Borderland: A fascination with borders and boundaries

I’ve long been fascinated by international borders and provincial boundaries. It started back in 1975-76. First, I decided in the Summer of 1975, between Grade 12 and 13 at Oshawa Catholic High School in Oshawa, Ontario, that I might was well catch a bus, head east, and then experience the end of the hitchhiking era. Part of that would involve borders. I recall walking across the Edmundston–Madawaska Bridge, an international bridge which opened in 1921 and connects the cities of Edmundston, New Brunswick, in Canada and Madawaska, Maine, in the United States, across the Saint John River. A new replacement bridge is currently under construction and scheduled to open in 2025.

I’m not sure quite what propelled me to walk over the river and into Aroostook County, Maine, but I think there was something about a girl in a bar in Madawaska (I know, sounds a bit like the opening salvo of a country-and-western song; I believe the legal drinking age may have been 18 in Maine at the time). I remember me back in Canada later sleeping in front of either Edmundston City Hall, or the Edmundston Police Force station (I’ve forgotten which, but the building was downtown, near the old S.M.T. (Eastern) Limited bus station, I think, in those days).

Remarkably, I only had a summer-weight sleeping bag and packsack (and notably no tent) in late June in the Maritimes.

My next stop would be camping out with the same gear in  Charlottetown in the back yard of the Government House of Prince Edward Island, often referred to as Fanningbank, where I was again neither disturbed or arrested, albeit I don’t recall then Lt.-Gov. Gordon Bennett inviting me in for some breakfast either.

A few days later, my sleeping back and I wound up camping out for the night atop some embankment, surrounded by cedar trees, I believe, in Truro, Nova Scotia. When I woke up the next morning my sleeping bag and I had descended about 30 yards down the embankment during the night, while my packsack was still back at top, marking where we had started out.

The following year was the United States’ bicentennial. To mark the occasion in 1976, Canada’s official gift to the United States on its bicentennial was a coffee table-size book, Between Friends/Entre Amis, which was chalk full of exquisite border photographs, and introduced me to the International Boundary Commission. I gave the book to my parents for their anniversary that year.

Between Friends/Entre Amis was where I learned about places like the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, situated at 93 Caswell Avenue in Derby Line, Vermont and 1 Church Street in Stanstead Quebec. It straddles two nations, with one foot in the United States and the other in Canada. A black line running along the floor – a strip of masking tape – marks the international border, separating the towns Derby Line, Vermont, from Stanstead, Quebec. The front door, community bulletin board and children’s books are in the United States; the remainder of the collection and the reading room is in Canada.

In the Summer of 1979, I lived briefly in Blaine, Washington, directly across from 0 Avenue in the Douglas neighbourhood of Surrey, British Columbia. The houses on the north side of the street right were in Surrey, the houses on the south side were in Blaine. My neighbours across the street had British Columbia licence plates visible in their driveways, while neighbours on either side of me had had Washington plates in theirs.

In 1983, I remember tagging along on a trip or two to Akwesasne with Richard Russell, when he was the circulation manager of The Standard-Freeholder in Cornwall, Ontario, and I was a daily newspaper reporter there. This is also around the time I came to love Lancaster, Ontario perch rolls in hot dog buns.

Akwesasne is an incredibly complicated and complex place. Was then and is now.

I may even have enjoyed a pint or two back in the 1980s in the Halfway House, a tavern also known as Taillon’s International Hotel, where the barroom straddles the Canada-United States border between Dundee, Quebec and Fort Covington, New York, and that was built in 1820 before the international border in that area was surveyed. I remember the demarcation line drawn on the floor by the pool table, and admonitions not to transport alcoholic beverages from Quebec into New York and vice-a-versa.

Perhaps this borderland and interprovincial boundary fascination runs in the blood. I remember going to my birth mother’s place for the first time in August 1999. She lived near Amherst, Nova Scotia, on Fort Lawrence Road, east of Exit 1, where the Via Rail Ocean passenger train, with its haunting but not at all unwelcome whistle filling the air, en route from Montréal to Halifax, or Halifax to Montréal, crossing the saltwater Tantramar marshes between Amherst, Nova Scotia and Sackville, New Brunswick, a stone’s throw from the Missiguash River, bordering New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and connecting the Nova Scotia peninsula with those who come from away elsewhere in North America.

