Music showed my father a way to
God. I suppose it would be an exagger-
ation to say that for him, music was
God; perhaps, though, his God was a
heavenly version of Johann Sebastian
Bach, a divine artist able to create struc-
tures of such transparent beauty and
intricate complexity that the cosmos
would ring out in harmony. In each of
their homes, my mother placed a cru-
cifix on the living-room wall, and my
father hung a portrait of Bach on the
wall above his desk. Music ruled his life.
It did not rule mine, and therefore, his
was a life I could not fully enter. I never
took an organ lesson; maybe he was
waiting for me to ask, or maybe I was
waiting for him. More likely, he needed
to maintain a private space away from
the demands of his family. To his wife
and child, the language he lived and
breathed was a foreign tongue: the
language of a distant nation. The lan-
guage of organists.
I look in his big scrapbooks, where
he meticulously recorded the details of
his musical life. They tell me that on
June 17, 1943, he was “permitted to
play, by recommendation, the mag-
nificent Grand Willis concert organ at
Alexandra Palace, one of the largest
organs in Great Britain.” By whose rec-
ommendation, I want to know? What
kind of music did he play?MY FATHER PLAYED hundreds of organs
over his long career, lending the skill of
his limbs and mind to fairground and
Creator alike. He performed on Wur-
litzers and other theatre organs that
were mighty enough to make the cin-
emas of the 1930s echo with the force
of music. He played on small electronic
organs not with delight but with a pro-
fessional determination to make them
sound as good as possible. And he
gave recitals in churches from British
Columbia to East Berlin.When I imagine him now, I see him
at the organ of the church where he
served the longest: St. John’s Cathedral
in Saskatoon. On a Sunday morning,
my father would arrive early, changing
from his street shoes into a pair he
reserved for the organ, donning his
blue, ankle-length cassock and a white
surplice over top and checking to see
if there were any last-minute changes
in the order of service. Then he would
stride across the front of the church,IF THE PRIEST INTERRUPTED HIS PRELUDE,
MY FATHER MIGHT GET HIS REVENGE BY
AN ACT OF MUSICAL SABOTAGE.rd.ca 85