Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise to represent the people of Timmins—James Bay. Of course, I could not begin without talking about the incredible fiddling history of James Bay, where the Cree fiddlers, going back to the 1600s, have maintained an incredible culture of fiddle and dance.
I have to say at the outset that I keep a fiddle in my closet. It haunts me. I cannot play it. The G–D–A–E fingering is probably the easiest fingering on the planet, but the ability to use the bow with the right hand is the difference between beauty and art and criminal activity. I have tried the right hand, and I have not been able to master it. However, I would like to speak to this.
I have to also say at the outset that I have heard incredible fiddling across this country, and I have had the great honour to play in the Grievous Angels with that incredible fiddler Peter Jellard, who is a master at Acadian, Quebecois, and traditional Irish fiddling.
My personal love is Cape Breton fiddling. My family were Cape Breton miners who were exiled. They had to follow the work. Also living in Timmins was Buddy MacMaster, the famous Cape Breton fiddler. He was born in Timmins, because the Cape Bretoners had to go north to work. It was the Fort Mac of the 1920s and 1930s.
My grandfather was a traditional Cape Bretoner. He had a fiddle and a piano. If we wanted music, he played one or the other or both, so we would have Saturday night ceilidhs. My grandfather was a purest. He did not believe in records. My aunts and mom wanted to listen to rock and roll and Elvis Presley. It hit them that a way to get my grandfather to allow a record player in the house was to bring Cape Breton fiddle records home, so we grew up on Winston “Scotty” Fitzgerald, John Allan Cameron, and the whole Celtic tradition in our neighbourhood, in this little miner's house in the Moneta district in Timmins. The Italian and francophone neighbours would come over on Saturday nights, and we would have a traditional Cape Breton ceilidh, and the music would go into the early hours of the morning.
Not being able to fiddle, I realized early on that if I could sing, I could stay up. As long as I knew the songs, I could stay up. I could stay up all night. The second I ran out of songs, they noticed, and I was sent to bed, so I might not be a very competent singer, but I knew all the words.
I would like to speak about the uniqueness of the fiddle as an instrument. I have played across Canada. I have learned a number of lessons from playing shows from the far Arctic to biker bars in southwestern Ontario, from the east coast over to the mountains. There is a distinct difference between how people respond when they hear the fiddle and any other instrument.
I will tell members a couple of stories. I was in Great Whale River up in upper James Bay in Quebec in the early 1990s playing with our band. There was only one place to eat. It was a Quonset hut run by Hydro Quebec. It was the only place to eat for 600 kilometres. They took a look at four or five scruffy tête carrés and said, “We're not feeding you”. We could have fought with them, but they were the law of the land. It was their restaurant, and they were not feeding us. Rather than fight, we sat down, and our fiddler took out the fiddle and began to play La Bastringue, and immediately they came out from behind, they called their friends over from the other Quonset huts, and they told us that we could eat there all day, as long as we wanted. In fact, they did not want us to go to the show that night. That is not an exception.
I played in many locations, when we were much younger, where we were literally playing in very hostile professional biker bars. We would always start with a fiddle tune. A fiddle tune immediately made us family. There is a sense with the fiddle that puts people in a place, and many Canadian people do not quite know where that place is. It is a place where their family is from. It is a village in their mind. They know that if they walk into that village, they will always be welcome. What is fascinating about this village is that it does not matter in the mind if this village is in Acadie, Jonquière, Poste-de-la-Baleine, the Ottawa Valley, Cape Breton, northern Ontario, or the Red River in western Canada. It is the place we all know that when we are there, we somehow belong.
I am not just making these claims. I know. I have tried it as a singer. It does not cut across all manner of cultural representations unless one is absolutely fantastic. If one is a saxophonist, some people like the sax, and some people do not. Everyone plays the guitar. Same with the piano, but there is something about a fiddle being played that brings that sense of identity, even if that person does not know the song. Whether it is Quebec fiddling or Acadian fiddling or western fiddling, one would immediately say that is from us.
What is it about the fiddle? It is the people's instrument, because it is simple. It is portable. The fingering is very easy to remember for the many complex jigs and reels with the G-D-A-E fingering. It is intuitive. Also, it does not need amplification. One could go to a village dance on a Saturday, and with nothing else, with no other band, the fiddle itself could be heard above the crowd.
There are incredible numbers of young fiddlers out there. This is not a dying art by any means. What we see is incredible talent right across this country. However, what has mostly disappeared, although not entirely, is the audience role, because the fiddle was not mean to be just listened to; it was meant to be danced to. The strathspeys, the reels, and the jigs followed set patterns. The audience did not need a caller to tell them how to dance, because they knew.
At a traditional country dance where the fiddle is still played, one notices a unique relationship between the instrument and the audience that does not exist if one is simply there to listen. The audience, with the movement of the feet, sets the rhythm. We see this in step dancing. The feet set the rhythm, and it is a natural rhythm that plays to the fiddle. There are many elements.
There is another interesting element, because it is not a fretted instrument, so there is a proximity to tonality. If the fiddlers are very good, it creates an incredible warmth. It is just like a big band with its horn section. If they are really good, a proximity of tonality creates a warmth. If they are not good, it is literally like scratching down a blackboard. We always see the images of a young child learning the violin, because it is brutal. It is the sense of warmth and the fragility of the instrument that actually allows it to cut through the sound, and it creates a different relationship with people.
When we talk about who we are as Canadians, we cannot really talk about ourselves unless we think of that village that still exists. Whether people have moved away, whether people have moved on, whether people have hip-hop pants, or whether people have not been back to that village in their minds, when they hear it, there is a cultural memory that puts them in a place, and that place is Canada.
The idea that we would celebrate this is really important, because we see that the fiddle culture has gone through waves of recognition and diminution as other forms of music have taken over.
When I was young, even though our family was very close to the Cape Breton culture there was a sense that it was a dying culture. Then we saw in the 1990s a whole growth of the new Celtic movement and many young people coming forward. In Quebec, we see that the continued strength of traditional music is still rooted in the traditional songs, with the call and response, but there is also the role of the fiddle. Take the fiddle out, and something fundamental is missing. We can go into a dance club now and see the fiddle.
This again is not to undermine the incredible role of the violin. The violin is the same instrument. For the layperson at home, the violin is a fiddle. However, the fiddle we are talking about is the traditional culture, the traditional music, the reels, the strathspeys, the jigs, and in the case of Cape Breton, the incredibly beautiful slow airs that are the people's music. It does not need amplification. It does not need a record label. It does not need anything except the ability of someone to play it and someone to dance.
I am very proud to get up tonight to speak about the role of the fiddle and its importance. For all those young bands out there, believe me, if they ever get themselves into trouble, if they have a good fiddler with them, it will get them through anything. If they need gas anyplace, if they need to get fed, they should have a good fiddler. If they have a bad fiddler, I cannot make any promises about how they are going to make out crossing this country.
