Guitar Hero: How an Ottawa musician turned a curbside find into a rockin’ reunion

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Last Tuesday, Marc Bourgon’s regular drive home took an unexpected turn when he spotted a Peavey bass guitar in rain-soaked grass beside a Westboro road.

For most, it would be an unexpected find, but for the Ottawa musician it marked the start of a mission. Strumming a few chords, he noted the guitar’s peculiar state: grimy, but in tune, a sign that it had recently been used.

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“It’s very odd for somebody to just drop a guitar on the side of the road and leave it there. There was no case. It wasn’t protected … It had been raining like crazy, so something felt weird,” Bourgon recounted.

His curiosity piqued, Bourgon took the guitar home for closer inspection.

Despite its weathered appearance, the guitar had character. The vintage sunburst finish, though scratched, still glowed. The pickguard bore the marks of countless strums, and the metal hardware was dulled by time. While far from pristine, the guitar’s overall condition spoke of an instrument well-loved or, at the very least, well-used.

“I’m not a bass player. I play guitar and am more of a singer, but I dabble in these kinds of stringed instruments,” Bourgon said.

A member of the local acoustic duo Strum Chums and the almost 20-year lead of rock band Iconoclast, he has seen firsthand the all-too-common theft of musical gear.

“I’ve known so many people who’ve had stuff stolen from their van on tour,” he said. “Just this week, I saw there was a DJ who lost a deck. Music gear is like bicycles or something: So many get stolen and very rarely are given back.”

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A search with no strings attached

Aware of the heartache that losing an instrument could cause a musician, Bourgon took to social media to track down the person who misplaced the bass. His efforts quickly escalated.

“I put a post up on Marketplace, and it was immediately taken down,” he said. So, instead, he resorted to a post on his personal Facebook account with photos of the instrument and a caption reading: “I found this bass … I figure someone stole it out of a car or, worse, someone’s home. If anyone has info on people missing this instrument, send them my way.”

The message was shared over 400 times on Facebook — across music groups — Twitter and r/Ottawa on Reddit, sparking multiple offers from people wanting to take the bass off Bourgon’s hands for free. But he refrained, still hoping to do right by the real owner.

His persistence paid off when Rick Vantour, who runs School of Rock in Orléans, recognized the bass from a repost of Bourgon’s photo in a local music group. It was previously stolen from his studio.

“It was the spring of 2021 and some of our gear went missing. We checked pawn shops, but didn’t find anything,” Vantour said. “That bass was a gift to the school when we first opened 10 years ago. We even used it in some promotional pictures at the time. It’s got a unique look and missing tone arm.”

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After verifying its identity through a photograph that Vantour provided of a former student playing the instrument, Bourgon arranged a meeting to return the bass.

The reunion at Bourgon’s rehearsal space, just over a week after the instrument was found, was a moment of relief and connection. “There are telltale markings, (although) somebody had changed the strings and repaired a tuning peg on the headstock,” Vantour said.

“They obviously took care to make the instrument usable. As for how they acquired that instrument … Well, we know roundabout how they acquired it, but we don’t know exactly how,” Bourgon said.

A ‘bass’ line kindness

Hours after Bourgon shared a photo of himself handing the bass back to Vantour, the news was shared on Reddit, where users celebrated the outcome with comments ranging from hopeful — “Sometimes the internet is a force for good” — to playful, dubbing it the “Brotherhood of the Travelling Bass.” Another user noted the rarity of such a successful outcome: “Took years but he got it back!”

Bourgon understood the significance of his find. “Musicians spend a lot of time and money practising and acquiring gear. (A guitar) symbolizes somebody’s possession, their music, their art,” he said.

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“When that gets taken away from you, which happens quite often to musicians, it’s cool to see that there’s a community that comes together on something like this with the help of the internet.”

For Bourgon, the quick recovery and return of the bass wasn’t a personal victory, but rather a matter of principle — part of the respect and support that musicians naturally extend to each other — a kind of baseline kindness underscoring the local music community.

“When people do find gear that seems out of place, it would be cool if we all just did our due diligence to hopefully return those things,” he said.

The incident has strengthened local ties, particularly between Bourgon and Vantour. “He’s about my age and occasionally puts on shows,” Bourgon said of the School of Rock owner. “He mentioned reaching out if he needs bands or anything.”

Meanwhile, Bourgon’s solo project, Iconoclast, draws from two decades of his rock and roll spirit. “You connect with people in the strangest ways, through shared gigs or random encounters like these,” he said.

“Matter of fact, I have a show at the Brass Monkey on August 31st.”

No better way to cap off the story of a lost and found bass guitar than with a performance and an opportunity to bring community together once more.

smisenheimer@postmedia.com

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