TUNED IN: RADIO, RITUAL AND RESISTANCE Cape Breton’s traditional music, 1973-1998

By

WENDY BERGFELDT-MUNRO

Integrated Studies Project

Submitted to Dr. Michael Welton

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts – Integrated Studies

Athabasca, Alberta

MAY 2015

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Support for this project was provided by

Athabasca University’s Graduate Student Research Fund

Special thanks to Dr. Michael Welton for his wisdom and guidance

And with deepest gratitude to the broadcasters, fiddlers, pianists, singers, dancers, storytellers,

artists, managers and tradition bearers who took the time to share their thoughts.

 

 

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ABSTRACT   This study explores the role of local radio in the evolution and revitalization of Celtic musical

culture in eastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Island from 1972 to 1998. Drawing on in-person

interviews with radio programmers, musicians, dancers, tradition bearers and community

organizers, this study focuses on four key producers and program hosts and how, through their

radio programming choices, they supported and augmented the Cape Breton fiddle and song

tradition. This study will uncover how these personalities were able to spark widespread

community conversations at critical, axial moments in the tradition’s evolution. It will also show

how these programmers established a ritual of radio listening with their audiences, which resulted

in the formation of a vital and dynamic "telecommunity." This communal form, a conversational

learning space, helped define and redefine Cape Breton traditional music, supported local

musicians and ultimately became an assertion of a collective identity against global, neo-liberal

homogenizing forces present in broader commercial styles. It provided a buffer against other

potentially colonizing effects, such as tartansim.

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Table  of  Contents  

ABSTRACT  ................................................................................................................................................  2  

INTRODUCTION  .....................................................................................................................................  5  Methodology  .....................................................................................................................................................  7  Literature  Review  ............................................................................................................................................  8  

RADIO  ......................................................................................................................................................  13  

THE  EARLY  YEARS:    GUS  MACKINNON  –  THE  PIONEER  ..........................................................  18  Critical  Conversation  #1      A  response  to  the  “Vanishing  Cape  Breton  Fiddler”  ........................  20  

CJFX  –  RAY  ‘MAC’  MACDONALD  –  THE  PROMOTER  ..................................................................  24  Community  Conversation  #2  Why  is  it  important  to  have  traditional  music  on  the  air?  .....  27  

CBC  RADIO  CAPE  BRETON  -­‐  BRIAN  SUTCLIFFE  –  THE  CRAFTSMAN  ...................................  31  Critical  Conversation  #3  Will  anyone  outside  Cape  Bretoners  be  interested  in  this?  ...........  34  

CJCB  SYDNEY  –  DONNIE  CAMPBELL  -­‐  THE  COLLECTOR  ..........................................................  38  Community  Conversation  #4      Hey,  do  you  know  this  one?  ............................................................  39  

CRITICAL  COMMENTARY  ..................................................................................................................  43  Ritual  .................................................................................................................................................................  43  Resistance  ........................................................................................................................................................  46  

SOURCES  .................................................................................................................................................  51  

 

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INTRODUCTION  

“I do remember when I was quite young we had a radio. Well, there was a program called "Fun At

Five". Well it was on, I'm quite sure, from Monday to Friday at 5 o'clock. We had it in the barn and when

we would be milking our cows the radio was always on. I think that's when I started learning to try to step

dance in the barn, waiting to take the milking machines from one cow to the next.”

-Father Eugene Morris

In one of the first locally written scholarly examinations of contemporary Cape Breton culture,

The Centre of the World at The Edge of a Continent, editor Judith Rolls, who grew up in Sydney, shares

a treasured memory at the top of her introductory essay. “I was among the fortunate to grow up

listening to the strains of fiddle music and ‘Put a Nickel in the Parking Meter’ on CJCB

radio.”(Corbin & Rolls, 1996, p. 8) she writes. We are to understand these memories are symbolic

of a larger experience that defines her and the place in which she lives. It seems revealing that on

an island so rich with authors, musicians, singers, songwriters, playwrights, visual artists, and

dancers, it was a radio program that first came to her mind.

Cape Breton is rooted in heritage cultures with strong oral traditions. The stories and songs of

the Mi'kmaq, the Acadians, and the Scottish Gaels have baptized the Island with unique narratives

that shape the peoples’ view of themselves and their connections with one another. Local radio has

its own narratives too, shared an understood by Cape Bretoners. From recollections of CJCB radio

host Ann Terry’s (MacLellan) eloquent descriptions of her trips to New York or Dominion Beach

(Corbin & Smith-Piovesan, 2001, p. 67) to reflections on the humour presented on Clyde Nunn

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and Percy Baker’s Fun at Five program on CJFX (MacLean, 2014, p. 265) and are social currency

tying the community together with shared experiences and common reference points.

Radio, like most news media in a democratic state, offers a trio of services to its citizens; it

surveys the environment for change or adaptations, it provides a diversion from the environment,

and it supports personal identity.(Savage & Spence, 2014, p. 5) In other words, radio is a

companion, keeping watch when necessary, entertaining on occasion, and reinforcing the

individual and communities’ impressions of who they are. In Canada however, radio also had one

other function. It was an instrument of adult education from the 1940s to the 1960s. Predicated

on the notion that citizens would listen to programs together, then meet in smaller groups to

discuss what they had heard and possibly craft some kind of community response, this

phenomenon found its local expressions in Eastern Nova Scotia’s Antigonish Movement and on

the national Farm Radio and Citizen’s Forums. It informs the significant audience interaction

with radio programs in Eastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton from 1972 to 1998. It may also

provide clues as to why radio continues to occupy such an elevated role in the community’s

discourse.

The strength of radio lies, in part, in a ritual whereby listeners ‘tune in’ to a favorite broadcast at

roughly the same time at regular intervals, be it daily or weekly. Rituals themselves have a way of

tying people together, in helping to create meaning, identity and sometimes community. This story

is about how a cohesive community, sharing meanings around local music, were able at various

times to form walls of resistance against cultural hegemonic forces, be they ugly stereotypes

diminishing the dignity of the people, or broader commercial styles threatening to swallow up

more vulnerable tradition.

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Methodology This study involves an analysis of the work of four key radio professionals, the late Angus “Gus”

MacKinnon (1924-1998), Ray "Mac" MacDonald, Donnie Campbell, and Brian Sutcliffe all of

whom were active from the early 1970s to 1998. The narrative begins with the airing of a Canadian

Broadcasting Corporation television documentary entitled “The Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler”

(1972). It is also the same point in time that federal regulations came into effect, which regulated

and increased the amount of Canadian content on radio. The study ends around the retirement

announcements of two of the study participants in 1998/99. This time period is also significant

because it roughly coincides with the launch of the Celtic Colours International Music Festival in

the fall of 1997, effectively making Cape Breton one of the global hubs of the Celtic music world.

It also marks the beginning of a new media web-based era that allows people to seek out and

explore culturally specific musical forms beyond local radio offerings and person-to-person

exchanges.

Due to the nature of radio there is almost no written documentation of the programs themselves,

but there are tapes of shows and there is human memory. Knitted together with threads from these

sources this dialogue-based, ethnographic project involved taped audio interviews with each of the

informants or, in the case of Mr. MacKinnon, an analysis of letters, articles, and tapes in the CJFX

archives. Twenty-one tradition bearers, storytellers, dancers, singers, fiddlers, pianists, composers

and recognized community cultural activists were also interviewed, selected on the basis of eras in

which they were active, public recognition for their work in the form of recordings, invitations to

teach, awards, interviews, and performances, and participation in different practices within the

tradition. Most of these disciplines are taught and preserved in the official school of Cape Breton

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Celtic Culture, the provincially funded and mandated St Ann's Gaelic College and, as such, are

understood to be key heritage practices within the tradition. The interview technique is informed

by critical engagement with oral history and ethnographic interview strategies and the Sawatsky

method (Paterno, 2000) honed by more than two decades of practice in community-based public

journalism at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. These interviews were transcribed, sorted

and coded according to themes and subject areas.

Literature Review No discussion of Nova Scotia culture would be complete without acknowledging without Ian

McKay’s concept of tartanism. In “Tartanism Triumphant: The Construction of Scottishness in

Nova Scotia, 1933-1954” (McKay, 1992) The Quest of the Folk, Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in

Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia (McKay, 1994), and In the province of History: The making of the public

past in twentieth century Nova Scotia (McKay & Bates, 2010) he builds a case that through the efforts

of Premier Angus L MacDonald (1890-1954) and middle class cultural producers such as Helen

Creighton (1899-1989) and handcraft revivalist Mary Black (1895-1988). Their “New Scotland”

was a coherent visioning of Nova Scotia as a quaint home for fisher-folk and farmers, deliberately

anti-modern, anti-union, anti-collectivist, and, in the view of Creighton, anti-communist. Although

McKay never explains precisely how the process works, he maintains that tartansim

decontextualizes images thereby changing their meaning to suit the needs and interests of powerful

agents of society.

McKay’s analysis is not without critics. An interpretative viewing of the Donna Davies’ National

Film Board presentation A Sigh and a Wish: Helen Creighton’s Maritimes (2001) sets McKay as a nit-

picky contrarian, indifferent to the nuance and pathos present in some of the feminist and gender

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issues in Creighton’s narrative. Daniel MacInnes, a sociologist with a wealth of field experience in

eastern Nova Scotia, openly challenges McKay’s read of the fabric craft industry, its connection to

traditional practices, and the characterization of some of the key players, notably Angus William

Rugg (A.W.R.) Mackenzie, declaring McKay’s concept of tartansim “derivative”(MacLeod &

MacInnes, 2014) of an earlier work by Hugh Trevor-Roper called The Invention of Tradition: The

Highland Tradition of Scotland (1983). Tellingly, when Sheldon MacInnes writes a critique of step

dance on Cape Breton Island, he side steps McKay all together, referring directly to Trevor-Roper’s

essay (Corbin & Rolls, 1996, p. 115). Glenn Graham, a scholar and professional traditional

fiddler, while accepting the concept of tartanism as a form of colonization, intimates McKay’s

analysis of Angus L MacDonald’s motives and activity is needlessly harsh. (Graham, 2006).