The saltwater Tantramar marshes, sometimes referred to singularly as the Tantramar Marsh, is a very special place indeed, and was even long before the first train crossed it in the 19th century. Memory surrounds you everywhere in Nova Scotia. This is the soil my Acadian ancestors lived and laboured on.  This is Aulac Ridge, a prominent rise running west to east across the Tantramar marshes on the Isthmus of Chignecto, just west of the Missiguash River. This is the demarcation line between Fort Lawrence and Fort Beauséjour, New France and British North America, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, overlooking the Cumberland Basin of the Bay of Fundy.

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Hitchhiking down the road to Edmundston, walking across the water to Madawaska, Maine for a few beer, and camping out in His Honour’s back yard

I have fond memories going back to 1975 of my first long-distance hitchhiking expedition from Oshawa at 18, just after Grade 12, to the Baker Lake and Edmundston areas of New Brunswick, and then walking over the Edmundston-Madawaska Bridge, which opened in 1921, from Des Veterans Promenade, as it is known now (not sure about back then)  or Highway 2 to Bridge Street or US Highway 1 in Madawaska,  just across the Saint John River in Aroostook County, Maine.

 

I think there was something about a girl in a bar in Madawaska (I know, sounds a bit like the opening salvo of a country-and-western song; I believe the legal drinking age may have been 18 in Maine at the time) and me later sleeping in front of either Edmundston City Hall, or the Edmundston Police Force station (I’ve forgotten which, but the building was downtown, near the old S.M.T. (Eastern) Limited bus station, I think, in those days).

 

Remarkably, I only had a summer-weight sleeping bag and packsack (and notably no tent) in late June in the Maritimes.

 

Remarkably, no one either disturbed me or arrested me.

 

My next stop would be camping out with the same gear in  Charlottetown in the back yard of the Government House of Prince Edward Island, often referred to as Fanningbank, where I was again neither disturbed or arrested, albeit I don’t recall then Lt.-Gov. Gordon Bennett inviting me in for some breakfast either.

 

A few days later, my sleeping back and I wound up camping out for the night atop some embankment, surrounded by cedar trees, I believe, in Truro, Nova Scotia. When I woke up the next morning my sleeping bag and I had descended about 30 yards down the embankment during the night, while my packsack was still back at top, marking where we had started out.

 

One of my last stops was  Channel-Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, where I discovered endless fog and Pizza Delight, which had been founded seven years earlier in 1968 in Shediac, New Brunswick. While it would be another 24 years or so, Chez Camille Take-Out on Chemin Acadie in Cap-Pelé, about 15 miles east of Shediac, and also on the Northumberland Strait, would become my favourite fried clams joint anywhere, with John’s Lunch on Pleasant Street in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, running a close second. Now if I could only make it back to check out the Shediac Lobster Festival!

All in all, this admittedly was not a particularly well-thought out adventure at the age of 18, but I was fortuitous in more ways than one. Along with not being disturbed or arrested, it didn’t’ rain for the 11 or so nights I spent under the starry Atlantic summer night sky, sans tent, and I wasn’t unduly tormented by mosquitoes or blackflies, both of which, I suspect, are not unknown to inhabit the Maritimes that time of year. 

Hitchhiking, at least in much of North America, is something of a lost travel adventure art that more or less disappeared around the time of my mid-1970’s trek to the Maritimes (with the odd exception such as Globe and Mail writer John Stackhouse’s insightful Notes from the Road cross-Canada series in the Summer of 2000.) Of course, fear reigns supreme now and no one is going to pick you up, right? Well, maybe not. About a dozen years ago now, and more than 30 years after my Maritimes saga, I did a fair bit of hitchhiking again in Ontario, down in Prince Edward County on Lake Ontario, or simply “The County,” as it is known to locals.If you wanted to meet some interesting County characters and hear some down-home stories, all you had to do was stick your thumb out. I did it many a time on the Wellington-Bloomfield-Picton routeOne Sunday morning a man picked me up in Wellington and drove me to Picton, all the while telling me stories about what he considered to be the two worst winters in the County in his experience – 1946 and 1977. In ’46, he was in school and the snow was so deep, he said, you could touch overhead telephone lines (not that it was advisable to do so) walking on top of snowbanks. But ’77 was even worse, he said, with the County briefly loosing a snow plow in Lake Ontario near Wellington; the military having to bring their big blowers out from CFS Mountain View to clear some areas; a couple of kids with their dad’s car hitting a snowbank on the way home from school in a blizzard and being stranded for several days in Bloomfield. In both 1946 and 1977, my driver said, the County was cut off from the mainland for five days straight. Then passing through Bloomfield, he told me about an-all-but abandoned house on the outskirts of the village toward Picton. Well, not quite abandoned. While there were no longer human inhabitants, the elderly woman who owned it, with some help from relatives, he said, still returned most every afternoon from her home nearby in the village to feed her birds, which still lived there on Highway 33.

