born & raised in calgary, go to toronto, US east, california.

i once knew a so rare, sacred, unbounded, everlasting love.

"i've had but one tremendous & holy, bridal love,

and i know that none other can ever replace her..."

my eternal love ...for donna of victoria

- as great as the hour we first met,

my only love, forever etched on my soul"

i was a prairie boy riding horseback in saskatchean at a young age. i came to believe in the provenance of the great plains, of the heartland. ‘the people i met were honest, real people of faith,” a faith which sustained them - “the faith of our fathers.”

grace that “causes us to catch the breeze of presence, the rain of compassion, and the thunder of truth.

its a kind of kristofferson or johnny cash outlook. chanan might as well have taken his place alongside the highwaymen, with willie and waylon. he and tom philips of the men of constant sorrow met up by similar happenstance, as he did with john hammond jr. “i played darts with john after my first marriage collapsed so i offered him my cowichan island sweater” which had been a present from his ex-mother-in-law. “she sent mine back to me so i decided to return the favour.” A time when, in kris’s words, “when no one stood behind me but my shadow on the floor.” And then, “when you realize that romance got me nowhere” that he best “by the grace available and the holy sacraments turn to the risen One. And “begin through baby steps abide in Love, and, recently, to offer up my life as a burnt sacrifice...

..."love refined in the furnace and made pure as crystal.”

And the songs he left here were testimonies to a higher sense of calling than just a repeated “Gound Hog Day” for romance. it was rather a full circle ‘pasajero’ for a love that can only be found as a once bestowed gift… he was called to become a “servant of the authentic spirit.” And he hopes that others too might hear the call as he did:

“Have you had sight of me Jonas my child? Mercy within mercy, within mercy…”

(Thomas Merton)

“I call the songs my babies.” After he wrote them, in a few months he got a phone call from Maurice Ginzer, Owner of Canada’s Kaos Cafe, Jazz & Blues Niteclub. “These are really quite good!” he surmised, setting Chanan up for a CD Release Night with Calgary’s Channel 8 TV filming it for the News next day. “And then on Soundclick, the first four songs went Number 1 on their Internet Billboard Charts.

I learned how a tough town could make me stronger for the things which lay ahead; a little more time doing Ground Hog Day until I was done and burnt to a crisp.” And the songs are testimony that “though the world might beat you down, hang in child, because Life, and the Saviour of Life, will lift you up again, like a resurrection bound to come and long overdue…”

i wrote about a number female friends, but there was only one love that rocked my world, an angel from victoria who gave her life as an alternative school founder and first principal. "she was beautiful, and i can only say i love her still as much as the first day we met...what can i say, i guess donna was an "angel flyin' too close to the ground.."