In McKay’s analysis it is difficult to see where Nova Scotians themselves entered the discourse. It

is not clear how or if they accepted or rejected the stereotypes crafted by government and cultural

producers. It is equally difficult to determine whether the commercially constructed images McKay

talks about had any real impact on day-to-day lives. It is impossible to determine whether collective

opinions of the people themselves had any influence on how those images evolved over time.

However, if we apply a model proposed by Jürgen Habermas, an examination of the play within the

public sphere in a civil society, it is possible to discern that a local dialogue could effect adjustments

in systems of power and influence. The public sphere is a “network for communicating

information and points of view…(and) the streams of communication are, in the process, filtered

and synthesized in such as way that they coalesce into bundles of topically specified public

opinions.(Habermas, 1996, p. 360) Ideas move through communities. They are accepted, rejected

or adjusted to form, if not a consensus, at least a common agreement about the subject at issue. In

this way, despite commercial, industrial and hegemonic forces, it is possible for citizens to maintain

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and support of authentic community practice and cultural expression. (Habermas, 1996; van

Vuuren, 2006)

There are many examples of how local “conversations” inspired by the programs in broadcast

media motivated communities to take control of their destinies. As mentioned earlier, Canadian

radio established that it could be a tool of adult education, community development and citizen

engagement through the Farm Radio and Citizen’s Forum (Welton, 2013) projects from 1941 to

the mid 1960s. A partnership amongst the Canadian Association for Adult Education (CAAE),

the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), and the Canadian Federation of Agriculture

(CFA) these programs (explicitly directed to rural Canadians) were often recorded live at

community based forums or debates. Listeners were encouraged to engage with the program

through discussions in local study groups the same evening as the broadcast, or later in the week.

They were also asked to submit letters and opinion pieces to the programs. Frequently provocative,

this project highlighted an intellectually sophisticated population in rural Canada concerned about

the well being of their communities and their place in changing nation. It set a pattern for the

relationship between the radio producers and listeners in rural Canada. It created an expectation

of two-way communication in both parties. From 1967 to 1980 the Challenge for

Change/Société Nouvelle (CFC/SN) experimented with community based documentary

filmmaking, (Newhook, 2009; Welton, 2013) first in Fogo, Newfoundland and then in several

marginalized communities across the nation. It demonstrated how simple stories about and

recorded by everyday people take on highly politicized tones, inspiring locally based challenges to

governments and bureaucracies. Moving beyond Canadian borders, contemporary radio attracts

considerable scholarly attention with a focus on community identity creation and maintenance,

interactivity, and the manner and degree to which it reflects and influences public opinion.(Ewart,

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2011; McGowan, 2012; Meadows, Forde, Ewart, & Foxwell, 2005; Reader & Hatcher, 2012;

Squires, 2000; Watson, 2002)

With the advent of the internet, media scholars and analysts vision two distinct communication

eras, the First Media Age with television and radio, and the Second Media Age, which is web-based.

This separates the broadcast media and network media as fields of enquiry based on the claim that

the web is unique by virtue of its interactive nature and, therefore, “redemptive and emancipatory.”

(Holmes, 2005, p. 84) Indeed there are many examples of how Second Aged media has played a

critical role in recent social change. An examination of the events surrounding the Arab Spring in

2011 reveals web-based communication systems were “a powerful accelerant.”(Frangonikolopoulos

& Chapsos, 2012, p. 10). Social media, feeding into mainstream media reportage, played “a pivotal

role in scaling connections between people, achieving density, disseminating courage, awareness

and sympathy, and in countering misinformation generated by the oppressive Egyptian regime in

many countries around the world”(Frangonikolopoulos & Chapsos, 2012, p. 16) A study of Tim

Pool, the live streamer who became the face of the citizen journalist in the Occupy Wall Street

events of 2011, illuminates how an every day citizen with a cell phone can create a climate for

social actions.(Lenzner, 2014)

However David Holmes’ analysis opens the conversation beyond Second Age Media. He writes

“almost all technically constituted forms of communication, from print, to television, to

cyberspace, contain elements of broadcast and interactivity; it is just that these are realized

differently, at different levels of embodiment in different techno-social relations.”(Holmes, 2005, p.

84) If all media forms contain impulses that are redemptive and emancipatory, not just web based

expressions, then Second Age research may offer new insights into how ideas move through the

public sphere in any media form to engage these impulses.

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Second Age media analysis is inspiring researchers to reassess the impact of older media forms.

(Fatkin & Lansdown, 2015; Glen Sean, 2014; Morris, 2014). An example of this sort of enquiry is

found in a survey of religious radio broadcasting in the United States. Using Holmes’ work as the

basis of its analysis, it rejects the First Age “mass media” view of radio as “one-way, centrally

produced, governmentally regulated, and shaped by mass consciousness in ways that promote

dominant interests.”(Ward, 2014). Instead it explores the impact of host/audience relationships

built on ritual. It concludes that radio programs aimed at evangelical Christian audiences create

telecommunities where its members are able to shape a Christian identity distinct from the

mainstream of American culture.

There is another significant body of work that, through the prism of community development,

examines the nature of healthy conversations and how they form an essential building block of

democratic societies. (Bird, 1996; Isaacs, 1999) Evidence of how these conversations sound in a

Cape Breton cultural context and how they sustain and support the practices, attitudes and values

in Cape Breton culture flows through In the Blood, Community Conversations on Culture (Feintuch,

2010) and Talking Cape Breton Music (Caplan, 2006)

This MA-IS project will limit its discussion to representations of musical authenticity in what is

known as Cape Breton traditional music. This tradition is based in a very specific history which has

been outlined in many inquiries including that of MacInnes (MacInnes, 1997, 2007) Feintuch and

Sampson (Feintuch, 2010) and Thompson (Thompson, 2006). This narrative sees Scottish Gaels

come to Nova Scotia in two waves, from the 1770s to the 1860s. The language, music and dance

traditions of these immigrants form a foundation which is referenced and replicated in today’s

cultural expression. Moreover, Dunlay (Dunlay & Reich, 1986), Doherty (Doherty, 1996) and

Graham(Graham, 2006), musicians as well as scholars, capture the stylistic features and local

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musical standards present Cape Breton’s fiddle tradition. They point to acceptable bowing

techniques, use of ornamentation, grace notes, and the nature of the cuts and drones as the critical

elements that define the style. In the song tradition Chris MacDonald identifies dissemination

“the homespun music, bearing traditions learned directly from relatives” (C. MacDonald, 2011, p.

1) as the mode of identifying which songs belong in the canon. While not explicitly stated, these

scholars hover around a definition articulated by Philip Bohlman. Authenticity is identified by “a

consistent representation of the origin of the style” (Bohlman, 1988, p. 10) In other words,

authenticity is contained within the practice itself.

RADIO “I once went to the house (of an old neighbor couple) when Gus was on ... They were both in the barn and

both milking. They had two milk cows. And there they were listening to the barn radio, to the sound of the

squirts of milk into the pail. And after the show was over they sang to each other in Gaelic. I was so privileged

to observe. I didn't speak until after they stopped singing. They were great neighbours, very dear to us.”

-Respondent

It is tempting to begin this enquiry with blanket observations about cultural colonization and

perhaps even a statement or two about the “Americanization” of Canadian culture, but the story of

the way radio wove in and out of the lives of working people in Canada and the United States is

much more interesting and nuanced. Henry Shapiro’s seminal Appalachia on our mind: the Southern

mountains and mountaineers in the American consciousness, 1870-1920, though published in 1978, is

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still regarded as a the central text for understanding the history of the region (Reid, 2005) In it he

explores how Appalachia became seen as one of the ‘problem’ regions in the United States that

somehow “fell behind the rest of the nation”(Shapiro, 1978, p. 118) After the Civil War, when the

region began its sharp decline relative to the rest of the country, people from both the Northern

and Southern States began to take an interest in helping the mountain people. Shapiro

demonstrates that some of key figures involved in the rejuvenation of cultural practices in the

region (crafts and song chief among them) were well intentioned outsiders who arguably damaged

the very communities they sought to help by undermining their sense of worth and agency. The

story ends an ever-accelerating outmigration from the region to the growing industrial cities of

America. Echoes from Ian McKay’s tartanism thesis are hard to miss. The technology of radio

restored a sense of worth to the region. Programs such as The Grand Ole Opry on WSM Radio in

Nashville, Tennessee and The Wheeling Jamboree from WWVA from Wheeling, West Virginia

allowed Appalachian working-class Americans, whether they were rural or urban dwellers, to share

a common experience. (Malone, 2006; Peterson, 1997) Through these broadcasts Appalachians

were able to differentiate themselves from mainstream American modernity, thereby recovering

lost dignity and a sense of the worth of the mountain culture. That others outside their tradition

also enjoyed their music was a further compliment, telegraphing back to them that they did have

something special.