Another time, I was picked up by a grandmother and her grandson while I was hitchhiking. Her family home had been in Bloomfield for 130 years. But she’d also travelled far and wide before her path took her back to the County. While she was well-known for many things, including being the spouse of a well-known-in-his-own-right Hallowell politician, less well known perhaps was the true fact that she gave Hollywood screen legend Clark Gable his last x-ray in Los Angeles in 1960.

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The train whistle carries on the east wind

I wrote the time down: 12:47 p.m. Yesterday. I wanted to make a note of it because I so seldom hear train whistles up here in Thompson, Manitoba. The wind has to be blowing in just the right direction at the right time.

Thompson is pretty much at the dead centre of Manitoba, Canada and North America, give or take a few kilometres here and there. Halfway north, halfway south, halfway east and halfway west, I have to remind myself at times. In the winter, we feel (quite literally with our legendary -40°C/-40°F temperatures) more connected to our northern geography. But conversely in summer, when July temperatures average 23°C and temperatures of 30°C and even higher are registered, we’re more aware of our southern connections to the Prairies of Southern Manitoba.

The bonus of a 30°C day in Thompson in July is that the humidity, with the exception of a few days usually each summer, remains relatively low and bearable compared to what I lived with for years in Southern Ontario. The only relief from that stifling summer heat for me for many years was annual trips to the Maritimes, when you knew that once you got just past Quebec City on the St. Lawrence River, somewhere between Montmagny, Kamouraska and Notre Dame du Portage, the air was going to clear of humidity and the temperature drop, making for pleasant driving for the rest of the evening to Edmundston, New Brunswick, gateway to the Atlantic time zone and jumping of point for all places in the Maritimes. Here in Thompson, the air cools off routinely at night to at least as low as 12°C or 13°C, even after a 30°C day, and the number of nights the temperature has been above say 20°C still at midnight, I could probably count on the fingers of one hand in my more than eight years living here now. Certainly, I’ve never needed a fan or air conditioning, although life-long Northerners tend to make a run on both here at Wal-Mart or Canadian Tire if they notice the thermometer is predicted to head up to 27°C or 28°C for more than a day or two.

Even in summer, we’re just close enough to Hudson Bay that a deep low pressure system with a strong counter-clockwise rotation, can send our temperature abruptly back down to 8°C for a day or so, reminding us the polar bears are never really that far away

As for train whistles, I’ve always found them to have a haunting, slightly distant sound that engages the soul instantly. All through my childhood, growing up in Oshawa, just east of Toronto, an east wind invariably meant two things: You could hear the train whistle from the CN tracks well south at Bloor Street, and rain, long steady rain, was an hour or two, not much more, away. You could not hear the train whistle at any other time from the house I lived in from the age of six to 19, and while it rained at other times, especially with summer thunderstorms, with winds from other directions, that was more unpredictable. An east wind started the clock running for the countdown to rain. For me, east winds and train whistles are so internalized they’re still part of my chronobiology at some deep level.

