New Music Mondays: Mother and daughter team up to write song about Laurentian cuts

Editor’s note: This article is part of a series called New Music Mondays, where we feature new music by musicians from the Greater Sudbury area on Mondays. If you’re an area musician and would like us to profile your work, email us at [email protected].

Ada King Gold is only 13 years old, but she had big plans for her life. She wanted to go to Laurentian University to study music and attend teacher’s college.

“But now I cannot do that,” said Ada. “I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do. I was really looking forward to going to Laurentian.”

Unfortunately, music was one of the programs on the chopping block last week as Laurentian announced massive cuts to programs and staff. Certain teachers’ education courses were also cut by the university.

The Princess Anne Public School student is also a budding songwriter.

So with the encouragement of her mom, Sarah King Gold, who’s a Laurentian alumna, Ada and her mom have co-written a song about the situation at the local university, entitled “Save our Laurentian.”

“My mom wrote a lot of the words,” she said. “I helped with it, but I came up with the tune and the melody. We really just collaborated on this project. It was really nice to work with my mom on this really great project for a great cause. I’m very excited about it, and it turned out really well.”

You can watch Ada perform the song below.

Ada’s mom, who’s known for her work with the local arts group Myths and Mirrors, said she herself earned a master’s degree in Humanities from Laurentian in 2015 (that program was also cut last week).

Sarah is currently working on a master’s degree in social work from Laurentian (although that’s on hiatus for a while because she’s on maternity leave after giving birth to her third child in 2020). Thankfully, that program was spared in the cuts.

“I was initially mortified on Monday night (last week, after the cuts were announced),” said Sarah, who brought all three of her kids to the protest against the Laurentian cuts on Paris Street Friday.

“Then on Tuesday I got angry. I called my mom, and said ‘What do I need to do?’ She said ‘Write a song.’

“And so I got Ada up first thing in the morning and said ‘We need to write a song.' She said 'OK,' and she started working on it right away.

“It’s just feeling like we need to shift the feeling of helplessness and sadness into action. We just needed to do that, and we did that …

“Yes, Laurentian needs to restructure, and needs to do things differently, but they’ve really attacked the heart of Laurentian, essentially our community, and the impacts are so far reaching.”

Sarah said she sees many issues with the cuts, but one of the biggest impacts will be to people who can’t afford to attend university outside of Greater Sudbury.

“They’re not going to be getting the education that they have a right to,” she said, adding she probably wouldn’t have gone back to school herself as a young mom in 2010 if it hadn’t been for Laurentian.

She said the song’s message is that there’s still time to turn the situation around, if people keep up the pressure on the government and don’t give up hope.

Save Our Laurentian Song

Lyrics by Ada and Sarah King Gold

Verse 1

We can’t get educated without leaving our town

We won’t stay silent, we will not back down

Students and professors lives are disrupted

While management has been corrupted

After this disaster, We’ll fall even faster

Chorus

Who’s gonna come now

Who’s gonna stay now

With this crisis in our town x 2