7 April 2018 - Act II: The Struggle Against the Darkness of the World (1980-1986)

Three dramatic changes occurred in Cockburn’s life around 1980: (1) his 10-year marriage to Kitty—which had included the birth of their daughter Jenny in 1976—ended in divorce, (2) his music caught fire in the U.S. and brought him fame he’d never had and was ill-prepared for, and (3) he moved from his 1970s home in rural Burritt’s Rapids, Ontario, to downtown Toronto, Canada’s largest city. Perhaps as an effect of these changes, it was also around this time that Cockburn stopped regularly attending any particular church consistently, though he continued to identify as Christian. After his divorce, the move back to Toronto was, as one reviewer put it, “a deliberate test of his faith.” As Cockburn explained: “I moved with the express purpose of absorbing myself in human society… If, as a Christian, I was being asked to love my fellow human beings, I couldn’t love them very well if I didn’t know anything about them.”

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