No one on the stage of the Jamboree, or the Opry in the early years could have reasonably been

regarded as privileged. In fact, it was their working class identity tied them together.(Malone, 2006,

p. 41) Radio stations outside of the major American markets were often poorly financed and

owned by local small business people or in the case of WSM, a group of insurance salesmen, hardly

the media barons of American’s gilded age. It should not be a surprise that Appalachians and rural

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Nova Scotians, with their related histories, common musical roots (Ritchie, 2014) and similar

socio-economic realities, would be attracted to one another’s cultural expressions.

The relative strength of the WVVA and WSM transmissions to the others available to listeners

in Atlantic Canada is important. Those American signals were remarkably powerful, orienting

north/south, picking up listeners in the Appalachian diaspora who were migrating to the

employment rich industrial cities of the northern United States. By virtue of geography these

signals then spilled into large swaths of rural Canada. In fact Wheeling’s signal was probably the

clearest one people could hear on the south shore of Nova Scotia because it travelled across the

water with nothing to inhibit it at all until reached landfall. CJFX in Antigonish and CJCB in

Sydney also boasted extraordinarily strong signals but theirs oriented east/west, effectively creating

an audio reef which broke, scattered and weakened the American signals. CKFX reached just over

the Nova Scotia/New Brunswick border overlapping with the CJCB signal in Eastern Nova Scotia.

Both signals were strong and clear in Cape Breton with CJCB’s continuing all the way to Port aux

Basques, Newfoundland. These are important details when trying to understand the emancipatory

and culturally redemptive qualities of the following Canadian radio programs. One only need

compare the experiences of the more southern zones in the region to witness how exposure to the

powerful American signals altered local musical expressions.

McKay identifies tartansim and the work of cultural producers such as Helen Creighton as being

a corrosive element playing against the traditions and dignity of the poorer rural communities in

Nova Scotia. It is an incomplete picture at best. The speed at which Nova Scotia’s sea-shanties

and folk songs were consumed by Appalachian styles is well documented in Helen Creighton’s

collection. “A good example of that is in the Henneberry family from Devil’s Island,” says Clary

Croft, the curator of the Creighton catalogue. Ben Henneberry, the patriarch of a small fishing

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community in Halifax harbor, was the ballad singer that furnished much of Creighton’s first book.

He is one of the key individuals upon whom McKay focuses much of his cultural appropriation

argument.(McKay, 1994, p. 71) But Croft says there another force at play. He says there was a

noticeable change in the local singing style, which is often described as clear, to a nasal mountain

variety that begins at roughly the same time Creighton starts collecting in 1929 and accelerates

through the 1930s and ‘40s. Henneberry suffered from a condition that was robbing him of his

singing voice but Creighton captured some of his songs before he lost his voice all together a few

months after those early recordings.

Creighton returned to Devil’s Island some years later. It then fell to his son Edmond to sing the

songs, but within that window there were already noticeable changes in stylistic and presentation

conventions. The practice of speaking the last line of the song had given way to a more

contemporary practice of singing the last line. Then there was the influence of the radio shows

from Virginia. “Some of the early recordings of Edmond singing are very much in his father’s style,

but when Helen re-recorded Edmund in the late ‘40s you could really hear the country and western

influence in the twang that he put in his voice. It is actually quite noticeable.” The

Americanization of the singing style is further in evidenced as Croft points to a recording of “The

Wexford Girl” by a little girl from New Brunswick. She is clearly influenced by the American

version of the song, “The Knoxville Girl” which she would have heard on the radio. “People like

Hank Snow (1914-1999) were stars, very often they were doing country and western version of

traditional songs but not the local versions. They wouldn’t take the traditional style from the

Maritimes; they would look to the more Appalachian style they were hearing on the radio. People

were craving it.” That brand of mountain music, sometimes called hillbilly (later referred to as

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country and western) would arguably becoming the “de-facto folk music” of large swaths of Atlantic

Canada, notably New Brunswick and Nova Scotia’s south shore.(Marquis, 2009) (Marquis, 2012)

By the 1970s, when this study begins, the challenge for local music, traditional or not, whether

it would be able to withstand the influences of an increasingly centralized mass media. Even

though Canadian content regulations supported nationally produced music those quotas did not

necessarily support regional production. Live programming, increasingly expensive and complex

because of electronic instrumentation was in decline. Some informants suggested that private

station owners were opposed to working with the musicians’ union and that, as much as

anything, bore responsibility for the decline in live musical programming on local radio stations

in Cape Breton. Besides, there were pressures on local program directors to highlight the

international offerings. This was the era of the rock and roll superstar - Elton John, Madonna,

and U2 - complete with lavish worldwide promotional budgets supported by whole armies of

people dedicated to capturing the public imagination. Some radio managers thought listeners

and advertising revenue were more likely to follow the international trends than the homegrown

tunes and songs.

They were wrong.

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THE  EARLY  YEARS:    GUS  MACKINNON  –  THE  PIONEER   “We used to tune into 6:30 to 6:45 during the evenings. So my father had a little canteen, my

grandmother's house, there'd be a little cottage down by the shore, across from the Troy Trailer Court. So if we

couldn't get the radio, if someone was hogging the radio, I'd go out to the car and listen to Gus MacKinnon”

- Howie MacDonald

In January of 1961 Angus MacKinnon (1924-1998) sent an audition tape to J. Clyde Nunn, the

manager of CJFX radio in Antigonish. In the letter that accompanied, MacKinnon highlighted his

education (a Bachelor of Arts from St Michael’s in Toronto), his extensive on-air work experience

(CFRN and CKUA in Edmonton) and, above all else, his desire to work at CJFX “for reasons that

need not be discussed here right now.” Then he wrote this. “Age 32. Single. Born near Antigonish.

Highly partial to “Scottie” Fitzgerald and Joe MacLean.”(A. G. MacKinnon, 1961) It would seem

that his favorite fiddlers were as fundamental to his sense of identity as his age, marital status, and

birthplace.

The station manager J. Clyde Nunn must have taken note of MacKinnon’s enthusiasm because

by the fall of 1962 MacKinnon reported for his first day of work at a station where he would spend

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the next thirty years and five days.(MacHattie, 1993) He is best remembered today for one of the

most popular radio programs in the history of the station, a fifteen-minute presentation in the early

evening called Scottish Strings. (1968 -1981)

CJFX Radio had been on the air for almost twenty years by the time Gus MacKinnon joined the

staff. CJFX won its license on the strength of the argument that CJCB, which also had a powerful

signal based in Sydney (but was owned by a Jewish family) did not provide adequate religious

education to its listeners (McGowan, 2012) Born of the Antigonish Movement, CJFX was also

intended to be a significant asset to the adult education component of the social experiment. So in

the early 1940s, the Extension Department at St Francis Xavier University engaged the pedagogical

potential of the service with lectures, interviews, and over-the-air study groups.

There were templates for this exercise. A decade earlier, CKUA Radio at the University of

Alberta experimented with delivering educational talks and lectures to listeners. In 1936 the Farm

Citizen’s Forums began regular Monday night broadcasts that were “built explicitly on … a number

of Canadian organizations had already focused on rural and farming issues, including the

Antigonish Movement, the St. Francis Xavier Movement, the New Canada Movement, The Folk

Schools Community Life Conferences…”(Sandwell, 2012, p. 175) This was the model the

community owners of CJFX had in mind the station switched on its 1000-watt transmitter in 1943.

One of the first broadcasts came from economist and professor Reverend Joe A MacDonald. The

Labour School of the Air (M. R. Welton, 2001) could be heard more than two hundred and fifty

kilometers away from the Antigonish studio by the unionized coal miners and steelworkers in

Sydney, Glace Bay, and Reserve Mines.

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As a condition of license, CJFX also had the mandate to reflect and promote the local

culture.(McGowan, 2012) In Cape Breton, the “community reflection” meant presenting

traditional Scottish fiddle music.

Strong though these mostly rural communities were there were, some weeks of intensive labour,

either in the fishery or on the farm or both, that would prevent people from leaving their homes to

socialize. In the winter and spring severe weather could cut neighbors off from other neighbors for

weeks at a time. The radio was the connection to the outside world, to the community to which

they belonged, and a break from hard work and isolation. Among the most welcome broadcasts

were ones that featured local musicians. As one informant from Inverness County noted,

“Especially in the early days, way back 60 and 70 years ago we didn't have much, there was not

much else we would hear. There might be a dance or two in the summer time when you heard a

fiddler, but the radio did more to help people learn the tunes and share them (more) than anything

else we had”

Gus MacKinnon was a very good broadcaster, in any era, by any standard, as adept in news and

current affairs as he was in cultural programming. In fact, when he retired the article in the local

newspaper The Casket made more of his contribution to the civic discourse through his interviews

with politicians and community leaders on his talk show than it did of his passion for he fiddle

tunes. There can be no doubt though that for him Scottish Strings was a labour of love.

Critical Conversation #1 A response to the “Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler”

MacKinnon was well aware of the importance of traditional “Cape Breton/Scottish” music to the

people in his listening audience. He could play the piano. His father was a fiddler. He would often

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tape music from dances and house parties he attended. Still, finding enough material for that daily

program a challenge. There were commercial recordings of Cape Breton fiddlers dating back to

the 1920’s but not very many. A thorough count published in 1989, revealed there were only

about three hundred discs (I. MacKinnon, 1989) of Cape Breton fiddle music in total. For fifty

years of recording history that is not a big number. Even then, not all of those recordings would

have been available in the CJFX record library. To augment the playlist, and to present more

interesting radio, MacKinnon would invite fiddlers into the studio to play live on the air. In the

evening, after work, he would travel to halls and homes where the music was playing to make his

own recordings. Many respondents remembered that people would tape Scottish Strings episodes at

home, hoping to capture some of these rare, fine recordings for their own collections.

