9 Feb 2026
“The winds of winter might blow cold, but none of us will feel it”
I received the sad news this morning that my friend Allan Rankin has died (https://theguardian.remembering.ca/obituary/robert-rankin-1093532340).
I was introduced to Allan many years ago: he and Roy Johnstone (https://royjohnstone.com) and I got together to see about having me make websites for them. Both had just released albums, and there was a sense in the air—a tentative, early, faint sense—that musicians should have websites. And so was hatched AllanRankin.com (https://web.archive.org/web/20020603102703/http://www.allanrankin.com/index.php3). In the process I became a fan of Allan’s music: rich, evocative, well-crafted songs about the Island he loved so dearly.
Over the years since, our paths crossed innumerable times, personally and professionally. Allan was one of my mentors in how to live a good life in my adopted province, and he bestowed a great compliment on me by calling me a “new growth Islander.”
Allan was witty, creative, contrarian, and wickedly smart.
While he was a political candidate–he ran for the NDP against then-Premier Alex Campbell in 1974 (https://www.electionspei.ca/sites/www.electionspei.ca/files/1974Report.pdf)–Allan excelled at being just out of view. He was instrumental in nurturing the careers of many worthy public servants over his years in government.
He was an incisive writer, both as a songwriter and in the column he wrote for several years for The Eastern Graphic.
By times a New Democrat and a Liberal, Allan ended as a fervant supporter of the Green Party, support that advanced the party’s cause greatly.
My favourite times spent with Allan, though, were at the movies.
Both fans of action-adventure films, with partners who weren’t, Allan I would meet for late nite showings of the films of Tom Cruise at the Cineplex in Charlottetown, the hour and the circumstance giving an air of international mystery to the affair.
My favourite song of Allan’s is Raise the Dead of Wintertime (https://web.archive.org/web/20020603101909/http://www.allanrankin.com/songs/onesong.php3?number=10), a song that only Allan could write, and a song that so-captures a slice of Prince Edward Island. From Allan’s notes about the song:
One perfectly still and beautiful winter’s morning at Christophers Cross, in western Prince Edward Island, Vincent Handrahan hitched up his little morgan horse and we took a ride over the back fields, surveying the supply of fire wood that had been cut and still needed hauling. That sleigh ride, and the hardworking and resourceful people of West Prince, inspired ‘Raise the Dead of Wintertime.’
I cannot help but have a tear come to my eye when I listen to him singing this line:
And when at night we’re by the stove
Our bellies full and our stories told
The winds of winter might blow cold
But none of us will feel it
Goodbye, old friend. I will miss you.
