‘I was never a person who wanted to look backwards’ Geddy Lee talks to Yoni Goldstein about his Jewish roots, the early days of Rush, and what drove him to write his memoir My Effin’ Life . I t took a prolonged pandemic lockdown for Geddy Lee to commit to taking stock of lot of spare gardens. It wasn’t exactly a lush environment. We first lived around Bathurst and Wilson, but then we moved to the outskirts of the city: even newer buildings, even fewer
his personal history: My Effin’ Life , co-written with Daniel Richler, is about how growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust segued into worldwide success as the bass-playing frontman for a rock trio called Rush. L et’s start by talking about where it began 70 years ago for Gary Lee Wein- reb in the suburbs of Toronto, before you adopted your mother’s pronunciation of your first name to become Geddy Lee. The immigrant population seemed to be interested in new builds. They wanted to be in an area that was not reminiscent of where they’d come from in any way. When they arrived, they lived in and worked in the downtown core. And they worked in factories, a lot of them in the shmatte business, doing piecework and trying to scrape together a living. The sooner they could get away from it, up north, where there was more space, it was less remin- iscent of the world they’d left behind and all the damage of the old world that had occurred through the war. The result was a neighbourhood with very young trees and a
trees—a typical suburban barren landscape. But I found the suburbs a soulless environ- ment. I couldn’t wait to get to where people lived closer together. You describe yourself as a nerdy kid, trying to hide your Jewishness—and in many cases being the only Jewish person in groups, especially as you’re getting into playing bass guitar. We’re talking about two different periods here. Before my father passed away, when I was 12, I was a dutiful Jewish kid like any other Jewish kid. I was very quiet and most of my peer group were the friends that I had either at school or in my neighborhood, which were mostly Jewish. But after our year of mourning, we moved to Bathurst and Steeles. We were the Jewish kids that were bused into R.J. Lang Elemen- tary School (near Yonge and Finch). And that’s where I started to experience flagrant antisemitism.
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