4 minute read
Chemainus - Small Business Spotlight
BY KERITH WADDINGTON
Chemainus businesswoman Rachele Turgeon has been, quite literally, fine-tuning her craft for over 42 years.
That’s because Turgeon, one of Chemainus’s newest residents and a proud shop owner, has travelled a good part of her life and a good part of the globe to study under and work alongside the best bow and violin makers in the world.
She has perfected her craft while perfecting the structure and sound of thousands of stringed instruments. Beautiful music has been played around the globe thanks to her work. And now Turgeon has hung her musical “shingle” on the main promenade in Chemainus, where she opened her shop’s decorative door on June 23.
But the Rococo Violin Shop is so much more than a place where “everything for bowed instruments” gets repaired or restored. As Turgeon likes to say herself, “It’s fun in the front and business in the back.”
That’s because the shop features eclectic gift and art pieces from both local and European artists.
The store gets its name from the Rococo time period, which Turgeon describes as “a flamboyant, fun and fanciful time in the history of art, music and political expression.” Rococo originated in France and flourished from 1720 till 1780. “It was a time between the Baroque and Neoclassical eras when everything was over-embellished, very ornamental and theatrical,” says Turgeon.
The shop and its items are the embodiment of that, as community members who have dropped in to welcome Turgeon to the neighbourhood with stories and smiles have been delighted to find out. “People thought it was strictly a violin shop, so I think they were surprised when they came through the door,” Turgeon laughs, admitting that “I’ve always enjoyed display.”
Turgeon comes by it honestly.
With a professional violinist for a mom and an opera singer father, Turgeon grew up listening to classical music and arias, hanging out on stage sets or during her parents’ rehearsals, not realizing that this was training her ear to the diversity of string instruments and voices.
She studied music from a very young age, yet she found herself always using her hands and creating elaborate productions on her family’s kitchen table. Costume design beckoned for a while. But when her parents divorced and her mother married a world-renowned bow maker, the opportunity to continue working with her hands while remaining in the community she knew and loved was a powerful draw.
“I entered into a four-year apprenticeship with my stepfather, honing the art form of French bow-making and restoration and instrument repair,” she says. “He later sent me to his teacher in New York for my practicum. And from there I had the bug to further my studies in the art and history of violin-making at a school in England.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
When asked why she chose Chemainus to re-locate her shop, Turgeon admits the friendliness of the residents, the artistic community, the theatre, and the history of the 1904 home in which she has set up business kept drawing her back.
“It doesn’t really matter where I work because the community of players I serve is global,” says Turgeon. “That said, when I was looking up and down Island for a place to land, it was Chemainus that made me feel grounded. The bigger bonus is that I am now in close proximity to all my family members.”
Speaking of family, Turgeon has this to say about the stringed instruments that come her way.
“Many of the instruments I work on are hundreds of years old, they have a huge history, and to me, are like cherished family members,” she says. “For me, repairing and making is a passion, I am in love with my craft. I have the responsibility to pass on the instrument or bow in as good, or better, condition than when I received it. It is such an honour to be entrusted to their care.”
