Elegy for a personal paradise lost: music in Georgetown, Ontario, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with Mr. Ken Harrison
“The past is a candle at great distance: too close to let you quit, too far to comfort you. It is strange how we hold on to the pieces of the past while we wait for our futures.” ― Ally Condie
As a child in Georgetown, Ontario, I discovered several safe havens.
Our family home was often awash with anxiety and strife, but the arena, the fairground baseball diamond, and St. John’s United Church served as personal sanctuaries.
In Georgetown, I discovered, to my own great surprise, that I had a sweet singing voice – a ‘blessing’ that melted away with adolescence like the snows of late spring – and as such the ubiquitous music teacher and choir master in those days, Mr. Ken Harrison, took me under his far-reaching wing.
Although unable to sing with the beauty and grace of my idols, Barbara Evans and David Farnell, whose annual Christmas rendering of “Oh Holy Night” was the highlight of Yuletide, I apparently had enough talent for Mr. Harrison to groom me for solos with the church junior choir; to insist that I audition for a performance role in the elaborate musicals that he organized at Chapel Street School; and to enter me, like a prize racehorse, in the annual Toronto Davenport Festival of Sacred Praise and Scripture.
There was one small problem with all this pushing: I suffered from acute performance anxiety to the point where my bladder and bowels would erupt like volcanic Vesuvius whenever it came time for an audition or a solo.
I would also mysteriously fall prey to laryngitis just before the annual pilgrimage to Davenport, and my solos in those competitions always sounded like the croakings of Billy Bob the Bullfrog.
But oh how I loved singing in the school chorus or the church choir! I remember the feeling of peace and joy that flowed like soothing waters whenever I entered the church for choir practice, in the company of kids from all over town, witty kids, kind kids, puckish kids.
A girl named Marsha Jones would make me laugh until I wept.
Meanwhile, for the school musicals, Mr. Harrison would often choose Irish themes. After inevitably flubbing the performance audition, I would readily join the chorus and belt out tunes like “Oh, the days of the Kerry dancing” and “ How are things in Glocca Morra,” happy as a lark in spring.
The Kerry Dance Lyrics | BellsIrishLyrics
How Are Things In Glocca Morra? Lyrics — Finian’s Rainbow Musical
Looking back over a vast vista of time – and now auditioning for eternal departure – I feel the tug of bittersweet nostalgia, as expressed in these wistful songs from bygone choral days:
Oh, the days of the Kerry dancing
Oh, the ring of the piper’s tune
Oh, for one of those hours of gladness
Gone, alas, like our youth, too soon!
Your friend,
Robert
Robert McBryde – robertmcbrydeauthor.com