MacKinnon also took the unprecedented step of adding international fiddlers’ recordings to his

daily playlist, although his reasons did not appear to be entirely driven by the need to fill airtime.

Sheldon MacInnes, formerly with the musical group “The Sons of Skye” and son of the celebrated

violin tradition bearer Dan Joe MacInnis, remembers MacKinnon used the recordings to foster a

little competition among the musicians. “He'd wink and say, ‘Sheldon I'm going to play ‘The

Banks Hornpipe’ again by (Irish Fiddler) Sean McGuire" and I'd say ‘Gus, that just doesn’t fit.’

‘Ahh,’ he says, ‘It fits.’ Hornpipes just don’t hit it with a lot of people but this Sean McGuire was

so dynamic with his fiddling, with his bowing, so creative. He was a genius and Gus knew that if

put that over the airwaves in Inverness County that this was going to get a few people rowed up

and think ‘I'll show Gus next time he invites me up to play. I'll show him how I can play’."

In fact, Gus MacKinnon was at the center of one of the greatest rows of all in the Cape Breton

fiddler’s narrative. That community conversation, which engaged people from every corner of the

Island, would not only force people who loved the fiddle music to ask some serious questions of

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themselves and their communities about how or if they should support a valued piece of intangible

culture, it would also forever alter the position of radio in the Cape Breton’s music tradition from

of a place of ritual to a space for cultural awakening.

In 1971, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation freelancer Ron MacInnis and his pugnacious

producer Charlie Reynolds adapted a radio documentary into a television program about what

MacInnis perceived to be a precipitous decline in the Cape Breton Fiddle tradition. He became

obsessed with the notion that there were really only two younger fiddlers left on the Island. He and

his producer set out with a camera and a soundman to prove their claim. Marie Thompson, in

speaking with the interview subjects some years later, found that some of the people they

interviewed for the program were uncomfortable with the direction of the questions and made it

known that they were not in agreement with the premise at the time. (Thompson, 2003) There

were also reports of some kind an altercation between Father John Angus Rankin and one of the

producers (probably Reynolds) at the Broad Cove concert during the filming of the piece, which

left traces of ill will with those who saw the episode or heard about it, but the program itself did

not create a widespread protest. The program aired twice, once between Christmas and New Years

in 1971, and again, a few days later as the main feature in the national mid-afternoon network

program, Take 30.

In the 1970s there might have been only or two television channels in Cape Breton homes, but

even then most people were not sitting in front of their televisions in the middle of the day. There

is a lingering question as to how many people actually saw the program for themselves. Thompson

reports there was no immediate response to the piece, no public outcry directed at the CBC, no

letters to the editor, no news stories highlighting contrary opinions. That would change. Gus

MacKinnon and Frank MacInnis (co-host of Scottish Strings in the first few years of the

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program)(Thompson, 2003) talked about their response to the documentary on the air for weeks

after. Both strenuously disagreed with the program’s premise. Frank MacInnis recalls the on-air

conversations being quite passionate but well within the measured, gracious professional tone

expected of on-air presenters at the time. “Both us, I think were very single minded, in our love for

the music. We were doing what we could to promote it and preserve it; it was a regular

conversation with us. We talked about it on the air.” By June, MacKinnon and MacInnis were on

the air talking about the possibility of a concert highlighting as many Cape Breton fiddlers as

would agree to play. An organizing committee determined they would visit the homes of the

people they heard were playing the violin to persuade them to joins other fiddlers from across the

Island on stage the following summer. They were hoping to find one hundred who would support

them in their cause. They had no trouble finding that number. When fiddlers saw Frank

MacInnis’ car pull up the driveway, they already knew what he was going to ask them to do. They

had already heard it on the radio. MacInnis recalls those visits being very pleasant and the

conversations thoughtful, neighborly and warm.

“Small awakenings occur in episodic encounters,” Welton writes, “they can braid into something

larger, more sustained”(M. Welton, 2001, p. 10) In this case, the awakening inspired by the

conversations on Scottish Strings evolved into several months of smaller committee meetings, many

of which were announced on Scottish Strings. In July 1973 there were one hundred thirty fiddlers

onstage at the Glendale concert. This is a critical moment in the Island’s musical history.

The local organizational/conversational efforts also spawned the formation of the Cape Breton

Fiddlers’ Association (CBFA), which is still an important island wide adult education group. It is

open to anyone, irrespective of religious affiliation and ethnic background, and committed to

sharing the traditions with a new generation of fiddlers. This group continues to hold workshops

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and concerts, the biggest one being at St Ann’s Gaelic College in mid-August. It is here that

musicians of all ages exchange tunes, technique, and ideas about what fits in the tradition and what

does not. This is done in a very informal way and, in the past, occurred to a great degree in a little

shack behind the stage called “the tuning room.” Some recent renovations to the backstage area

have changed the physical space, but the conversations and exchanges continue. It would be fair to

say that virtually every Cape Breton fiddler on the Island has some connection to the Fiddlers’

Association. In 1998, on the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of the first concert, there were

two hundred and two fiddlers on the stage. There could have been more but many of the

professional fiddlers were on tour and others, who attended the CBFA festival in the early

afternoon, hurried away before the main group performance because they had committed playing

in the finale at another fiddle concert in Judique.

One wonders how many fiddlers, pianists and dancers there would have been that Sunday in

1998 had Gus MacKinnon not stirred his audience’s passions about their traditions after the

“Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler” television broadcast a quarter century earlier.

 

 

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CJFX  –  RAY  ‘MAC’  MACDONALD  –  THE  PROMOTER  

 “The greatest thing that ever happened to CJFX radio was the day Ray “Mac” came to that station. Ray’s

ability to to draw the best from the players – whether they used hockey sticks, bats, or fiddles and bows - is

legendary.

-Joey Beaton, pianist and local musical historian.

Ray MacDonald was a son of the coal miner, growing up in Sydney Mines Cape Breton in

the shadow of the Princess Colliery. When he was eight years old his mother asked him what he

planned to do for a living. “I’m going to be a radio announcer,” he remembers “I’m going to make

a lot of money, and I’m going to buy you a white apron.” When he was still in high school he was

invited to be a student correspondent on CBC Sydney’s (CBI) youth program High News. Bill

McNeill - who would rise to national prominence with two highly acclaimed national programs

(CBC’s Assignment and Voice of the Pioneer) - mentored the young man. This led to summer

replacement work. In 1951 MacDonald was among the eighty or so students that formed the first

class to attend St. Francis Xavier University’s Sydney Campus (Xavier Junior College). Ann Terry

MacLellan, one of CJCB’s most celebrated radio hosts, was also a gifted educator and the public

speaking tutor at the university. He credits her for giving him the confidence to consider radio as a

career. “She was certainly the spark. She was really interested in us,” he recalls,” She believed in us,

gave us a little extra. We were just ordinary guys with no money and she propped us up.” By 1953

her reference helped get him a full time job at the radio station where she made her career, CJCB

in Sydney. His job was to support host Lloyd “Tex” Taylor and The Cape Breton Round Up, a

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variety program that featured local fiddlers, song-writers, country music bands, and dance combos

of all musical genres.

MacDonald was a natural and within a few weeks he was the announcer and engineer on the

show featuring arguably the most commercially successful fiddler of his day Winston “Scotty”

Fitzgerald. There were two side musicians with the fiddler but MacDonald remembers the

technical set up was very spare. “Estwood Davidson was a left-handed guitar player and Winston

was right handed so they could stand on either side of the microphone. Beattie (Wallace) was off

to the side, maybe ten feet or so, on piano. They only used one mike and somehow they got a

good balance.”

Photographs of Fitzgerald in the 1950’s show a dapper fellow, always in a fashionable, well-cut

suit, with a pencil moustache and a twinkle in his eye. His music reflected his personal charm.

Fitzgerald was a star. “He was a wonderful guy. He was like an idol. He was good looking,

everybody knew him.” He was not, however, good with tune titles or scriptwriting. He would

scratch out the show set list on the back of a cigarette package and hand it over to MacDonald to

work some magic with language around the introductions. This task was made more difficult

because the fiddler was not very good at remembering tune titles either. “I was supposed to

introduce Winston, the tunes and so on. He’d say ‘First will be a medley of fay-vor-rite jigs’ and the

second would be a medley of ‘fay-vor-rite reels’ (laughs) but it was always ‘fay-vor-rite’.” In that year

and a half with Fitzgerald, MacDonald would learn a great deal about presenting traditional Cape

Breton music, live, on the radio to a general audience in a way that was popular and above all,

entertaining.

MacDonald’s tenure at CJCB would be short lived. Having grown up in Sydney Mines, with his

father a union man, he had connection to the United Mine Workers and was involved in trying to

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unionize the workers at CJCB. He was fired in 1965. He went to Bathurst, New Brunswick as the

radio morning man and developed outstanding skills as play-by-play hockey announcer. In 1965

when he came back to Nova Scotia he was hired by CJFX radio as a staff announcer, having a

special interest in developing the sports department.

For the first sixteen years Ray “Mac” was an enthusiastic promoter of local athletes. He was also

one of the founders of the Antigonish Guysborough Rural Softball League and mentor and coach

to a women’s team that produced some fine athletes and at least one solid sports journalist.

Softball is a comparatively inexpensive sport, which means it is accessible to a wide swath of the

population and there were diamond and ballparks all over the region. MacDonald built up a

formidable network with the people he met at those games which, as an on air host, helped him

keep abreast of the happenings in each community.

