Five Wild Moments on Elvis's Canadian Tour

The 1957 shows were the only time he ever performed outside of the US

BY Rachel HoPublished Nov 13, 2024

Yet another documentary about Elvis Presley's 1968 TV special (dubbed "The Comeback Special") is hitting Netflix on November 13, and while ardent Elvis fans will never tire of watching stories about how the show came to be and the impact it had on his career, the sheer amount of material devoted to this part of Elvis's career is getting to be a bit much.

There's probably a multitude of reasons for this, but regardless of the why, the intense focus on the '68 special has meant that other fascinating events in Elvis's career have gone relatively unnoticed to the wider public. The fan favourite Aloha from Hawaii via Satellite from 1973 (and arguably his last meaningful filmed public appearance) is a perfect example, or deeper cuts like The Frank Sinatra Timex Show: Welcome Home Elvis, when he made his grand re-introduction to the American public after completing his military service.

For Canadian fans, though, Elvis's 1957 tour of the Great White North at the height of his fame — the only time he performed outside of the United States — remains a special honour and distinction that deserves the documentary treatment and more.

To support this official claim to Elvis Presley Enterprises (I will be sending them this article), here are five wild and fun facts about Elvis's time in Canada.

A Leaside teenager is responsible (at least in part) for bringing Elvis to Toronto

After performing at Buffalo, NY's Memorial Auditorium on April 1, Elvis and his crew drove across the border to Toronto, where he would play two shows the next day. The sold-out shows in Toronto went off without a major incident — just the typical screaming and near-hysteria that had become the norm for Elvis by 1957.

"You couldn't hear a thing but you could see his lips moving," reporter Bill Beattie said on CBC Radio in Toronto after the concert had ended. "There were the screams, the sighs, the pounding of feet. ... And with 'Hound Dog,' it was over. The crowd left glassy-eyed. This [was] their night to remember."

Thousands left Maple Leaf Gardens that night with Elvis and his gold lamé suit forever etched in their memories, along with the deepest of gratitude to a 14-year-old teenager from Leaside, Carol Vanderleck.

Like most teenagers of that era, Carol was obsessed with Elvis. Doing her civic duty, she gathered signatures in an effort to petition Elvis's manager, Tom Parker, to bring her hero to her city. Across three months, Carol gathered over 2,000 signatures and, after sending them to Parker, she received a phonecall from the unscrupulous manager telling her work had paid off and Elvis would be coming to Toronto.

Elvis was aware of Carol and her efforts, sending her a handwritten note of thanks for all her help and even presenting her with a pair of imitation leather shoes covered in his song titles backstage before his show. Vanderleck, ever a shrewd Elvis fan, recalled this moment in a letter to Brandon Yip, author of Elvis Presley: "All Shook Up" in Canada, in 2000, stating, "I was supposed to wear them, but I refused to because he touched them, so they had to give me another pair."

222 Members of Parliament played hooky the night Elvis performed in Ottawa

At 8:00 a.m. the morning after his Toronto shows, Elvis boarded a train to Ottawa, where he would play another two shows in Ottawa Auditorium that evening. Like Toronto, his shows in the nation's capital were completely sold out, and the city (and local police force) were on high alert for the arrival of the Memphis Flash.

That same afternoon, Ontario Senator David Croll was scheduled to make a speech to the House of Commons on foreign policy. He assured his colleagues that he'd finish his speech "in time so that members of this house may … see and hear a character called Elvis Presley who will be holding forth at the Auditorium."

Despite Croll's promise, on April 3, 1957, only 37 of 259 MPs attended the night session in the House of Commons. Presumably, the rest had more important things to do.

Eight students were expelled from an Ottawa high school for going to Elvis's concert

For as rabid and passionate the love he elicited from fans, Elvis evoked a similarly extreme response from his detractors. His gyrations were considered immoral and un-Christian by many, prompting television programs like The Ed Sullivan Show to famously only film him from the waist up after receiving complaints across the country. A magazine cover in 1957 even asked, "Did the Devil send Elvis Presley?"

