Today in Grande Prairie, they’ll lay to rest a musician. Richard Callihoo lived 90 years, and by most reckonings, they’d have been full years. He had 11 children, if i recall rightly. I grew up with some of them, and with some of his grandkids.
His family and mine set up Local H.O.P.E. 5 of what was then the Metis Association of Alberta. HOPE – Help Our People Evolve – was about trying to help our little community of marginalised people, to make our lives better through whatever means a political organisation might leverage. Others would know better what HOPE 5 accomplished. One day, i mean to ask around, ask people who were there what that work might have meant to them and their families.
What i remember most about Richard was the music, the glorious music he played with my dad. Richard was a fiddler, and a fine one. My dad could play, too, but his real forte was in accompaniment. Together, they had a sound that was irresistible, if what you wanted from music was something that brought out the will to dance.
Last year in June, i found a box of broken fiddles, up in a closet in our old family home. I brought them here, hoping to rebuild them. I hoped i’d find, in that work, some way to pay tribute to the old guys. And i suppose i can say that, one year later, i have learned a little.
I’ve learned how easy it is to break things, how hard to mend what is broken.
And when you have no way to learn how it broke, sometimes you can only look at the pieces in mute wonder that they ever held a song.
I’ve not even managed to finish the first of the four fiddles. I don’t know if i’ll ever succeed to build them. And if i do, then what? It’s not like they were high-born concert instruments in the first place. Just a bunch of old wood, maybe marginal at best, the kind of thing that poor folks rom the bush could afford to have. The kind of thing that came to my dad, that he didn’t throw away, despite his lack of any specialised tools or knowledge about how to repair such delicate things. Maybe it was just foolish sentimentality that made him keep those fiddles. Maybe it was bull-headed arrogance, to think he could ever make music out of junk.
But maybe it was also part of the gift that he and Richard shared back and forth, the thing that i suppose was the glue of their friendship.
Maybe it was the spark of light that travels in the music, however faintly. Nobody can teach you that. Nobody can give you that. You have to feel it. And the great ones, they have the gift of transmitting that spark, of letting it grow in them, letting it loose. Richard was one of those great ones.
I will keep my box of junk fiddles, in honour of him, in honour of my dad, and in honour of the sure knowledge i have: those guys could make music out of anything.
Today, i will play the last whole fiddle my dad had. I will play it as well as i can, because i’ll be sending a message, a thank you, and a pledge.
I’ll do my part, however well or poorly. I’ll seek the song, and the spark in the song. I’ll be thinking of your joy. And of Hope. And whether or not i ever get those fiddles rebuilt, i won’t give up on them. On what they mean.
God speed your soul, Grandpa Richard. Chi Megwetch. Merci. Hai hai. Thank you.
All My Relations
ams
Your piece made a song in my heart, Anna Marie. I remember when you played at WordsWorth, and the words you spoke from our poet heart. Thank you. Megwetch. Carolyn