HEARTS, MINDS & SOULS - The Old Guard

HEARTS, MINDS & SOULS B.C. Music Educators Series, VOLUME I

The true stories of 23 respected, career B.C. Music Educators who influenced the lives of many young people through music.

Christopher Best AUTHOR OF:THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE LEGENDARY MR.D

HEARTS, MINDS & SOULS

HEARTS MINDS & SOULS The true stories of 23 respected, career B.C. Music Educators who influenced the lives of many young people through music.

4 ~ Publisher Copyright 2016 Christopher Best All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopywrite.ca, 1-800893-5777 Warfleet Press 1038 east 63rd Avenue, Vancouver, B.C., V5X 2L1 www.warfleetpress2.wordpress.com All photos from the collection of Christopher Best unless otherwise noted.

Cover Photo: 2004 Dave Proznick and his Semiahmoo senior music students on a trip to Cuba

Cover design by Christopher Best Text design by Christopher Best Printed and bound in Canada Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Best, Christopher 1949 HEARTS, MINDS & SOULS B.C. Music Educators’ Series, Volume I

1972 Annual Vancouver School Board Nights of Music. Kerrisdale Arena five nights in the Arena with 2000 performing each night.

FOREWORD:

A History of the B.C.M.E.A based on an interview with Dr. Dennis F. Tupman

The British Columbia Secondary Instrumental Teachers Association or BCSITA was a loose group of about fifteen directors. It included Rex Potter from Trail, Ted Aimes in Castlegar, Cummings in Powell River Ralph Yarwood in Kimberley and Howard Denike in Victoria. Fred Turner ran several bands in New Westminster. Most of their members came from the military. The ones who started the strings programs like McMurdo in Kamloops, probably came from Kneller Hall in England where directors were trained for the military bands. Gar McKinley was in the Okanagan in Vernon. He was an amazing guy. He used to teach all the grade 8s in one class. He preferred to have a choir of around one hundred and twenty kids. That was quite common. ‘Kids wouldn’t sing in junior high unless it was a large group. He also directed the band. He was a general music teacher. A driving force behind SITA and the BCMEA was Fred Turner. He was a ball of fire in those days.

8 ~ Fred Turner

The BCSITA organized festivals. I remember the first one was in New Westminster. Fred Turner directed it at Vanier Auditorium. There were four hundred and forty players (all from B.C.). I was one and Earl Hobson was another. We were both in grade nine. They were held in New Westminster and were directed by Fred Turner for the next few years.

After that they moved to Victoria around 1959. That is the year the SITA really took off. Howard Denike was its secretary. Before the internet you just picked up the telephone and called the guys. I can remember Howard being on the telephone to whomever while I was having a lesson with him. The first event in Victoria drew about 1500 kids from all over the province. It was held in the Memorial Arena. I attended that one as well although I had graduated by then.

In 1958, I came over to Brock Hall at U.B.C. A group of about twenty-five teachers had got together. They were university educators, secondary choral teachers and a strong contingent of elementary teachers.

They had a meeting at Brock Hall. That is when the whole concept of the B.C.M.E.A. was consolidated and articulated. They said, “We must have something that goes from elementary to secondary and everyone needs to be involved: instrumental, choral or whatever. At that time this was a big thing to think about because band programs were just starting.

Choirs were the big thing. There were more orchestras than bands but they were not really school orchestras. They took kids who learned

FOREWORD ~ 9

outside the schools and brought them together in the schools but they weren’t really started in the schools.

Organizing meetings that included teachers from all around the province was difficult. It was expensive to fly and long distance telephone calls were costly as well. We were really handicapped in the outlying communities. But we prevailed and teachers always managed to come down for the conferences.

After the meeting it was decided to start up the British Columbia Music Educators Association or the B.C.M.E.A. They held talks with SITA and both groups decided to come together to form one comprehensive group in 1959. It was quite rare in Canada. Other provinces never did it this way. This is how the B.C.M.E.A. was born. Dr. Lloyd Slind was one of the key movers in this group and probably the one responsible for fostering the concept. He also brought together I.S.M.E. and the C.M.E.A. making it one comprehensive group as well.

Conferences were a big deal. In the early years a great majority of teachers attending the BCMEA conferences were elementary teachers.

In 1960, we used to figure that it was about 70% elementary and 30% secondary. Now it is the opposite which is very disappointing. It is good for the secondary level but what it means is there are people out there who don’t care enough to go to the conference or cannot afford to go or aren’t given release time to go and learn the skills of teaching music.

10 ~ Langley School of Fine Arts

As a result they don’t have what we had at that time which I would call a discipline based approach to teaching music. That was the time of Kodaly and Orff, both systems of teaching music that spread all over the world. Both were discipline-based, very systematic and very successful.

They still are but nothing to the extent they used to be. They required a methodology and lots of exposure. There is another system in America called “Threshhold to Music.” It is led by Mary Helen Richards. A person who worked closely with her in the old days was Sister Floret Sweeney. She still lives in Vancouver and is still working. She has devoted her whole life to the methodology of teaching music. In my opinion if you do not know her approach in the primary grades then you are not teaching correctly. What can be accomplished through music is phenomenal.

I am very excited about elementary music because it is not just for the talented. It is for every kid and we handicap our kids’ ability to learn if they are not exposed to music. By putting emphasis on computer education too early (e.g. teaching algorithms in grade one and in Kindergarten) they are entirely wrong. Émile Jaques-Dalcroze was another.

