100 Years of the Crowsnest Pass Music Festival

In 1924 a committee of Mr. W. Thomas (chair), piano teacher Miss Brown, Mrs. S. Bannan, Mrs. J. A. Kerr, Miss Nichol, Miss Dicken, Mr. J. E. Upton, violin instructor Mr. W. Moser, and Rev W. T. Young were ‘instrumental’ in forming the Crow’s Nest Pass Sunday School Musical Festival. Originally a one-day local event, it soon grew into a regional event that spanned multiple days, and is the forerunner of the music festival that still runs today.

The idea for a Festival originated from Rev. Young and Blairmore’s Central Union Church as a way to improve the standards of church choirs and musicians, mostly for the boys and girls of local Sunday School classes. The first festival was on Saturday May 16 1925 and was an instant success with 105 entrants, requiring continuous operations from 9:30am to 10:30pm and including musicians from Pincher Creek, Cowley, Lundbreck, Bellevue and Blairmore. All but two events were for Sunday School students. Events include five grades of piano plus an open competition; four grades of violin; vocals under 10, under 12, under 16, and under 18, and solo and duet open competitions; and full orchestra competitions, with five entrants. Each event was critically adjudicated by judges including Clifford Higgin of Mount Royal College( instruments) and his son Elgin Higgin (vocals) of Calgary, with trophies issued to the winners. Entry was 25 cents for the morning and 50 cents for the evening.

The second festival was a two-day affair (Monday and Tuesday) with 300 entrants, billed as ‘by far the biggest event of the year’. The committee, which met in the Greenhill Hotel, now had a president, vice-president, secretary-treasurer and seven executive members, with appointees from Macleod, Pincher Creek, Cowley, Bellevue, Hillcrest and Coleman. Judges included an instrumental adjudicator from Edmonton, vocal adjudicator from Calgary, and an elocution adjudicator from Coaldale. There were more events than the previous year, including duets and quartets in some. The festival was open to Sunday School students of any denomination (except for the Open events) anywhere between Macleod and Natal.

The Festival has been opened to all, not just Sunday School students, by the fourth event. Programs were sold, and admission to the entire three-day event cost $2. Heinzman and Co from Lethbridge loaned a grand piano for the event, which ran from Easter Monday through Wednesday. Events not able to be held in the Blairmore Opera House were held in the Central Union Church.

By 1929, a Mr. H. Mellor-Langdale advertised being in Blairmore every Monday to give voice lessons to make “competitors prepared for the Music Festival”. By 1930 the Festival programme took up an entire page of the Blairmore Enterprise, including a list of the ten major trophies and shields. Adjudicators that year included the European-trained Holroyd Paul of Vancouver, and Rhynd Jamieson, music critic of the Vancouver Daily Province. The following year adjudicators included Grigori Garbovitzky, the Russian-born conductor of the Calgary Symphony Orchestra.

Every year the event grew. By 1932 there were 200 entrants. In 1933 the event was held at Thanksgiving rather than Easter, with competitors from Cranbrook arriving on a special chartered train. Soon Medicine Hat joined in, and in 1934 there were 600 contestants and 3000 spectators. Many Pass musicians also competed in the Lethbridge regional competition and the provincial festival in Edmonton.

The 13th Festival was held in October 1937, but as there was no event in 1938, the 14th annual Festival was in 1939, and was moved back to April. As Canada’s involvement in the Second World War intensified, there was no Festival in 1944 – nor, in fact, right through 1955.

The event was revived in either 1956 or 1957 when the Blairmore Lions’ Club restarted the Crowsnest Pass Music Festival, based out of Isabelle Sellon School. Later the Festival used multiple venues including the Lions Pride Hall, Horace Allen School, and Crowsnest Consolidated High School, and later the Crowsnest Centre, and even Grace Anglican United Church has recently joined in. Over this period the Festival varied from three days to eight days in duration. The Crowsnest Pass Music Festival became non-competitive in 2015.