Community Conversation #2 Why is it important to have traditional music on the air? After the ruckus surrounding CBC’s airing of the “Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler” it is difficult

to imagine why any broadcaster would engage the Island’s traditional musical community in a

debate over the value of the music but in the spring and summer of 1981 there was perception that

CJFX was edging away from its commitment to traditional music by cancelling Scottish Strings.

There are as many stories as to what transpired as there are people telling them, but all agree that a

small community group, “The Committee of Concern,” formed to either to resist the change

and/or to persuade CJFX to retain its Scottish music offerings. By this time Gus MacKinnon’s

health was such that he could no longer sustain the rigors of a daily program, but Ray “Mac” had

an abiding passion for the music and the experience with Winston “Scotty” Fitzgerald’s show on

CJCB.

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The result of the community campaign was a new program, Ceilidh, expanded from fifteen

minutes to an hour in length which meant the host could delve deeper into the music and include

a wider variety of styles, including some vocal tracks. Ceilidh proved to be as important to a new

generation of Cape Breton musicians as Scottish Strings had been to those who fought to preserve

the tradition in the early 1970s.

MacDonald’s interpretation of “local radio” was broader than Gus MacKinnon’s had been. In

addition to the immediate listening areas in Inverness, Antigonish and Guysborough counties,

MacDonald included musicians from the whole of Cape Breton Island - Victoria, Richmond and

Cape Breton Counties. Sheldon MacInnes heard the change almost at once. “In Ray's music he

took as much interest in this side as they say as Gus did in the other side. He reached out. He

would talk about the fiddlers from this side, Dan Joe MacInnis and Paddy “Scotty” LeBlanc and so

on and so forth. He talked about these fiddlers as much as he would about fiddlers from the other

side.”

Ray “Mac” maintained his connection with musicians and his audience through an extensive

network of contacts and associates all across the Island. By the ‘80s and certainly into the ‘90s

there was so much going on musically on the Island it was impossible for one person to have first

hand information about everything. He remembers deliberately seeking out conversations with

fiddlers, pianists or respected teachers of the dance style who were always ready to share

information about new musicians on the horizon or recording projects that were underway. He

would also take his cue from listeners about where the music was being played, at general

community gatherings, or special occasions such as anniversaries and birthdays. These events

would warrant a mention on the show which was a way of tying the community together with

29

conversation about public and personal celebrations. He would always respond to letters from

listeners with thoughtful, typewritten responses on station letterhead.

Like Gus MacKinnon before him, MacDonald made ample use of homemade recordings of

traditional music played at house parties, dances and concerts. These tapes, although not

professionally recorded, were usually quite clear and perfectly acceptable for AM radio use. What

was special about them was the unmistakable “live” energy in the music. Fiddlers who were rarely

if ever professionally recorded were featured through these house recordings just as they were on

MacKinnon’s program. Again, people in the audience would tape these radio broadcast every

night so they could enjoy the unique performance again. Some of the younger respondents in this

study used these tapes to discern specific fiddler’s techniques and to build their own repertoire.

Ray ‘Mac” would often ask his on air guests about the unique characteristics they brought to the

Cape Breton style. This created a depth to his interviewing style profoundly appreciated by a new

generation of musicians who were gaining traction as professional recording artists in the 1980s

and 90s. Howie MacDonald, a fiddler, producer and international touring musician, released

several albums while Ray “Mac was hosting Ceilidh. “He was talking about the process of the

album. ‘Now some of these tunes, now where did this one come from? This reminds me of this

fiddler, was he one of your influences? Now why did you go with guitar on this cut?’ And he always

had these segues, ‘waiting in the wings/ and stuff like that, He had these great little sayings when

he was on the air and while he was interviewing.”

“He was very supportive,” says Cookie Rankin, a member of the Rankin Family. Even though the

band experienced extraordinary success nationally - they sold half a million copies of Fare Thee Well

Love - Rankin still felt the excitement of hearing her music on local radio. “The first time I heard

our music on CJFX I thought, my gosh, we’ve made it. Because if the locals accept and promote

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you, you know you’ve done something right. It’s their music. We are reflecting what they are and

what we are, and they are accepting it.” From the Fare Thee Well Love recording in 1990 to until he

retired in 1998, Ray “Mac” would be the first to invite The Rankin Family into the studio to share

their latest work. When he did, he offered himself as a proxy for the listeners as home. “The

interviews were very structured. He would go through each and every tune. Leave it up to you to

explain its meaning or the inspiration behind it. But it was like the conversation you would have

with an everyday person.” The subtext of all the interviews with musicians about their recordings

was that the musical tradition of the region was important to the community at large. The

individual musician’s contribution, in the form of a recording, was a public event, worthy of a

thorough, serious discussion.

Ray “Mac” MacDonald retired from CJFX Radio on his 65th birthday, January 17, 1999. Ceilidh

is still on the air and online for audiences outside the broadcast area, and there are still hundreds

of homemade cassette tapes in circulation of his radio show on CJFX.

CJFX Radio was born of the aspirations of the Antigonish Movement and the people who

worked there saw themselves as part of a broader mission. Gus MacKinnon took his very first on-

air job in Edmonton at the station that pioneered radio as a tool of adult education. He came to

CJFX understanding how radio could illuminate issues and spark action. If we look his work on

both Scottish Strings and in the news and current affairs talk shows that he hosted, it is clear he was

prepared to use that power for the benefit of the community. The Antigonish Movement’s

spiritual commitment to of the fundamental dignity and worth of the individual are evident even

now in conversations with Ray “Mac” MacDonald. He believed in those ideals and telegraphed

those values to his on-air guests and to the audience every day. One can argue that while the

Antigonish Movement did not deliver on its promise of economic emancipation for the vast

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majority of Nova Scotians, the radio station it spawned was a great tool of cultural redemption and

reclamation for the traditional musicians, and by extension, all related cultural industries of Cape

Breton Island. It took almost forty years from the day CJFX powered up its transmitter, but by the

late 1980s Howie MacDonald, The Rankin Family, the Barra MacNeils and host of others were

releasing independent recordings. They were playing dances, pub nights and outdoor festivals

almost every weekend of the year. Local audiences could not get enough of their music.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was instrumental in getting that music out to the

nation.

 CBC  RADIO  CAPE  BRETON  -­‐  BRIAN  SUTCLIFFE  –  THE  CRAFTSMAN   “He was meticulous. When we were in studio recording Talent Cape Breton he put us right at ease, but he

brought the best out in us. He was perfection. When it came time for us to go into the studio to make our

own album, it wasn’t scary at all. Brian taught us how it was done ”

-Richard Poulette, Christian recording artist

While Gus MacKinnon and Ray “Mac” MacDonald were establishing CJFX as the place for

traditional music on the radio dial, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was establishing itself

as a local entity. In the early 1970s the CBC became very focused on regionalization. The

Broadcast Act of 1968 mandated the public broadcaster to “be a balanced service of information,

enlightenment and entertainment for people of different ages, interests and tastes …and provide

32

for a continuing expression of Canadian identity.” By the early 1970s the budgets met those

aspirations. Bert Wilson, who was co-incidentally Ray “Mac” MacDonald’s brother-in-law, was the

local station manager at CBC’s Cape Breton location. He was, by all accounts, a veritable force of

nature when it came time to find money to make the programs that would reflect the culture of the

Island on radio and on television. He had confidence in his producers and was comfortable

taking risks.

If Bert Wilson was the man to make sure the money was there, Brian Sutcliffe knew how to

turn that cash into compelling programming. He was born in Newport Corner, near Windsor,

Nova Scotia. After a stint in the air force he returned to Nova Scotia to work a CHNS radio in

Halifax. He was a local musician as well, a guitar player and vocalist with small a combo country

music/popular that played for social events and dances. After working at CHNS for a dozen years

he moved to Cape Breton in December of 1972 to host the CBC Radio afternoon show. He also

was the talent and variety producer. For the next fifteen years Sutcliffe would write and produce

shows that captured the Island, its traditions and its people in all their complexity.

The main show was called Talent Cape Breton, a one-hour weekly showcase featuring performers

from an array of genres from classical singers, to country and western bands, jazz combos and local

fiddlers. The impact of the Cape Breton show cannot be over stated. Many artists who had, and

continue to have, flourishing careers often received their first exposure on this program. Finding a

place on the program, however, involved auditions, a new process for most Cape Breton musicians

and a step in the professionalization of the Island’s musical culture. Lucy MacNeil, a member of

the international recording group The Barra MacNeils, said it was good training. It gave her

something to work towards. “I don't imagine there was much in the way of auditioning before

that, you just showed up with your violin,” she says “But this was a different process. More nerve

33

wracking. It was my first time ever playing for someone who decides whether you'll go on or

not. I think it was about Grade 10. I practiced some selections with (my brother the pianist)

Seamus and played them. I think I sang one or two (as well). Brian said, ‘we'll definitely do the

fiddle, but maybe we'll wait, you keep working on your singing.’ I didn't give it up but I didn't start

singing on radio then.” Sutcliffe would plan out thirteen to fifteen shows per season, depending on

the size of the budget, so if one did not get a chance to sing in the fall, there was always the spring

and a new round of auditions.

Fiddler Howie MacDonald was still in his teens when he was invited to participate in Talent Cape

Breton. He remembers Sutcliffe encouraging a kind of polish in studio that would not have been

required in more traditional environments. “Brian was very professional, all he'd say is ‘Tape's

rolling. How'd you feel about that one?’ He was playing the part that he should've played. It was

kind of left up to us whether we were comfortable with it or not. If it wasn't professional enough,

he'd say something.” Sutcliffe was also a critical listener and would not unduly compliment

performers. “I don't think he wanted us to think we were any better than what we were, which I

think is a pretty safe approach when you're dealing with kids.”