Years removed from Oshawa, I would still notice the haunting but not at all unwelcome sound of the train whistle when I would visit my mother, who by then lived on Fort Lawrence Road, east of Exit 1, as the Via Rail Ocean passenger train, en route from Montréal to Halifax, or Halifax to Montréal, crossed the saltwater Tantramar marshes between Amherst, Nova Scotia and Sackville, New Brunswick, a stone’s throw from the Missiguash River, bordering New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and connecting the Nova Scotia peninsula with those who come from away elsewhere in North America. The saltwater Tantramar marshes, sometimes referred to singularly as the Tantramar Marsh, is a very special place indeed, and was even long before the first train crossed it in the 19th century. Memory surrounds you everywhere in Nova Scotia. This is the soil my Acadian ancestors lived and laboured on. All I have to do is close my eyes for but a moment listening to Lorena McKennitt’s The Mystic’s Dream and I clearly hear the words, “All along the English shore,” and in my mind’s eye I see the Acadian tricolor of blue, white and red, the gold star Stella Maris at top left, seeking the guidance and protection of the Virgin Mary, patron of the Acadians. This is Aulac Ridge, a prominent rise running west to east across the Tantramar marshes on the Isthmus of Chignecto, just west of the Missaguash River. This is the demarcation line between Fort Lawrence and Fort Beauséjour, New France and British North America, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, overlooking the Cumberland Basin of the Bay of Fundy.

Nowhere, of course, in the song are the words, “All along the English shore” actually heard, not even as a mondegreen where you mishear the lyrics to a song, which is a sort of aural malapropism, where instead of saying the wrong word, you hear the wrong word as a result of near-homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning. No, this, as it was for Marcel Proust, is remembrance of things past.

Train whistles, which were also called steam trumpets, originated in England in 1832 with the stationmaster at the Leicester and Swannington Railway opening, who suggested that trains should have an audible signaling device. A local musical instrument maker was commissioned to create a steam trumpet for the steam locomotive. The proportional tracker action of the steam calliope in those days allowed for the engineer to individualize to some extent the expression of the sound and many locomotive operators would have their own style of blowing the whistle so it would be often be known who was operating the locomotive by the sound.

The purpose of the train whistle was to serve as an audible warning device, which it still does, and as a way to signal to other rail workers up and down the railway track, which, of course, in the latter case today has been supplemented, although not replaced, by two-way radios and even smartphones and text messaging. And train whistles to this day are still seen as an inexpensive warning device compared to other options, such as elevated rail crossings where tracks intersect with roads used by motor vehicles. Under Transport Canada’s Canadian Rail Operating Rule (CROR 14), a combination of two long whistles, followed by a short whistle, then followed by another long whistle, indicates that a train is approaching a public grade crossing.

Both the old steam whistle and today’s compressed air whistle waver in pitch, suggesting a cry or wail, giving them that distinct haunting, lonesome or melancholic sound often ascribed to them. In the United States in the 19th century, different whistle sounds were created for different railroads (the preferred term rather than railway in the U.S.) in order to distinguish them, ranging from high pitched to deeper tones.

When I lived in Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, I found that to be an exception to the east wind-means-rain rule. There, deep in the continent, like here, but without the proximity of meteorological effects emanating from Hudson Bay, an east wind off Great Slave Lake and Yellowknife Bay, which I could see down the road from my place, often meant high pressure and plenty of sunshine and fine weather, especially in the summer. As for trains, they only ran as far north as Hay River in the Northwest Territories, as I recall. There were no train whistles to be heard in Yellowknife.

Here in Northern Manitoba, Via Rail Canada Train  693 runs north between Winnipeg and Churchill, stopping in Thompson, while Train 692 runs south from Churchill to Winnipeg, also making a stop in Thompson, As well, Hudson Bay Railway (HBR), which owns the track and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of  OmniTRAX Canada, runs its own freight Train 295 from its interchange with CN Rail and its railhead at The Pas along the route. OmniTRAX Canada is in turn a wholly-owned subsidiary of Denver-based shortline railroad OmniTRAX, Inc., an affiliate of The Broe Group, which was founded in 1986 and is privately owned by Pat Broe, who founded the company in Denver in 1972 as a real estate asset management firm.

Via Rail Canada stations and stops along the Winnipeg to Churchill route in Manitoba and Saskatchewan include Portage-La-Prairie, Gladstone, Plumas, Glenella, McCreary, Laurier, Ochre River, Dauphin, Gilbert Plains, Grandview, Roblin, Togo, Sask., Kamsack, Sask., Veregin, Sask., Mikado, Sask., Canora, Sask., Sturgis, Sask., Endeavour, Sask., Reserve, Sask., Hudson Bay, Sask., The Pas, Prospector, Root Lake, Wanless, Atik, Simonhouse, Cranberry Portage, Optic Lake, Heming Lake, Sherridon, Ruddock, Charles, Pawistik, Mile 151.8, Pukatawagan, Orok, Halcrow, Cormorant, Dering, Dyce, Wekusko, Turnbull, Ponton and Pipun.

