Guelph Musicfest enters its 15th season

With their debut recording “Souvenirs” recently named BBC Music Magazine ‘Recording of the Year,’ Rolston String Quartet will play for the Guelph Musicfest’s second show of the year on July 24, 2021. CREDIT: KEN GEE CREDIT: PIXABAY

Classical festival wants to share live music with audience whether online or in-person

ALLAN SLOAN

Live concerts have been few and far between lately with the restrictions placed on events and indoor gatherings. However, Guelph Musicfest is entering its 15th season with in-person shows scheduled for July and November.

The shows will run live if Ontario’s stay-at-home order is lifted, however, people may still enjoy them online if not.

Ken Gee, artistic director of Guelph Musicfest told The Ontarion that after the 2020 lockdown, there was such a need for live music that listeners of their online performances were “moved to tears.”

Gee has been running Guelph Musicfest for 15 years and says the festival was born out of the Guelph Spring Festival, “a big music festival that featured a lot of choral things, sometimes operettas and recitals.”

The Guelph Spring Festival declared bankruptcy after 38 years of annual events, and the Guelph Musicfest was created in order to continue offering people the music they had grown to love.

“There were no classical concerts and I just thought, here’s an opportunity. Why don’t I just start something?” Gee said.

The festival has seen success over the years, but like many concerts and events planned for 2020, those running it were worried about not being able to hold shows.

However, Gee said the public was so eager for music that the cancelling of their 2020 live performances and move to online was met with positivity.

“I had pre-sold a lot of subscriptions for the whole series then,” Gee said. “All the people who had paid full price, [and signed up for] free subscriptions too, said ‘oh it’s fine, I don’t want my money back, I’ll just watch it online.’”

Gee says he takes pride in Guelph Musicfest’s online shows.

“In 2020, it was about the only classical music festival in the country that managed to present all the concerts in front of a live audience,” Gee said.

This year, with five performances scheduled between July and November, Gee has geared up to offer them online or — if the stay-at-home order is lifted — in person.

“I turned it into a hybrid series right away,” Gee said, “we’re adhering to the normal red zone rules or orange zone rules, a maximum of 50 people. So, everybody’s spread out and they’re grouped according to families or couples with six feet between them.”

Gee went on to say that masks are a requirement throughout the entire building, and if anyone is experiencing any symptoms related to COVID-19, they are encouraged to stay home and watch online. Gee is optimistic that by November indoor gatherings will go back to upwards of 100 occupants.

He believes that if the reactions to last year’s shows are any indication, there is a great need for music in the public eye, whether it’s live, prerecorded, or through streaming.

“[They were] so thirsty for music that at the first concert in July 2020, which had been the first live-streamed concert since March 2020, people were crying, they started hearing the music and they were literally moved to tears,” Gee said.

Guelph Musicfest’s first show of the season is July 9 at 7:30 p.m. As of April 28, in-person tickets are still available for purchase, however, Gee said that online live stream tickets will remain open, and pre-recording of the show will be online shortly after.

People were crying, they started hearing the music and they were literally moved to tears.

— Ken Gee

Further information about Guelph Musicfest can be found at guelphmusicfest.ca.

Rodeo champion Fred Whitfield is John Ware in the documentary John Ware Reclaimed, which follows filmmaker Cheryl Foggo on her quest to uncover more about this famous but often misunderstood cowboy. CREDIT: SHAUN ROBINSON

Reclaiming History: John Ware Reclaimed tells the story of the famous Black cowboy from a new perspective

The documentary is being screened as part of the #ChangeStartsNow summit

TAYLOR PACE

A19th century cowboy known for helping establish the lucrative ranching industry in Alberta, John Ware had a softer side that not many people knew of. In fact, not many people have heard of Ware to begin with.

Ware’s legacy has been surrounded by a myriad of stories that in some cases have made him seem more beast than man.

Award-winning writer Cheryl Foggo has dedicated much of her professional life to researching Ware. Thus, in her documentary John Ware Reclaimed (2020), Foggo set out to introduce the mythical man to the world in a new, reclaimed light. she simultaneously highlights Ware’s humanity and the struggles he faced as a Black man in Canada through a combination of re-enactments, animation, and original music.

The film launched in 2020 as part of the Calgary International Film Festival, and has since been screened at many other festivals. It became available on the National Film Board of Canada website in February 2021 for Black History Month.

The documentary first began as a presentation about Ware’s life to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Calgary Stampede. That presentation eventually turned into a play, which later morphed into the documentary.

It will be screened on April 30 as part of the Guelph Black Heritage Society’s (GBHS) #ChangeStartsNow Anti-Racism Summit, a multi-day virtual summit presenting speakers and events with the goal of preventing and responding to racism in Guelph and Wellington County. This goal is part of the society’s broader #ChangeStartsNow Education Initiative.