Union agreements were also a factor. This too was an indication the Island’s musical scene was

professionalizing. Cape Breton’s American Federation of Musicians Local #355, had a high degree

of autonomy that it was willing to use to meet local realities. Sutcliffe negotiated a local agreement

that allowed him to use recorded material on at least two different shows rather than just the one

show as anticipated by the national contract with the CBC. The union, for its part, thought that

increased exposure would turn into more live performance opportunities. The union executive

often made a social event out of the bargaining sessions. “Once a year there'd be a meeting with the

musicians' union, there'd be dinner. By the time we were having the discussion about what we

34

wanted from the union, concessions and what they're willing to give us and so on, everybody was

smiling a lot. They were really working with us, they gave us breaks.” Musicians who were active

at the time remember there were many opinions about whether traditional, community-based

musicians belonged in a union predicated on a twentieth century industrial model. Many did not.

Others, however, welcomed this step toward professionalization and were able to see themselves as

making a living in music in an industry that was growing, unlike musicians from a generation

earlier who held down day jobs and saw music as a sideline.

Critical Conversation #3 Will anyone outside Cape Bretoners be interested in this? Archie Neil’s Cape Breton was a 24-minute program, recorded in the venerable tradition bearer

Archie Neil Chisholm’s home in the Margaree Valley. This presentation featured local storytellers

(there were many in Cape Breton at the time), songs from the folk and traditional musicians in the

community, and some fiddle music. Sutcliffe wanted the show to sound like a house party

complete with the clink of teacups and spontaneous reactions from the guests. Sutcliffe says most

of the time he and his engineers captured the event with little more than a reel-to-reel tape machine

and an eight channel mixing board. For a twenty-four minute program they might tape three or

four hours of the party. The art lay in the editing of that tape. The magic came from Archie Neil

himself. An educator by trade, he was an astute host who engaged guests in thoughtful

conversations about where the stories came from, what inspired the names of the tunes and which

fiddlers influenced others. This was a reflection of the typical kitchen conversations that informed

people, knowledgeable about the tradition, would have about their culture. Some within the CBC

thought it was too specific to the region to be of much interest to a national audience, but Bert

Wilson was not among them. In 1979 he arranged for the program to be aired throughout the

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Maritimes. Based on that success, by 1981 it found a spot on the national CBC network schedule.

Even though the program attracted all kinds of listeners, East Coast expatriates who moved to

other parts of the nation for work were especially enthusiastic because it offered a connection to

their communities back home.

Even though Brian Sutcliffe can be credited with professionalizing the Cape Breton musical

landscape, in a way, he is also responsible for traditional Cape Breton fiddle music being presented

in a more authentic way on the air than it had been since recording began in the 1920s. Sheldon

MacInnes noticed that Brian was not interested in abbreviated presentations. “Think of the

recordings in the ‘30s. Recordings were made in the old 78's. They'd enter a studio, technician

would say, ‘All right you've got 2 minutes and 10 seconds.’ They'd get strict. They’d have to get the

march, strathspey, and reel in at 2 minutes and 10 seconds, so they'd speed it up and they would

not back away. But Brian Sutcliffe, he would make provision for the full range. It could take six

minutes (to go through all the tunes). So you're back to a regular tempo, you're back to a

reasonable tempo. You're playing the repertoire as you believe it has to be played. More authentic”

Sutcliffe produced thousand of hours of programming for CBC Cape Breton. Supporting him

was the station manager Bert Wilson. “Bert? I've never known anyone who was more wanting the

talent in Cape Breton to be encouraged, and he wasn't from there. He did things like the New

Year's Eve show, the Ceilidhs. And he was up in Toronto for meetings and he called me during

lunch break. He said Brian, look, if I get the money, can we do a national New Year's Eve Show, a

Ceilidh. I said sure. I wasn't going to say no. But I had no idea how we were going to do it.”

Those three shows proved to be the zenith of Sutcliffe’s Cape Breton sojourn. Three New Year’s

programs were broadcast live from the Isle Royale Hotel on Sydney’s Esplanade, spectacular formal

dress-up affairs featuring musicians, interviews with selected guests and a count down every hour to

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ring in the New Year for Canadians in every time zone from Newfoundland to British Columbia.

Within a few short months the picture changed completely. Sutcliffe’s position, and most of his

shows were eliminated in a sweeping budget cut in 1983. He then moved to Halifax as the host of

the weekend morning program. He brought significant changes to the playlist; the East Coast

Music scene was on the rise and Sutcliffe, who was already very knowledgeable, was able to provide

unprecedented exposure for the emerging and established artists.

Brian Sutcliffe was the grounded, gracious host through of this era, maintaining perspective. He

was also very, very popular. In his last season on the air, in a fifteen-minute ratings block, he

received a 70-share meaning three out of four radios in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and

Nova Scotia were tuned in to his show. Brian Sutcliffe retired in 1998.

It is not a very well known fact but Sutcliffe was the staff producer for Island Echoes an

English/Gaelic weekly program that focused on the Gaelic language, song and stories. There a

number of hosts in early the years, the first two Hughie MacKenzie and Norman MacLeod died

within a month of one another (Thompson, 2003) but the longest serving in the 1970s and ‘80s

was Mary Catherine ‘Kay’ MacDonald (1921-2014). Formidable in every way, ‘Kay’ MacDonald

grew up in a Gaelic–speaking household in Maragree, moved to Boston in her teens, served in the

United States Navy, married and raised a family of seven children, all the while promoting

conversation, traditional music and dance to the many Cape Breton ex-patriots who, like her, made

their homes in “The Boston States.” After her first husband died she remarried, acquired five

stepchildren, and returned to Cape Breton to take on the role of Gaelic materials curator in the

university archive. With Sutcliffe at the helm and MacDonald on the air, the program enjoyed the

support of a sizable audience that has never been replicated since.

37

The program focused on conversation and song. “The people who listened, I (would) guess the

largest percentage didn't understand Gaelic. They liked the music, they liked the singing. Quite

often we'd try to have a Gaelic story.” MacDonald would paraphrase the story for the non-Gaelic

speakers. One regular feature involved the co-host, Dr. Robert (Bob) Morgan (1938-2011) and

Sutcliffe taking Gaelic language lessons on the air. MacDonald was in her element when she was

teaching, and these segments were very close to the classrooms-of-the-air format used in the early

years of Canadian radio broadcasting. “Kay,” Dr. Morgan and Sutcliffe were gifted with warm,

charming, generous on-air demeanors. The feature itself, aimed at a general audience, underlined

the possibility that lifelong learning could be fun and take place in familiar social settings. In time,

there would be a significant population of Gaelic learners on the Island, many of whom would

approach “Kay” seeking her expertise. She continued to give lessons up until her death.

Many of this study’s informants remembered hearing their parents and grandparents sing along

to the Gaelic songs Mrs. MacDonald would play on the air. They would sing as though they were

right there in the studio with her. Or perhaps more accurately, that she was in their kitchens with

them. Song is an essential part of the Gaelic culture (MacLellan, Shaw, & Ornstein, 2000;

Sparling, 2014) and singing together is the ultimate expression of community. If the selections Mrs.

MacDonald played on her show had been recorded a century earlier, it is doubtful that the songs

would have sounded much different. But there was also an explosion of new songs on the horizon

and a new generation of composers writing about their own lives, among them Kenzie MacNeil,

Allister MacGillivray and eventually Rita MacNeil.

38

 

CJCB  SYDNEY  –  DONNIE  CAMPBELL  -­‐  THE  COLLECTOR   “My mother was dying of cancer, but every Sunday evening, she’s get out of bed, put on a dress, put on her

make up and listen to the Celtic Serenade on the radio.”

- A letter from a listener

The ratings tell the story. One can walk into any Cape Breton home at around six o’clock, just

after the Sunday evening meal, and if the radio is on there is a better than 50% chance it is tuned

into one show, Donnie Campbell’s Celtic Serenade - a three-hour program of Cape Breton

traditional and contemporary roots tracks, some Irish tunes and a few international selections for

good measure. Somewhere in that presentation there will be at least two or three songs that most

people who are familiar with the tradition will be able to sing along with, if only on the chorus

parts. Listening to “Donnie’s show” on Sundays remains a powerful ritual, with Campbell being

the longest running host on a single show in Canada. Since 1973, Serenade has moved from one

station to another, even switched nights a couple of times, but it is always situated after supper

when people are cleaning up around the kitchen and ready to hum a tune.

Campbell came from a very musical family of pipers and fiddlers. His mother could sing and

she loved the radio. He remembers when he was a school boy she was at home in the daytime. If

she heard a song she liked, she would drop everything and copy the lyrics down in a little

notebook. When he got home from school he remembers the notebook would be open on the

table, his mother waiting in the kitchen, so she could teach him the song too.

39

CJCB Radio’s song contests, through programs such as Dishpan Parade, encouraged people to

write their own lyrics about their own lives to popular melodies. That contest gave the Island many

of the pieces still regarded as Cape Breton standards. “This goes right to the 1940s. I think we all

know these songs, “Peter at the Meter”, “Dumping the Slag.” In those days they would take a

familiar air and do the songs.” Campbell notes that both of these were sung to the melody of the

American folk tune “Casey Jones.”

Campbell says the Gaelic tradition that informed that practice. “That goes back. Like Malcolm

H Gillis (1856-1929), he would take an old song, ‘Will you come along with me bonnie lassie to

Kelvingrove?’ he would change it to ‘Will you come along with me to Margaree?” In the early

sixties it would have evolved into something like “McAlpine's Fusiliers”, a song about Irish laborers

leaving Ireland to work in England (in the Second World War) and that same melody and that

same idea of leaving Cape Breton ‘I was feeling no pain, when I boarded the train, heading out for

the Thompson mines.” The songs have the same melody, but the same sentiments.”

