Thirteen years after urging the world to boycott Canadian goods and calling Canada “the cruellest and most self-serving nation,” Morrissey announced Tuesday he's going on tour in Canada.
The former Smiths frontman will break his promise to never again perform in Canada by doing eight shows in seven cities, beginning at Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre on April 15 and ending at MTELUS in Montreal on April 29.
In between are shows in Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Toronto.
The tour is being billed as his first in Canada in 20 years.
In 2006, Morrissey vowed to never perform in Canada again in protest of the annual east coast seal hunt.
"I fully realize that the absence of any Morrissey concerts in Canada is unlikely to bring the Canadian economy to its knees,” he said at the time, in a message on his website, “but it is our small protest against this horrific slaughter.”
He described the country as “the cruellest and most self-serving nation" and urged fans to "please boycott Canadian goods. It will make a difference.”
The singer renewed his objection to Canada’s commercial seal hunt in March 2008 after turning down offers to perform in Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver.
“There is something especially menacing about Canada’s seal-kill,” he said, calling Canada “a place that people such as I couldn’t bear to visit.”
In 2014, after Sophie Doucet, a rep for then-fisheries minister Gail Shea, urged Morrissey to consider the jobs created by the commercial seal hunt, the singer replied that “building and maintaining the concentration camps of Auschwitz also provided livelihoods, but this hardly made the camps warranted.”
The commercial seal hunt peaks in late March in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and in early April off Newfoundland.
Tickets for Morrissey's tour go on sale Feb. 22 at 10 a.m. and he has pledged to donate a portion of proceeds to various animal rights groups across Canada.
Check out the tour dates below:
April 15 - Vancouver, BC - Orpheum Theatre
April 17 - Calgary, AB - Southern Alberta Jubliee Auditorium
April 18 - Edmonton, AB - Northern Alberta Jubliee Auditorium
April 20 - Saskatoon, SK - TCU Place
April 22 - Winnipeg, MB - Centennial Concert Hall
April 26 & 27 - Toronto, ON - Sony Centre for the Performing Arts
April 29 - Montreal, QC - MTELUS