Leading up to his Ottawa shows, local high schools warned their students to behave and not act in a manner that would look poorly upon themselves or their schools. Notre Dame Convent attempted to ensure their students wouldn't sully their good name by asking them to sign a pledge: "I promise that I shall not take part in the reception accorded Elvis Presley and I shall not be present at the program presented by him at the Auditorium on Wednesday April 3 1957."

Fifteen-year-old Louise Bowie and seven other students chose not to abide by this pledge and went to the Auditorium along with thousands of others. The next morning, these eight teens met the consequences of watching Elvis shake, rattle and roll.

"I went to school. The nun who was my teacher asked who went and I said I went," Bowie recalled to the CBC. "So she called me out into the hall and she told me I was no longer welcomed at the school and that my soul was condemned to hell. I was devastated."

Elvis was banned from performing in Quebec

In addition to his Toronto and Ottawa concerts, Elvis had originally been scheduled to perform in Verdun, QC, a borough of Montreal, on April 4 and 5. However, the dreams of many French-Canadian teens and adults across the province were dashed when city officials cancelled the performances during a council meeting three weeks earlier.

It has been said that civic concerns and pressures from the Catholic Church informed the city's decision. A spokesperson for Verdun explained the city's decision like this: "Elvis Presley will not help the cultural level of a young city. He would not be any great profit to Verdun with the disorders that have been known to follow his appearances elsewhere."

Verdun's response isn't exactly surprising, especially given how, a year earlier, Variety reported that the mayor-elect of Aylmer (now Gatineau) urged teens to stop listening to Elvis's "suggestive" music, and had local jukebox operators remove his records from their machines.

However — just like with Carol Vanderleck, our nations finest MPs, and Louise Bowie and her classmates — where there's a will, there's a way. On April 3, hundreds of Elvis fans from Montreal boarded a 10-car special CPR train to Ottawa (called "Presley Special" or the "Rock N' Roll Cannon Ball"), paying $11 for a round-trip journey and a ticket to the show.

Vancouver was Elvis's largest and most chaotic crowd of 1957

Elvis's next few shows were decidedly different from his Canadian welcome. He returned to the US on April 5 and performed four shows in Philadelphia across two days where the Pennsylvania Sports Arena was half-full and Elvis was even egged. (The eggs only hit his guitar he laid down on the stage.)

After these less then stellar showings, Elvis spent the next few months filming and recording the soundtrack of Jailhouse Rock. His next set of performances were in the Pacific Northwest with a stop in Vancouver on August 31 for one show at Empire Stadium, the then-home of the BC Lions.

According to Elvis's guitarist, Scotty Moore, the stage was constructed on the back of two flatbed trucks parked at the north end of the stadium with a fence surrounding the makeshift stage. Nearly 100 yards of empty football field separated Elvis from 26,500 screaming fans (his largest audience to that point). Just as Elvis began his first song of the evening, "Heartbreak Hotel," the crowd abandoned their seats and, ignoring the police, rushed up the field to get a closer look. "We must have looked like ants to them back where they were sitting," Moore recounted in his memoir, That's Alright, Elvis.

Stadium officials stopped the show twice in an effort to get everyone back in their seats, to no avail. After only 22 minutes, Parker, seeing the surging crowd, told Elvis to cut the show short and the singer dashed off stage, leaving his band to fend for themselves.

"The kids all ran up there and the platform kind of tilted to one side," Elvis's drummer, D.J. Fontana remembers. After the band got all their instruments loaded into a car, fans surrounded them, even shaking the car thinking that Elvis was hiding inside. (A piece of Elvis folklore includes him giving his gold jacket to a member of his entourage and, as that poor fella ran for his life being chased by a fanatic crowd, Elvis calmly crossed the field to the dressing room unnoticed.)

Elvis's last show in Canada was certainly a memorable one, perfectly exemplifying the extreme reactions the then-22-year-old commanded. Although he had dreams of performing across Europe and Japan, Elvis never again performed outside of the United States. 

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