16) The Canadian Pacific Music Festivals of the twenties

Most of us are the "product" of the folk wave of the seventies (unless, of course, we are carriers of a tradition). And although we know that the world of folk music did not begin with this folk wave, we too quickly forget the revival of traditional music and dance which took place at the beginning of the century. This is why in the following editions, we propose to bring you a series of articles concerning different facets of this revival of the musical and dance traditions which occurred nearly a hundred years ago. We begin with the series of festivals presented by the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) between 1927 and 1930.

It may be a surprise to some that a railway company would promote festivals, but one must remember that at the time Canada was still searching for settlers for the Canadian West. In 1907, John Murray Gibbon, one of the organizers of the festival series, was in charge of immigrant recrutement for the CPR in Europe. He immigrated to Canada in 1913 and continued to recrute within the country. By coincidence, Gibbon had studied at Oxford University in archeology, and when he was there he had met Marius Barbeau, who was then preparing his thesis on the natives peoples of British Columbia. It was Barbeau who interested Gibbon in the revival of song and dance which was then happening in England, a movement which seems to have inspired the festival organizers of the CPR . Gibbon was helped by Conrad Gauthier who had first organised similar urban events such as the Veillées du bon vieux-temps at the bibliothèque de Saint-Sulpice and which began on March 18, 1918 . In 1920, Charles Marchand joined the two and worked mostly with Marius Barbeau for the organization of the festival which took place in Quebec City .

The CPR festivals were meant to promote the idea of Canadian diversity. In time, each cultural community was in this way attributed its own festival which featured not only music but traditional arts and crafts as well. Here is the list of the festivals:

1927: Festival de la Chanson et des Métiers du Terroir (Château Frontenac, Quebec); Highland Gathering and Scottish Music Festival (Banff Springs Hotel)

1928: The first two festivals took place in the same area for a second year and a European ethnic festival was held place in Winipeg, known as the New Canadian Folk Song and Handicraft Festival.

1929: The Quebec City festival was cancelled due to the sudden death of Charles Marchand; the Highland Gathering and Scottish Music Festival at the Banff Springs Hotel was held for the third year; the European Ethnic Festival was renamed the Great West Canadian Folk-song, Folk-Dance and Handicraft Festival and was held in Regina. Two new festivals were added: the Sea Music Festival in Vancouver and the Old English Yuletide Festival in Victoria.

1930: Festival de la Chanson et des Métiers du Terroir at the Château Frontenac in Quebec City; the Highland Gathering and Scottish Music Festival at the Banff Springs Hotel; the New Canadian Festival in Winnipeg; the Sea Music Festival of Victoria; the English Music Festival in Toronto.

It is obvious to what class these festivals were directed, as they took place in the grand hotels of theCPR and reached out the upper and middle class elite, either from Canada or visiting the country as tourists. It seems a bit surprising to note from the programs of the Quebec City festivals how academics and traditional artists participate in the events together.The songs are mainly those collected by Gagnon or Barbeau . The repertoire was interpreted by classically trained singers such as Rodolphe Plamondon who sang 12th and 13th century songs accompanied by the Hart House Quartet, Léon Routhier of the Metropolitan Opera, Cedia Brault, mezzo-soprano of the Manhattan Opera Company, and by Wilfrid Pelletier, who was then conductor of the New York Metropolitan Opera. Interspersed with these classically trained artists, one finds others far closer to the tradition, such as the Troubadours of Bytown with Charles Marchand, Émile Boucher, Fortunat Champagne, and Miville Belleau accompanied by Louis Bédard. There are several other singers, musicians and dancers which are not featured on the program, in contrast to the professionally trained musicians. Children's dances are also featured, and are those collected by the Frenchman, A. Gauvin, from the Ursuline convent in Québec (which was also a private school). There is only one mention of a step-dancer, and that is during the 1927 festival, and concerns M. Jacques Garneau (champion step-dancer) interpreting the Gigue de l'aveugle (gigue simple) as performed by fiddler Johnny Boivin. The latter introduces it in this way: "This gigue (step-dance) has been handed down from fiddler to fiddler for many years, and over time was completely altered. I have recomposed it according to the original tradition". This shows that a particular ethnographic dialogue proper to this revival had already been assimilated by the traditional performers.
(To be continued)

by Pierre Chartrand

1. Cecil Sharp was one of the leaders of this movement.
2. Now the Bibliothèque nationale, located on rue Saint-Denis, in Montreal.
3. Charles Marchand was an professional artist who worked for the federal government until 1920.
4. Ernest Gagnon had already published Chansons populaires du Canada in 1865, and there had been at least eight reeditions since then.