Music has always brought people together in Bradford West Gwillimbury – but it also created divisions. In the early 1830s, the congregation of the Auld Kirk (on Line 6) split, with part of the congregation leaving to establish a new Presbyterian church in Bond Head. The reasons for the split were many – dissension within the Church of Scotland, the use of Gaelic in traditional services, but also “the desire of some members to incorporate the use of an organ during the services.” Those opposed felt it would undermine the ‘purity’ of worship. Those in favour felt it would attract a younger generation.
The Bradford Citizens Brass Band was first organized in 1870, under John H. Hockridge. By 1874, it had morphed into the 35th Battalion Band, under William A. Armstrong – but a brass band, playing at special events, continued to exist in BWG into the mid-1930s. A photograph from 1928, published in the Bradford Witness, identified a number of members, including Emerson and Wilfred Faris, Jack Armstrong, Tom and John Speziali, George Manton, Jim and Mike Catania, Roy Delahaye, Tom Bachelor and Mac Campbell.
Music was taught in the one-room schools. One memorable music teacher was Paul McKelvey, hired in 1947. He was paid $8.50 per school, and he would make the rounds. Ruth (Jackson) Hamilton remembers that he always arrived at her school, Fisher’s Corners S.S. #7, “regardless of the weather. He would sit down at the piano, take off one shoe and put it on top of the piano and proceed to teach new songs. He always had everyone’s attention as we sat amazed at what he might do next.”
On June 9, 1944, the Town of Bradford hosted a music festival at the old ice rink on John Street West. The ice was taken out, bleachers put in for seating, a stage built – and choirs involving nearly 300 children in Grades 5 through 8, from schools in Tottenham, Schomberg and West Gwillimbury, rehearsed. Music teacher Georgina Barton even contacted the Robert Simpson Co. (Simpson’s) to decorate the arena with trellises and artificial flowers. A baby grand piano was brought in for pianists Irene Knowles and Fay Tipping, and the students practiced songs that included Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, and Little Sir Echo. It was a memorable concert; decades later, Ralph Williams wrote, “Only once I recall going to a music concert of school choirs… The hymn Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring really impressed me above all others.”
Church halls, community halls, Orange Lodges were meeting places for everything from elections and Council meetings, to community dinners, dances and concerts. Dances were held in Schomberg, Bond Head and Bradford – often attended, during the war years, by soldiers on leave. Things could get rowdy and end in a brawl, but the organizers had a fail-safe strategy: “The playing of God Save the King brought them to attention, stopped the fight and restored order,” noted one memoir.
Popular local bands included Russell Creighton and The Hay Balers in the 1930s, ‘Hammer and Tongs’ – Gerry Roberts on piano and Harold Bell on fiddle - and more recently the Leo Paxton Orchestra. Upstairs at the Old Town Hall in Bradford, now the Treasury Building, a large room also hosted dances, Christmas concerts and Amateur Talent Nights. Norm Snider, owner of the Mt. Pleasant Store (Yonge Street and Line 12, from 1928 to 1942) was a regular, remembered for his clogging skills, accompanied by 'Hammer and Tongs.'
As for instrumental music in the Presbyterian churches, the controversy died down by the 1890s. When the new Bradford Presbyterian church opened in 1894, at the corner of John Street West and Church Street, the Ladies’ Aid of the Bradford Presbyterian Church purchased a Thomas organ as a gift to the church. And in 1915, the church installed a handsome pipe organ, paid for in part by the Carnegie Foundation.
Sources: We Must Tell the Stories-The Presbyterian Churches of BWG; Governor Simcoe Slept Here: The Legacy of West Gwillimbury; Bradford Public Library Archives, and other online sources.
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