The longest-lived musical ensemble on the Sunshine Coast celebrated its golden anniversary with back-to-back concerts in Sechelt and Pender Harbour on Dec. 8 and 9.
The Pender Harbour Choir was founded in 1973 in the home of Doreen and Ray Lee. “The Harbour was alive with music in the ‘70s and ‘80s,” said Margaret Skelley, who joined the group in 2006 and sings alto. The Lee home was musical headquarters because the couple owned a piano.
The choir started as a women’s chorale under the direction of Les Fowler. Gwen Hawkins would take up the baton during Fowler’s extended fishing trips. “The choir has continued on for 50 years,” said Skelley, “sometimes doing major things and sometimes minor things, but we’ve always been singing.”
The 22-voice mixed ensemble performed a selection of Christmas numbers at the Sunshine Coast Botanical Garden on Dec. 8 and the Pender Harbour School of Music on Dec. 9. Kenneth Johnson directed the group in traditional holiday songs, including one of his own compositions: Alleluia.
Johnson began directing the choir in 2016, taking over from Joy McLeod who had been its leader for eight years following Pat Larson. Larson succeeded Les Fowler in 1995 when the choir organized a walkathon to raise money for a professional director.
“I’ve grown to just really love it,” said Johnson, who was originally a high school music instructor. “I thought when I left teaching school I wouldn’t be involved in choral music because I was writing music and recording albums. But this choir is unique because of the passion they have. It’s a family, almost. There’s a feeling that we belong together, and we support each other.”
Tenor Sandy Matches was recruited in 2009 to extend the musical breadth of the group’s male voices. “I was brought in to reach for high notes,” he said, “and there were lots of butter tarts, and lots of desserts. As I was building a house, living in the mud, so it was a nice, warm place to sing.”
Choir members contributed to the rise of successive Pender Harbour cultural institutions. Nancy MacKay, a pianist and alto who joined the group in the mid-1980s, became the first chair of the Pender Harbour Music Society. The society was formed to transform a vacant forestry complex into the Pender Harbour School of Music.
When it opened, there were 225 children in the local elementary school, and a facility was needed for music lessons. “Much sweat equity was involved and continues to be involved maintaining this artistic complex on our historic hilltop,” said Skelley. “The choir was always autonomous, but it was all the people in the choir who enabled the Music Society to be formed.”
Mackay led a letter-writing campaign to move the Sunshine Coast Festival of the Performing Arts north from Gibsons to Sechelt, easing access for residents of Pender Harbour. Until COVID, the choir performed regularly as part of the annual festival (which will mark its 50th anniversary in 2024).
Through Les Fowler’s influence, a two-year association between the Music Society and Capilano College provided non-credit choral training. Harmonious collaboration became a hallmark of the group as it sponsored visiting performers like the Vancouver Welsh Men’s Choir and performed Handel’s Messiah oratorio with the Suncoast Phoenix Choir. In 2019, the group organized a Mamma Mia! singalong at the Sechelt Seniors Centre.
Today, the group is accompanied by pianist David Poon, who drives from Gibsons to Pender Harbour for weekly rehearsals. Recruitment and renewal are a priority, explained Johnson.
Keen to welcome young voices, the group offers free membership to students from Pender Harbour Secondary School. “And we have business cards we hand out to anybody who we hear humming,” added Matches.
Listen to live audio of the Pender Harbour Choir singing Cantate Canon by browsing to michaelgurney.com/culture.
