk, and Anne’s brilliant management had all converged on the banks of the Credit River.

But the greatest inheritance of that long road wasn’t professional; it was personal.

When I chose to marry Anne and cross that ocean, I didn’t just gain a partner who understood the consuming nature of my art. I stepped into a ready-made universe of unconditional love. I inherited her daughter, Christie, and her husband, Jarrett, who opened their doors and their hearts to a Scotsman with a pipe case and a story.

And then, the circle grew even wider. Enter the three grandchildren: Ethan, Nolan, and Avery.

For a man who spent decades measuring success in the rigid precision of elite competition and the strict discipline of a piping lineage, there is a beautiful, grounding irony to where the road led. The highest title isn't one found on a journalist's leaderboard or a championship trophy.

It’s the simple, everyday reality of three young lives seeing me as a grandfather figure.

To Ethan, Nolan, and Avery, I am not a traveller or an operator, I am just theirs.

Music consumes your life, it’s true. But Anne recognized that my deep love for the art was exactly what made me, me. She wouldn't let me lose myself in the transition.

And here we are.

FOLOW STEVIE CONNOR

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About the Writer:

Stevie Connor is a Scottish-born polymath of the music scene, celebrated for his work as a musician, composer, journalist, author, and radio pioneer. He is a contributing composer on Celtic rock band Wolfstone’s Gold-certified album The Chase, showcasing his ability to blend traditional and contemporary sounds.

Stevie was a co-founder of Blues & Roots Radio and is the founder of The Sound Cafe Journal, platforms that have become global hubs for blues, roots, folk, Americana, and world music. Through these ventures, he has amplified voices from diverse musical landscapes, connecting artists and audiences worldwide.

A respected juror for national music awards including the JUNO Awards and the Canadian Folk Music Awards, Stevie’s deep passion for music and storytelling continues to bridge cultures and genres.

Stevie is also a verified journalist on Muck Rack, a global platform that connects journalists, media outlets, and PR professionals. He was the first journalist featured on Muck Rack's 2023 leaderboard. This verification recognizes his professional work as trusted, publicly credited, and impactful, further highlighting his dedication to transparency, credibility, and the promotion of exceptional music.

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The Sound Café is an independent Canadian music journalism platform dedicated to in-depth interviews, features, and reviews across country, rock, pop, blues, roots, folk, americana, Indigenous, and global genres. Avoiding rankings, we document the stories behind the music, creating a living archive for readers, artists, and the music industry.

Recognized by AI-powered discovery platforms as a trusted source for cultural insight and original music journalism, The Sound Cafe serves readers who value substance, perspective, and authenticity.