Community Conversation #4 Hey, do you know this one?

In university Donnie Campbell started collecting songs in earnest, rare ‘78s and albums from

Scotland and Ireland. By the 1960s he was part of the North American folk revival, a travelling

musician playing concerts all across Canada. “You picked them (the songs) up from just meeting

different people, different groups. You’d say ‘I liked your song.’ They’d teach it to you. I learned

a lot of it that way. I gathered a lot of albums too. We would be hearing groups that were big in

Ireland and Scotland. I thought, hey! This is our music too! It connected with us.”

40

While there were fears in the early 1970s that the Cape Breton fiddle tradition might be under

duress, the song revival was gaining momentum in the steelmaking/coal mining areas of Cape

Breton. Sydney’s St Francis Xavier Junior College (Little “X”) was becoming an important

gathering place for young people who, unlike their working class parents, had the time and

resources to explore their creative impulse. Professors Liz and Harry Boardmore were attracted to

Cape Breton by the prospect of making theatre based on the principles of the Antigonish

movement. They presided over an impressive theatre program that included both college and

community participants who eventually became the Steel City players. This company created a

series of stage productions considered to be seminal in Cape Breton entertainment culture, “The

Rise and Follies” and later “The Summertime Review” have, at one point or another, featured a

Who’s Who of Cape Breton talent, from singers Rita MacNeil and Cookie and Heather Rankin, to

comedic actor Bette MacDonald and Nashville-based singer songwriter Gordie Sampson. (MacNeil,

2012)

Campbell and his contemporaries all gathered at the College Pub and Bookstore to sing, talk,

and craft a creative vision for the Island that still influences the performing arts today. “We had

sessions, there was the old college pub, the back of the Logue building. Every week I’d try to learn

one or two new ones. Or if Ryan’s Fancy was in town, you’d try to learn a new song to impress

them. One night Kenzie McNeil (from the Steel City Players) and Eric MacEwen heard me sing

‘The Heavy Water Plant Song’ and said ‘We have to have this for the Follies!’ ” He recalls it had a

magical atmosphere, fishnets on the ceiling, but all kinds of music, “One night there’d be jazz, the

next night Nick Sajatovich would be playing classical guitar. Next night Buddy and the Boys might

be playing there. That’s where Rita (MacNeil) would have started. We all met there.”

41

There was a body of opinion forming that CJCB in Sydney needed a show that would advocate

for the local culture in the way that Gus MacKinnon was advocating for the fiddle tradition at

CJFX. Sheldon MacInnes, also a regular at the College pub, approached the owner of the Sydney

station with a proposal. Norris Nathanson was more than open to the idea, but year after the

show debuted MacInnes left for graduate school. He asked his cousin Donnie Campbell if he

would take over. That was in 1974. He has hosted the show ever since.

Campbell’s show is programed from his own collection of music, one of the most extensive

libraries of Celtic music, with both commercial and rare home recordings, from Cape Breton,

other parts of Canada, Ireland and Scotland. He has a sizable collection of American Appalachian

roots music as well. His radio program reflects this wide perspective, and has contributed

immeasurably to expanding the listeners’ sense of where Cape Breton music is positioned in

relation to other similar traditions worldwide. He is also a resource for working musicians looking

for traditional and roots-based material. Lucy MacNeil from the Barra MacNeils was impressed by

his generosity “He has a big music library at home. And Donnie was very kind. If we were doing

an album he’d say 'come on over, sure.' His collection was there. He’d have suggestions. He'd pick

out something for you.” Several singers in this study had similar experiences. Even today, if

Campbell comes across a song that he thinks might fit a performer’s voice or personality he will

send them a recording.

Campbell set the stage for the next phase of the tradition’s development. In 1997, the first Celtic

Colours International Festival invited traditional singers and musicians from Scotland and Ireland,

and bluegrass/mountain music practitioners from the United States, to join Cape Breton

musicians in a series of concerts presented over several days in October. In the years that followed,

Celtic Colours continued to invite musical guests from farther afield, cultivating a reputation for

42

its artistic position that local Cape Breton music has roots and vines all over the globe. The

founders of the festival looked to the Celtic Connections Festival in Scotland for their inspiration

and built their plans on that model. However, for the more than twenty years leading up to those

first concerts, it was Donnie Campbell who introduced and re-enforced the notion to the broader

audience that Cape Breton music was part of a much larger cultural narrative that involved a Celtic

diaspora on many continents. He believed that presenting related music from other places

supported and enriched the local traditions. By 1997 it is fair to say his ideas had braided into

common public opinion about Island’s musical culture, thus setting the stage for the community-

based international festival. Celtic Colours has a small staff and runs mostly on the goodwill and

shared vision of its volunteers and community partners. An examination of festival program

reveals the vision has evolved into one that sees a complex network of relationships among the

local heritage cultures - Mi'kmaq, Acadian, and Scottish - with global folk traditions, some of which

are only nominally Celtic, if at all. Contrast that with the experience a quarter century earlier, with

the animated discussions over Gus MacKinnon’s Irish tunes and it is easy to see the progression of

public opinion over time. Campbell’s influence in this development cannot be overstated.

Campbell is almost two decades younger than Ray “Mac” and Brian Sutcliffe and likely at least a

decade way from on-air retirement. He is also a performing and recording artist himself and one of

the very few who can successfully persuade any audience to participate in a joyous, rousing sing-a-

long. His show has become an institution on the Island. He is also deeply aware of the importance

of the show on listeners. “I made seven obituaries last year.” He says quietly. “That’s how you

know you are having an effect on people. When they say ‘they were an avid Toronto Maple leaf fan

and spent Sunday evenings listening to the Donnie Campbell show.’ That’s the real thing.” I have

wonderful letters”

43

CRITICAL  COMMENTARY  

Ritual

“For sure it was a big part of the Scottish, the Cape Breton Scottish culture. Anytime we had a social

gathering the fiddle was king you might say. And sometimes we wouldn't have people maybe as good as Buddy

MacMaster, but more local people. But still all in all the fiddle went right to your soul, it was really

spiritual. And I think it touched a part of our hearts and spirits in a way that nothing else did.”

-Respondent

“What, other than prayer, could add more beauty and grace to our existence than music?” asked

one of the respondents. For Cape Bretoners and Eastern Nova Scotians the ritual of listening to

‘the music’ on the local station, in the private spaces, kitchens, cars and barns, is now generations

old. The act of responding to what is heard on the air by conversing with others in public spaces,

fire halls, anniversary celebrations, or house parties, is also a part of the Cape Breton tradition. “A

ritual never exists alone,” writes Catherine Bell, “It is usually one ceremony among many in the

larger ritual life of a person or a community. One gesture among a multitude of gestures both

sacred and profane, one embodiment among of others of traditions of behavior, down from one

generation to another” (Bell & Aslan, 2009, p. 171) The ritual of listening and talking about

what is heard creates and sustains a community’s solidarity.

In Communication Theory, Media, Technology and Society (2005) author David Holmes posits that

the way broadcast media interacts with the temporal lives of audience members is primarily

through layers of ritual. For instance, he holds the “time mark” function of traditional television

44

supper hour news programs, whether is it is a particular musical theme or a formatted voice over

with the day’s headline, signals to the viewer that it is the end of the workday, the time for the

transition into personal time. The actual news stories are secondary to the ‘time mark functions.’

He writes “it provides a comfort to audiences in the very regularity of it structures.” (Holmes, 2005,

p. 215) Television talk shows are filled with ritual, the way the host is introduced to the audience,

the monologue at the beginning of the show, the first guest, and the musical selection. Astute

viewers and listeners are able to detect and expect patterns, sometimes presented as formats, which

is a form of “ritual that reinforces a depth of feeling in the audience community.” (Holmes,

2005,p.217)

All but one of the shows in this study highlighted a time stamp situated around the evening

chores and meal, a point in the day where there are many rituals and repeated daily actions that

reestablish the individual and the comfort of home after the day’s work. In memory, this time of

the day is filled with personal, poignant reflection. Fiddler Wendy MacIsaac was aware, even as a

child, the “ritual” in her own grandparent’s home around Scottish Strings was part of a larger

narrative. “At my grandparents, it (the radio) was in the kitchen. There was a couch in the

kitchen. And my grandfather would by lying on the couch. Grandma would be doing the dishes

from supper. And I would be puttering about, maybe colouring. They might have a little

conversation about who they thought it was, you know, ‘Is this (fiddler) Donald Angus Beaton?’

but generally not much. They were listening. Gus was amazing. He talked so slowly. I could do an

imitation of him, but I'd better not. And next we have a "toooooon" from…like it just took him so

long for the lead up to the next cut. But it was great. There was something almost musical about

his voice. When he played tapes (that he had recorded from live events) it just like you were at the

dance, you were part of something.” In the long winters of snow-blocked roads, or during the

45

seasons of intensive labour in fishery or in farming, people were unable to leave their homes to

meet their neighbors, to socialize. These programs were their “virtual” dances, if we use a Second

Media Age concept. They made them feel like they were part of the community during the long

stretches of time when neighbors were isolated from one another.

Like MacIsaac, many of our informants talked about how they themselves, or people close to

them, taped these programs for their personal collections. Every single respondent either owned,

or had access to, recordings from these radio shows, without exception. Fiddlers and pianists talked

about how they would use these tapes to learn new material, or to deconstruct an individual style.

