HISTORY

“The Music Man” Barry Gosse 1937-1988 Liona Boyd (Gosse’s student) with the Queen Elizabeth & HRH Prince Philip at Windsor Castle

Years before ‘Professor Harold Hill’ with his instrument emporium travelling show marched on the giant screens of Southern Etobicoke Movie Houses, there was an untiring young man alive and well infusing youth with the timeless wealth of music.

Aptly referred to as ‘The Music Man’ (aka Mr. Music) by his colleagues and students, Barry Gosse at age 13 was already composing, arranging conducting, and directing with his natural bounty of musical genius. All the while being an EATON’S junior and executive councillor at his graduating high school; New Toronto Secondary School!

During the post-WWII periods, the Gosses were no strangers to the Long Branch community. The son of The Reverend Gosse of Saint Paul’s United Church 31st, and with brothers who would pursue their own illustrious medical, ministry and music careers, the Gosse family was a prodigious household.

Mr. Gosse studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto, as well as the Eastman School of Music in Rochester.

His many remarkable accomplishments throughout his career include the founding of the Etobicoke Youth Orchestra as well as being its stalwart conductor for seventeen years. He prepared hundreds of young performers for the Kiwanis Music Festival and was a Festival adjudicator. For twenty eight years, Gosse was the Coordinator of Music for the Etobicoke Board of Education and for twenty years as the Director for the Etobicoke Centennial Choir.

In the Ministry of Music, Gosse was organist and director of both junior and senior choirs at Saint Paul’s United Church. Later he assumed the Director of Music post for the Islington United Church for two decades until his far too early passing in 1988. My introduction to Mr. Gosse was not through music but rather by numerous recollections and jokes from my Best Man, Alan L. on Mr. Gosse’s inseparable and contagious sense of humor teaching Geography (carried over to music classes) at Kipling Collegiate Institute during the sixties.

One of Mr. Gosse’s grade nine students was a reticent and self-conscious British young lady. Unknowingly to him (and herself, too) this young lady would spellbound his immersive stories and the magnificent works of the great composers such as Beethoven, Gershwin and Copland into global stardom; “Canada’s Lady of the Guitar” and multiple JUNO recipient, Liona Boyd.

In Liona’s Boyd’s autobiography “In my Own Key’ she credits and thanks Barry Gosse for his unparalleled inspiration to ‘kindly put her clarinet down’ and pursue her insatiable love of the classical guitar.

Mr. Gosse composed over a hundred original songs including ETOBICOKE’s official theme song and a piece written for one thousand voices which was performed during Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Toronto in 1977.

In 1987, Mr. Music, Barry Gosse, was inducted into the Etobicoke Hall Fame.

Today, his musical legacy is honored by the prestigious Barry Gosse Award for music composition which is administered and annually awarded at the Toronto Kiwanis Music Festival.

BILL ZUFELT

Long Branch Resident and Chair of the History and Culture Committee Long Branch Neighbourhood Association bill.zufelt@lbna.ca