Since its inception in 1984, International Choral Kathaumixw festival has grown in size and reputation. The 18th biennial event owes its success to the countless individuals in Powell River and beyond who volunteer their time and open their homes to visiting singers from around the world.
One of the popular offshoots of the festival is the touring program, which involves participating choirs visiting communities throughout the province and beyond. The program was initially devised by Richard Hibberd, a founding member of the Kathaumixw festival, as a way to support Powell River Academy of Music while bringing the music and cultural exchange of Kathaumixw to a wider audience.
Hibberd passed away last year at the age of 91, but the legacy of the tours program he founded continues to build.
“He created this because he wanted a way to help the academy and to keep it growing” said current tour committee member Pam Wadden.
In the early days of the Kathaumixw festival, Hibberd used his connections as a member of the BC Choral Federation to get the tour program off the ground and organized the bulk of logistics on his own.
“I came on board to help out in 1990,” said Hibberd’s sister Shirley Koleszar. “I had retired from teaching and started working with Richard because it was just too much to do on his own.”
Betty Norman joined the tour committee in 1992 and remains part of the current organizing group along with Wadden, Martin Osbourne, Lee Coulter and Cindy Dalcourt.
“Back when they started doing this it was before computers, before email,” said Wadden. “Everything was written down on paper.”
Today, technology helps the organizers, but there is still a huge amount of work that goes into pulling off a successful tour, she added.
The work begins in the fall the year before the festival, said Koleszar. It starts with reaching out to communities and asking if they would like to host choirs, she added.
Wadden said the positive response and generosity of people always amazes her.
“I’m always surprised at how many people are willing to say ‘Sure, we’ll take a choir of 50 people. I’ll find billets for every one of them. Sure we’ll give them lunch, we’ll feed them dinner and drive them places and they’re going to sing for us once.’” she said. “It still surprises me to this day when I get the email back saying ‘Yes, we’ll do it again.’”
Another key piece of the arranging is finding the right people to lead the choirs on their tours.
“The tour guides are a super important component of the program,” said Wadden. “You need the greatest people. They have to be on 24/7 the entire time they’re gone. Those tour guides fix everything and they are just happy to be there showing these people everything.”
This year’s guides are Cindy and Andre Dalcourt, Peggy Ogloff, Nancy and Alex Hollman, Carol Stokes and Inge-Lore Freeman. Tours have taken choirs to every part of the province as well as Calgary and Washington State.
“The biggest tours involved 31 communities and 12 choirs,” said Koleszar.
Once the choirs are on the road, there is a lot of troubleshooting and problem solving the committee deals with. Ferries are inevitably late and some connections get missed.
“There is always some stress behind the scenes when something breaks down or somebody doesn’t get where they should,” said Norman. “But there are so many good memories, too.”
Koleszar said it was the philosophy behind the tour program that initially attracted her to become involved.
“When you travel thousands of miles you might as well have a look around,” she said. “And the people in communities throughout BC enjoy hearing world-class choirs. It’s a win-win situation.”