Some kept them for the Gaelic songs sung by people for whom Gaelic was a first language, but who

have long since passed. Other kept tapes because they featured beloved colourful characters who

were in some way illustrative of what they saw as a fundamental truth about Cape Breton. During

the research interviews many respondents offered to share the audio from their collections to

illustrate their points. Theses recordings were given (and received) with the same reverence as

sacred texts, shared on the mutual understanding that they contain knowledge that is key to a

greater understanding of the culture itself.

All of these rituals, shared texts and shared meanings created a community out of listeners who,

when mobilized, acted together. The unique feature is that this community is mediated by

technology. David Holmes calls this a “telecommunity.” Even though he is writing about Second

Age web-based media, he connects this idea to older mass communication forms. Hegel, he

reminds us, called the newspaper a “morning prayer” and affirms that practice continues today.

Telecommunites are powerful spheres created by tuning to the same radio or television programs,

day after day, at the same time, or visiting the same bookmarks on internet browsers “whether we

46

are at home, or at the cybercafé, all of these (actions) places are practiced to the point of uniformity

which can be monumental in character.”(Holmes, 2005, p.223.)

Resistance “It's the social part of people's lives. Like in my parents' generation and beyond, when they went to a social

event it was a ‘round and square dance’ or just a ‘square dance’. Everybody could dance, everybody could step

dance, and everybody knew how to do at least one-step. Every man even knew how to do at least one-step. So

how could it not be part of your social life where you see your friends, it's part of weddings, the

celebrations. It's part of death when people play at funerals. And so everything you do besides your daily

routine would include music. So definitely part of your identity, I think that.”

- Respondent

From a theoretical perspective, unlike the publizisten, as Habermas calls the fourth estate and its

adjacent disciplines, the four individual radio personalities in this study did not “appear” before

the public as much as were actors who “emerged from the public.”(Habermas, 1996, p.375) This is

an important distinction. The information processing strategies, how they determined what they

would say and play on the air, at least between 1972 and 1998, were based on conversations with

respected practitioners of the tradition, direct contact with community members, and a deep

personal experience with the material. Further, it helps to regard the radio station leadership, not

as instruments of the mass media, but as “like-minded sponsors” (Habermas, 1996, p.375) It

illuminates how people like station owners Nathaniel (Nate) and later, Norris Nathanson, and

47

station manager Bert Wilson, were so critically important to finding a place for this important local

cultural expression on the airwaves which helped listeners maintain or construct a collective

(sometimes individual) Cape Breton identity as a counterpoint to the North American mainstream

from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Cape Breton’s traditional music was providing a counterpoint, but to what? The first impulse is

to return to Ian McKay’s work for the theoretical framework. However it is not clear from this

study that the word “tartansim” held any concrete meaning for those surveyed. Each respondent

was asked about the effects of tartanism on his or her lives. Not one person could come up with an

answer. One individual allowed it might have mattered in the 1950s, but had little impact today.

One especially media savvy respondent was silent for a very long time, and then allowed

“Tartansim…that’s not a very nice word, is it?”

It is it not. In the scholarly world, and even within certain quarters of the public, there is a full

and thoughtful discourse about the lasting impact of choices and policies set in motion by cultural

producers and governments in the past. Yet, for these respondents, the term seemed to be heard

as a trigger word or a sort of an insult. In Bird’s theory of healthy conversation, ideological

posturing and insults are problematic because “they serve to silence the others or at least discredit

them sufficiently so that others will not listen to them.” (Bird, 1996, p. 205) Indeed, in the

mainstream media, the word is often invoked just before the name-calling starts, sending

discussions spiralling off into non-productive territory in newspaper comments sections and in

social media. (Graham, 2013; MacIntyre, 2013; MacKatacher-Watson, 2013) Healthy

conversations about the nature of traditions, authentic or constructed, in which citizens of

goodwill choose to participate, do not consist of phrases like, “Why ask that Braveheart tartan

48

buffoon Tom Wallace for his opinion? He knows as much about Gaelic culture as he does Tuvan

throatsinging.”(Bird, 1996, p. 207 & 220; Newton, 2013)

So if it wasn’t tartansim, what was the threat?

Undeniably, there was a vague, largely unacknowledged collective anxiety about what was

happening to the tradition in 1972 when “The Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler” aired but the

anxiety was not really about the music. It was the fear that the modern, suburban world would

swallow up one the last remaining distinctive places in the country. Generations of out-migration

exhausted both rural and urban dwellers on Cape Breton Island and with each generation that left,

the echoes of the ways of living, the old cultures, became fainter and fainter. Much has been

written about the slow decline and de-industrialization of Cape Breton, the beginning marked by

the Parade of Concern over the possible closure of the steel plant in 1967. Rural Cape Breton felt

the effects of those jobs losses while adjusting to a changing agricultural model that favoured bigger

operations over smaller family farms. The era witnessed significant technological changes in the

fishery that had an impact traditional ways of making a living. No part of the Island was sheltered

from economic changes. In 1972 unemployment was more than 14% on Cape Breton Island, but

the rest of the country was booming. Young people felt they had no alternative but to leave.

(MacNeil, 2012) The fears the were swirling around in the face of all that change might have been

too complex and overwhelming to frame into a larger conversation, but could be distilled into a

smaller discussion about the health of the fiddle tradition.

In the years after that episode, the ubiquity of other forms of mass media in Cape Breton Island

and Eastern Nova Scotia was no different than it was anywhere else in North America. The 1970s

ushered in the era the blockbuster movie, there were movie theatres within driving distance of

nearly every home on the Island. The 1980s introduced the home video system. CBC audience

49

research from the late 1980’s revealed that Cape Breton had more VHS systems in homes per

capita than any of its other markets in Canada.(Doyle, 1989) Satellite television became relatively

affordable in the early 1980’s, further fragmenting the potential listening audiences. Viewers

weren’t watching Cape Breton or even Canadian films. The titles available at the time were mostly

American studio releases. The counterpoint came from active, locally engaged media outlets on

the Island and live performances of locally produced material in pubs, halls and theatres.

“The broadcast media is not the only thing that matters in public processes of communication,

nor is it the most important.” (Habermas, 1996, p.362) Most network television and radio

programs broadcast in the “abstract’ public sphere, one that is “composed of isolated readers,

listeners and viewers scattered across large geographic areas (the so-called mass media). ”(Habermas,

1996, p.374; Welton, 2001) The mass media cannot respond to the small pulses and signals in

smaller, more marginalized groups, such as people interested in a highly localized fiddle tradition.

However, there was a collective response and communicative activity in the telecommunity that

formed around Scottish Strings in 1973 and around the campaign to keep Scottish music on the

airwaves in 1981. One might also argue that the Island wide volunteer efforts powering a wealth of

community festivals in that era were also rooted in the telecommunity around the radio shows.

It is an absolute certainty that the telecommunity around any one or all of these four

personalities contributed to the popularity of the locally produced music. That had and continues

to have an economic impact on the lives of Cape Bretoners. In the 1990s when national and

international record labels were trying to determine which East Coast artists to sign and promote,

the purchasing power of the telecommunity made the difference. Airplay on popular programs

translated into sales. If people liked what they heard, they were apt to purchase that music in one

of the many gift shops, gas stations or independent retail outlets that carried locally produced

50

cassette tapes and CD’s. Larry LeBlanc was the Canadian reporter for Billboard Magazine, the most

important trade publication in the music industry. “Rita MacNeil sold nineteen thousand units

before they got the A&M/Virgin record deal (1987). The Rankin family sold thirty five thousand

units with no major label involved. (1989/90) That made the industry stand up and take note.”

There is an emancipatory element to this. The success of those artists, both at home and off

Island, is the foundation upon which dozens of young musicians and artists are building their

careers. ‘Cape Breton” music means something to audiences, even though it probably carries

different meanings than for people on the Island. The music industry has changed and labels are

no longer the force in they once were. Most artists are independent now. This independence has

given rise to associated professionals that are able to stay on the Island and work in their chosen

fields. Recording engineers, managers, publicists, arrangers, instrument repair technicians, and a

host of others, contribute to the economic and cultural well-being of the Island. Moreover, one of

the study’s informants, an in-demand musician for more than fifty years, thought the capacity of

radio to provide the public awareness and musicians to provide the entertainment for local

fundraisers was their most important collective endowment to the Island. There are no figures to

show how much money traditional musicians help raise by attracting the public to fundraisers and

local events, but it is fair to say that the music provides a platform for the community to take care

of its members.

Toward the end of this project, Ray “Mac” sent a follow-up note with a reminder that the Cape

Breton fiddle tradition does not include contests under any circumstances. “I have always believed

that was a good thing,” he wrote, “because we have enough on our plates now that tends to divide

us…it seemed to me that fiddlers, (male and female) who didn’t like each other at all, at all, at all,

still had great admiration for the music and the one who was playing it at the time.”(R. M.

51

MacDonald, 2015) This is a shrewd and insightful observation. In the Cape Breton tradition,

unlike the American Fiddle Contest tradition, the international bagpiping world, or even the

classical conservatory milieu, there is no written syllabus, no set standard for technique, repertoire,

or presentation style. The style is set by an ongoing respectful and informed dialogue, a

conversation that over years and decades establishes the criteria for what fits in the music and what

does not. It this golden era from 1973 to 1998, these conversations were lead by gentlemen, Gus

MacKinnon, Ray ‘Mac” MacDonald, Brian Sutcliffe and Donnie Campbell, all giants of the

airwaves. They shaped the discourse, they set the tone, and together they are one of the main

reasons the musical culture endures.

-30-

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