Along the Bayline, the stations and stops include Wabowden, Lyddal, Odhil, Hockin, Thicket Portage, Leven, Thompson, Sipiwesk, Pikwitonei, Bridgar, Pit Siding, Ilford, Wivenhoe, Gillam, Bird, Sundance, Amery, Charlebois, Weir River, Lawledge, Thibaudeau, Silcox, Herchmer, Kellett, O’Day, Back, McClintock, Cromarty, Belcher, Chesnaye, Lamprey, Bylot, Digges, Tidal and Fort Churchill. The Bayline reached Churchill on March 29, 1929.

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Season six: Home Routes House Concert tonight in Thompson with Deep Cove, Nova Scotia area country bluesman Morgan Davis

Country bluesman Morgan Davis is in Thompson tonight for a 7:30 p.m. show to kick-off season six of Home Routes house concerts at  Tim and Jean Cameron’s place at 206 Campbell Dr. Tickets are $20 at the door and the coffee will be on, says Tim Cameron, now in his third season of organizing Thompson stops on the tour. For more information give Tim or Jean a call at 204-677-3574 or send them an e-mail at: cameron8@mymts.net

Home Routes, then hosted by Lisa Evasiuk, a youth counsellor for school-based programs for the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba in Thompson, had at its original venue Thompson venue in the Basement Bijou at Thompson Public Library, kicking off in here on Sept. 22, 2009 with a show by Corin Raymond and Sean Cotton, who make up The Undesirables. Today marks five years and a day since Home Routes arrived in Thompson. Evasiuk, originally from Dauphin, had lived here since 1985, but retired and left town in August 2012 to travel the world, although there have been occasional sightings of her locally over the last two years on a visit back.

All the money goes to the performers, some of whom would likely never pass through Thompson without the concert series. Performers typically do 11 shows in 14 days at their stops along Home Routes Borealis Trail circuit in Northern Saskatchewan and Manitoba, which Thompson is part of . Other stops on the Borealis Trail beside Thompson include Flin Flon, The Pas and Minitonas and Swan River Valley in Manitoba and in Saskatchewan, Buena Vista, Annaheim, Prince Albert, Napatak, Melfort and Greenwater Lake Provincial Park. Other circuits on Home Routes include the Yukon Trail; Salmon-Berry in British Columbia; Cherry Bomb and Blue Moon in British Columbia and Alberta; Chautauqua Trail in Saskatchewan and Alberta; CCN SK in Saskatchewan; Central Plains in Saskatchewan and Manitoba; Jeanne Bernardin in Manitoba, Agassiz in Manitoba and Ontario; Estelle-Klein in Ontario and Québec and the Maritimes in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.

Davis “called last night from The Pas and is having a great time on the tour. He is looking forward to his Thompson concert tonight,” Cameron said in an e-mail this morning. Davis, a Nova Scotia resident since 2001 and Juno award-winner is here to bring his brand of country blues to Northern Manitoba. Davis lives north of Deep Cove, on the Aspotogan Peninsula, along the Lighthouse Route of Nova Scotia’s South Shore.The Aspotogan Peninsula is in the eastern part of Lunenburg County, situated between St. Margarets Bay in the east from Mahone Bay in the west.  Davis is a regular weekend performer at the legendary Bearly’s House of Blues and Ribs, established in 1987, on Barrington Street in south end downtown Halifax.

Two more Home Routes house concerts follow at the Cameron’s place in October and November and then resume in February following a Christmas holiday hiatus.

Tim and Jean Cameron moved here from Ashern three years ago. The Camerons were also Home Routes hosts in Ashern for three years before coming here. Tim’s day job is as a uniformed armed peace officer with Manitoba Conservation and Water Stewardship – the province’s chief natural resource officer. Jean Cameron is the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) branch manager here.

