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$1.25 GST included Serving the communities of Blyth and Brussels and northern Huron County Thursday, June 4, 2015
Volume 31 No. 22
SPORTS - Pg. 8
Tigers, Brewers start
Huron Fastball season
ARENA - Pg. 2
Community Centre seeks
nominations for project
Publications Mail Agreement No. 40050141 Return Undeliverable Items to North Huron Publishing Company Inc., P.O. Box 152, BRUSSELS, ON N0G 1H0
INSIDE
THIS WEEK:
Munro
Festival
June 4-7
In line
The Brussels Cadet Corp held its annual year-end
inspection and awards ceremony last week with a number
of Cadets participating. The weather was nice, so the
members showed off their skills outdoors with the help of
the Municipality of Huron East, which closed the road for them.
Lieutenant Commander Neil Martin, Deputy Commanding Officer
of Blackdown Cadet Training Centre was on hand to conduct the
inspection. (Vicky Bremner photo)
Faces of Fury brings story of S.S. Wexford to life
Blyth’s Memorial Hall played host
to a special event last Tuesday
evening as the S.S. Wexford, as well
as all the ships lost during The Great
Storm of 1913, were paid tribute to.
The event, called Faces of the
Fury, featured music, presentations
and a sneak peek at Fury, a fictional
play premiering at the Blyth Festival
this season that takes place on the
Wexford.
The storm had dire effects on four
of the Great Lakes and claimed 19
ships, stranded 19 others and is the
most destructive natural disaster to
occur on the bodies of water.
Put on as a collaboration between
the Blyth Festival and the Great
Lakes Storm of 1913 Remembrance
committee, the event brought
together descendants of the sailors
on the S.S. Wexford from home and
abroad, the St. Anne’s Catholic
Secondary School’s award-winning
band to perform a three-piece song
about the storm, and members of the
Blyth Festival and Fury to help mark
the important place the Wexford
plays in Huron’s history.
The evening began with the St.
Anne’s choir playing “Songs of the
Karegnondi”, a three-movement
piece composed by Jeff Christmas
that was produced specifically for
the band.
Fresh off a provincial win for its
musical prowess, the group took to
the stage and played the complex
piece which featured the tones of
calmer nautical songs, a sea-chanty
and a movement focused on the rage
of the storm that sank the S.S.
Wexford as well as many other
ships, claiming nearly 300 seamen.
Fury composer, music director
and sound designer Samuel
Sholdice, who was part of the show,
said it was an amazing piece to see
performed by high school students.
He also said that, having been in a
local concert band himself when he
went to high school at Central Huron
Secondary School, it was impressive
to see the group on stage and
performing so well.
The second part of the evening
featured a special presentation by
the Great Lakes Storm of 1913
Remembrance committee.
Blyth Festival Artistic Director Gil
Garratt emceed the show and
introduced the various acts.
Prior to introducing the
committee, he said he was glad the
Festival could help with the event,
pointing to the fact that part of the
mandate of the theatre group is to
tell the stories of not just from
Canada, but from the local area.
He said there have been many
plays about the area as far as
agriculture and rural life is
concerned, but the lake is often
forgotten and there are many tales to
tell.
He then introduced the Great
Lakes Storm of 1913 Remembrance
committee, that told people the tale
of the S.S. Wexford, whose
wreckage was discovered south of
Goderich 15 years ago.
The committee includes historians
Paul Carroll, who recently penned a
novel about the S.S. Wexford and the
storm, David Yates, Kathy Pletsch,
and Colleen Maguire.
Maguire gave an overview of the
history of the S.S. Wexford,
detailing its crew. Carroll spoke in
depth about the ship’s construction,
modifications and how it came to be
in Lake Huron.
Yates focused on the events of the
storm and of the aftermath,
highlighting several sailors whose
stories were impressive. Pletsch
dealt with the more human aspect of
the story, focusing on the lives of the
sailors and those they left behind
when they died in the Great Storm of
1913.
Following the presentation, Peter
Smith, playwright and lyricist for
Fury and Sholdice took to the stage.
Sholdice performed two pieces from
the play which bookended a reading
of the play by Smith.
Sholdice said that in the creation
of Fury, he was treated to entire lore
with which he was unfamiliar. He
said that Garratt, in saying that the
lake is sometimes forgotten in the
history of Huron County, was
accurate.
“The Blyth Festival, being this
rural theatre, does so many shows
A special exhibit to honour the
100th anniversary of the birth of St.
Augustine-born author Harry J.
Boyle was opened at the North
Huron Museum on Saturday.
The museum was filled with
visitors for the opening ceremony
including Boyle’s brother Norman,
of London and his daughter Patricia
and son Michael, MP Ben Lobb,
MPP Lisa Thompson, Huron County
Warden Paul Gowing and North
Huron Reeve Neil Vincent.
Vincent said he grew up within
two miles of St. Augustine and in
elementary school literature, studied
Boyle’s Mostly In Clover, one of a
number of humorous books written
about growing up in Huron County
in the 1920s and 1930s.
Boyle, Vincent said, always
carried with him the values he
learned growing up in Huron,
whether to his career at CBC radio
where he helped start the National
Farm Radio Forum or as chair of the
Canadian Radio-Television
Commission (CRTC).
Thompson, who said her forebears
came from St. Augustine, said Boyle
“Put an exclamation point on the
type of people who come from
Huron County.”
Lobb touched on the same point
saying he is always struck by the
remarkable people who have come
from the county. When Boyle went
to CBC in the 1940s, he joined at a
time when the network was building
the same unifying bonds across the
nation that the railways had done a
half-century earlier, Lobb said.
During Boyle’s time at the CRTC
the commission was establishing
The recently-rebranded Alice
Munro Festival of the Short Story
has undergone some major changes
and is now ready to be one of the top
literary festivals and attractions in
the country.
Now under the auspices of
Festival Director Kate Johnston,
who also works with The Livery in
Goderich, the festival has expanded
to become a county-wide event,
featuring events in its natural home
of Wingham, as well as Clinton and
Bayfield.
The sweeping changes also mean
a new date for the festival, which
had historically been held in the fall,
but will now be held between
Thursday, June 4 and Sunday, June
7.
The rebranding of the festival,
Johnston says, was really done to try
and make it more of a tourism
attraction and an experience, rather
than simply a handful of workshops.
The festival was first created in
2003 before being rebranded as the
Alice Munro Readers and Writers
The Citizen
Celebrating 30 Years
1985~2015
Museum honours ‘Clover’ author
By Keith Roulston
The Citizen
Continued on page 10
By Shawn Loughlin
The Citizen
Continued on page 14
By Denny Scott
The Citizen
Continued on page 20