Today the conferences are a shadow of what they used to be. We used to have 1500-2000 people at the conferences. Now there are only 300500. We have doubled the number of kids taking music but the music groups have diminished to a quarter of their size. So what we have all over the province is classrooms that have no music what so ever or a classroom where music appreciation consists of listening to an FM radio

FOREWORD ~ 11

station. That is not to fault people today.

There is a very special movement in B.C. that started about 30 years ago called the Specialty Featured Arts Program for Elementary students.

An example is the Langley School of Fine Arts. They have phenomenal teachers, excellent programs and kids that just blow you away, kids who are not necessarily great musicians but they get a lot out of music. I did an assessment on many arts schools and the first thing the kids say was they feel safe and they know who they are. The arts have a way of doing that. There are others. There is one in Kamloops and another is the Abbotsford School of Fine Arts. Districts tend to concentrate the arts teaching in that one school though and that wasn’t the original intention.

But it happened. In order to teach English you should use drama and the arts. So that is what is happening today.

We have in B.C. one of the the most adversarial provinces in Canada where there is a need for improved cooperation between schools and trustees. It is amazing that they do as well as they do. I have tremendous respect for teachers who can make anything work and in B.C. they have done the impossible. That is not only in music but in all disciplines.

Standards are high in many areas but it has often been at the cost of the teacher’s health.

1972 Kerrisdale Arena annual Vancouver School Board Nights of Music. Five nights (2000 performing each night)

CONTENTS 1. Dennis Tupman................................................................13 2. Pete Stigings....................................................................29 3. Bob Rankin......................................................................43 4. Ernie Colledge.................................................................53 5. Bob Schaefer....................................................................73 6. Fred & Kerry Turner..........................................................96 7. Rob Karr.........................................................................113 8. Dave Henderson.............................................................195 9. Bob Rebagliati................................................................219 10. Peter van Ooyen...........................................................231 11. Keith Woodward...........................................................245 12. Margaret (Neill) Behenna.............................................269 13. Mary Howland Ellenton.................................................285

14. Chris Robinson............................................. ...............307 15. Tom Koven...................................................................353 16. Ron Pajala....................................................................363 17. Sandy Koven..........................

..................................13

18. Mark Kowalenko.............................................. ..............29 19. Dave Proznick.................................................................43 20. Dave Fullerton.......................................................... .....53 21. Marilyn Turner.................................................................73 22. Bob LaBonte...................................................................91 23. Curt Jantzen..................................................................113

PHOTO RIGHT: 1972 Annual Vancouver School Board Nights of Music. Kerrisdale Arena

1 Dennis Tupman Back Story

My father Frank Tupman was a director of choirs in Victoria. During the war he was asked to teach at Victoria high school on the bequest of Dr. J.F.K. English, an important figure in Victoria at the time. I think he was the deputy Minister of Education. He asked my father to teach music. My father was too old for the war so he was happy to oblige. It was a smaller province with lots of cooperation.

Victoria has always been a musical town. From a very young age I operated the family record player which had a fiber needle that you put down and then cranked up the machine. I would run the record player for my sisters who were in their late teens. Saturday nights service men were invited to our house during the war for a dance. That’s how I got

18 ~ Harry Bigsby

used to the big bands: Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fletcher Henderson. They were all household names. In the summer just before I turned ten, I started playing clarinet. I liked the sound and it was what Benny Goodman played. Harry Bigsby taught extracurricular band after school for anyone who was interested. Because I was asthmatic my parents felt it would be good for me to play a wind instrument. For a year I rode my bicycle once a week from Gorge Road to Esquimalt with my clarinet. The following November, I played my first Remembrance Day Service with the band. Mr. Bigsby took us to Esquimalt where we played at the memorial. [It was snowing and we were standing outside playing a march. Snow was building up on my instrument and I wondered if I would be able to play.] I played in the band for a couple of years until my father was transferred to Vancouver where he worked for Western Music. The following year I returned to S.G. Willis School in Victoria for grade nine. Howard Denike was the choir director working on a letter of permission. He had learned his music in the Air Force band and was an excellent musician. He inspired me so much that when I finished grade nine and left the school he offered to give me private lessons for free. We didn’t have much money in those days. I spent a few months at Victoria High School studying technical education (the trades) but after conversations with my father and G.F. Gough I decided to set my sights on Victoria College for a year and then to Normal School.

DENNIS TUPMAN ~ 19

I wanted to be an elementary teacher but like most starting teachers in those days I didn’t have a full degree. Harry Bigsby, the Superintendent of Music, said to me, “Why don’t you teach music at Central Junior?”

So I did. That was in 1956. I had graduated from high school in 1954.

Roland Grant directed the band at both Victoria High School and at Central Junior. He was a graduate of Kneller Hall in England where they trained directors for the British military bands. He too was an excellent musician. Both Roland and Howard inspired me greatly.

Howard especially inspired me because he got to me first. He became a father figure to me. Both Earl Hobson and I took lessons from Howard after high school. We received an incredible education from him and for free. We went every Thursday night for two years. He said, “I won’t charge you. All I want you to do is take notes and then give them to me.”

He put them together in a book which he used later for teaching the Victoria University Band. It was a wonderful mentorship.

My first teaching job at Central Junior lasted one year. I taught Social Studies, English, and a course called Health and Personal Development as well as a couple of music courses (one was orchestra and the other was a grade eight band). I had trained as an elementary teacher but launched myself immediately into a secondary level teaching career. I wouldn’t teach elementary school until later. I soon realized though that I needed to finish my degree.