Tim is also known as a guitar-playing folkie from the late 1980s, whose talents were on display at the long-defunct Thompson Folk Festival, during an earlier stint working and living here in his 20s. Tim picked up a guitar for a few songs after the Randy Noojin show last Nov. 22, joining local musician Russell Peters and Noojin for a Hank Williams kitchen party sing-along. Attendance for shows in their mobile home venue over the last two years ranged from a low of 22 to a very cozy, getting-to-know-you better 45.

Originally from Detroit, Davis grew up listening to a mix of rhythm and blues and the likes of Jimmy Reed, Ike and Tina Turner, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino. He later moved to California with his family, and then in 1968 left for Canada, where he lived at the now-iconic counter-culture Rochdale College, Toronto’s mecca for the subculture of the late 1960s, where he immersed himself in the study of Delta Blues, especially the music of Robert Johnson, he says.

It was in the early 1970’s Toronto music scene that Davis  made the journey from apprentice to musical journeyman, having the opportunity to see and play with such legendary performers as Bukka White, Johnny Shines, Sunnyland Slim, Snooky Pryor, Hubert Sumlin, and John Hammond, who, he says, were “encouraging supporters.”

Davis hit the road with the Rhythm Rockets, The Knights of The Mystic Sea, and David Wilcox’s first band, David Wilcox and the Teddy Bears, before eventually forming his own trio. He has since performed in full bands, trios and mainly as a solo artist. Over the years, Davis has opened for Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, Albert King, Hammond, Albert Collins and Eric Bibb.

Home Routes Inc. (also known as Home Routes/Chemin Chez Nous) is a national non-profit arts organization incorporated in February 2007 to create new performance opportunities for Canadian musicians and audiences, in the homes of volunteer house concert presenters organized in touring circuits through rural and urban, French and English communities in Canada. A national volunteer board of directors operates the arts-service and arts-delivery organization, along with a small professional staff in Winnipeg and more than 200 volunteer house concert hosts across Canada.

Home Routes says it “owes its existence to the theoretical footprint of the Chautauqua travelling shows of the late 19th and 20th century.”

The Chautauqua movement was named after the Chautauqua Lake Sunday School Assembly founded in New York State in 1874 as an educational experiment in out-of-school, vacation learning. It was broadened almost immediately beyond courses for Sunday school teachers to include academic subjects, music, art and physical education.

“In the time before radio the Chautauqua was the cultural conduit between the urban east and the rest of North America. Traveling by horse and wagon, the Chautauqua was ‘The Medicine Show’ bringing the latest in show tunes, science, the gospel, fashion, snake oil and whatever was the latest invention for the modern kitchen. Almost every community had a ‘Chautauqua Society’ laying the groundwork locally and producing the show. The arrival in any rural community of the annual Chautauqua was a big event that was celebrated across the continent and even today, almost a hundred years later, the word “Chautauqua” still reverberates in existing concert venues and in cultural and educational institutions.

The travelling shows disappeared as radio and the movies grew in prominence and those mini extravaganzas became a wistful lingering memory in North American history.

“The modern folk music ‘House Concert’ was born out of necessity in the early 1950’s just at the time when the folk ‘boom’ began. In 1952 The Weavers had a number one radio hit with Leadbelly’s ‘Irene Goodnight’ and the song ignited a mini folk song revival; suddenly folk music was popular. City people started buying banjo’s and guitars and fiddles and began to learn the folklore that country people were born with and they began to create new songs about the world as they saw it then and ever since. There simply weren’t enough places to play for all the young and enthusiastic men and women who decided that being folk musicians was for them and so the grass roots invented a grass roots solution to the problem. People discovered that their living rooms made fine venues for acoustic music and began what has turned out to be a long tradition of home based intimate presentations of folk music.

What has been consistent has been the extraordinary level of excellence.

“Home Routes is a rough amalgam of these two historical approaches formulated and delivered with respect for all the work that went before we came along and re-kindled these excellent ideas. The volunteer hosts, like the Chautauqua Societies before them, play the role of community cultural animator. The musicians, like musicians and vaudevillians have for all time, get to work and play for these very special networks of vibrant committed people. The inter relationship between performer and host provides community after community with access to a brilliant array of artists. There is a trade off inherent between the parties, the artist brings their musical skills and the host contributes the effort to bring out an audience. One doesn’t work without the other. The thought of “circuits” of house concerts flows logically from the experience of the Chautauqua and equally from the current needs of the communities and of the artists.”

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