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Townsman, 1992-03, Page 5i P©© p e Loreena McKennitt: 100,000 albums and counting. It's been quite a year for Stratford singer -musician Loreena McKennitt, culminating March 29 with a Juno Award for her album The Visit, (tied with Saturday Night Blues) as the best Canadian album in the Roots and Tra- ditional category and a performance on the nationally televised awards cer- emony. She was also nominated for best female vocalist and best producer (she carefully controls all aspects of her career). The album has sold 100,000 copies in Canada, earning platinum album status, since it was released last fall. Now it is being released worldwide in 24 other countries including the U.S. There it will have a different cover than the original Canadian cover. McKennitt and Warner Music offi- cials agreed the old cover might put the album in a new-age ghetto and leave sales "dead in the water". The success of the album has meant McKennitt hasn't spent much time in her home town. In March she toured Europe and in April she'll be in New Zealand and Australia, an itinerary that has her feeling "tired but good". She has worked very hard to be the one calling the shots with her career. "I'm still at the helm of the ship and I think I always will be," she said. While some farmers keep wonder- ing how they can make farming pay, there's one story of farming that just keeps on harvesting big crops. St. Marys theatre producer and director Douglas Beattie has had a bountiful crop from the Wingfield Trilogy: Letter from Wingfield Farm, Wingfield's Progress, and Wingfield's ield's Folly which have played in dozens of theatres across Canada. The comedies, about stockbroker Walt Wingfield who moves to a farm in Persephone Township to get away from it all stars Douglas' brother, Rod Beattie. Now the brothers are working to develop the Trilogy for television and their project got a boost when a televised version of Letter from Wingfield Farm won a Gemini award for best live per- forming arts program on March 7. "We just made our pitch to a network and it's coincided nicely with the Gemini award," Douglas Beattie said. The plays are based on a series of newspaper columns written by Dan Needles, a family friend of the Beat - ties, when he was editor of a newspa- per in Shelburne. He invented Walt Wingfield who wrote a series of let- ters to the paper about his imaginary adventures on the farm. Meanwhile before most farmers have planted their seed yet, the har- vest continues on Wingfield Farm. This June the three plays will be per- formed at the Tom Patterson Theatre at Stratford Festival. Starting April 21, Perils of Persephone, another Needles play about Persephone town- ship, directed by Beattie, will open at the Grand Theatre in London. Artists traditionally may not make much money but Hanover native Beth McEachen certainly has designs on it. /Tn4f, ; -411W31- e. o The first year student at the, Ontario Col- lege of Art recently was in Yellowknife for the unveiling of her winning design for a new 25 -cent piece to commemorate Canada's 125th birth- day. A series of. 12 designs, one for each province and territory, is being created for the country's anniversary and McEachen's winning design for the Northwest Territories was chosen from more than 11,000 submissions overall, 612 for the NWT. The win- ning design shows a pre -historic Inuit stone structure, an inukshuk. McEachen, 19, said her design was inspired by a vaguely remembered primary school geography lesson in which she learned that above a certain latitude, the ground was always frozen and no trees grcw. "To know where they are going, the Inuit build land- marks of stone." Joining McEachen and Paul Dick, Minister of Supply and Services at the ceremony were the Dcttah Drummers of the Dene community and the Yel- lowknife Youth Choir. Seeing her work on the new coin McEachen said "I think it looks fantastic." TOWNSMAN/MARCH-APRIL 1992 3