The initiative was launched after a peaceful march and protest was held in downtown Guelph this past summer, led by GBHS Executive Director Kween Gerber to raise awareness of and show solidarity for Black lives lost in violence.

“The protest was a starting place for the work that needs to occur to change policy and create

opportunities for Black voices to be heard,” GBHS President Denise Francis said.

The educational summit will be an annual event, and the GBHS will be hosting a monthly speaker series throughout the year.

Francis first learned of John Ware Reclaimed about a year ago. “I thought it was an amazing film. It has inspired me to learn more about the Black communities and other racialized communities who helped build and settle Western Canada,” she said.

Ware was born in the Southern U.S. and was likely enslaved before coming to Canada in 1882,

I thought it was an amazing film. It has inspired me to learn more about the Black communities and other racialized communities who helped build and settle Western Canada.

— Denise Francis, GBHS president

Canadians have been given such a narrow education about our history, that we actually can’t know who we are today, and we can’t move forward into a positive future without this knowledge.

— Cheryl Foggo

when he was part of the first major cattle drive from Texas into Alberta.

In Foggo’s film, she begins with the brutal snowstorm that hit just after this cattle drive. The cowboys abandoned their cattle and raced to the nearest ranch house — all except for Ware. When he didn’t make it back, they went looking for his body. Instead, they found him sitting by a fire with his cattle, safe, while most of the other cattle had died in the cold.

According to Foggo, this was the first time that Ware showed them he was more than his enslaved past, and bigger than the derogatory names they called him.

Another time, when his wife was sick he travelled for what Foggo estimates to have been 18 hours by train, on horseback, and on foot to get her medicine, saving her life.

By the end of the film, it’s clear his narrative has been reshaped. This man, a tough and talented cowboy, was also a loving and dedicated family man and community member.

The documentary also shines a light on many historical inaccuracies.

For instance, it was said that he was referred to by a phrase that supposedly meant “Bad Black White man” among the Blackfoot. Foggo conducted an interview with a Blackfoot speaker that revealed the ways in which mistranslation and misrepresentation by White settlers impacted both Black and Indigenous communities.

This begs the question, what else did we get wrong?

Many stories about Ware were perpetuated by a text that was published in the 1960s, John Ware’s Cow Country, which contains racist stereotypes about Black masculinity.

Foggo said she wanted people to question “what other stories have not been told or have not been told in a way that is honouring the people in those stories?”

She also wanted “people’s appetites to be wetted, to [want to] learn more about Black history on the prairies specifically, and to expand their knowledge of Black history in Canada.”

While each region’s history is different than the others, Foggo noted that “they are all linked.”

Foggo grew up on the outskirts of Calgary in the 50s and 60s. Like most other kids in the Prairies, Foggo and her brother Richard loved all-things cowboy culture; but, she said, they didn’t see a cowboy who looked like them until they discovered John Ware.

One day, a young Richard went to the Glenbow museum in Calgary, and was “shocked” to see a picture of John Ware, a famous Black cowboy from their area. He raced home to tell his sister what he had found.

“At first it was like I couldn’t really process what he was saying,” Foggo said. “Then once I processed it, it was a very explosive moment. It was a life-changing experience.”

Francis said they decided to screen the documentary for several reasons.

“Growing up in Ontario, when we studied history in school we learned very little about Western Canada,” Francis said.

In fact, she only learned about John Ware and other Black cowboys after visiting Calgary several years ago and seeing an exhibit about him.

“I wanted to learn more and learn why these stories are not widely known all across Canada. The Black community has been in the West for over 100 years, [and] people need to be aware of this,” she said. “We also need to make the community aware of the challenges and racism they faced when they came to Canada from

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the United States.”

Similarly, Foggo said Black history was absent from historical records and media when she was growing up. Yet she noted that “to know that this history and heritage has been here for so long” is critical to Black Canadians’ sense of identity.

The history is there if teachers choose to share it, but they aren’t part of the mandatory curriculum.

Foggo, like many others, believes it should be.

“Although it could begin around the time of John Ware, and include other Black history that was present in his time here, I think it must also include the decades after John Ware ... It has to be holistic and encompassing,” she said. “Canadians have been given such a narrow education about our history, that we actually can’t know who we are today, and we can’t move forward into a positive future without this knowledge.”

Foggo said she loves the work the GBHS does in preserving Black history in our region, and is “very excited to be able to share a bit of Black history from [her] region of the country.”

Francis noted that the summit is open to all members of the community, and because they don’t want financial barriers to stop people from attending, they have a number of “Pay it Forward” passes available. Contact guelphblackheritage@gmail.com for more information. To learn more about the Anti-Racism summit and the #ChangeStartsNow initiative, visit www.changestartsnow.ca

John Ware Reclaimed can be viewed for free at the NFB website, or on their YouTube channel.