Bruce and Connie’s Retirement Trip

4 Months across Canada and the U.S. – Fall 2009

2009 was a busy and highly eventful year.  I conducted my last Chamber Singers’ concert in Victoria and enjoyed several retirement parties at the same time and in April took my last concert tour with the Chamber Singers and Prima Choir combined, visiting Korea, Thailand, Cambodia and Hong Kong (https://brucemore.ca/tour-2009/).  Since Connie and I were now officially retired, we decide to go on a 4 month car trip, just the two of us, staying with friends, relatives and colleagues in various locations across Canada and down to Virginia, returning across the northern US just before New Years. I include our itinerary and a map, and a few selected photos. We visited and were hosted by several of Connie’s Kodaly colleagues and gave a few workshops as well.

We spent our first night in Alberta, visiting enroute the pub at Crownest where the Chamber Singers gave their first out-of-province “concert” in 1980 (1,2) . We enjoyed several nights in a cabin at Gull Lake belonging to our friend Margaret Brownrigg’s family.  They first built the cabin in1960, but the lake has been drying up and the water’s edge is now a quarter mile away (5). We visit my Cousins Johnny in Red Deer (7), and Ron (8) and Dave (3) in Calgary.  Connie visited colleagues in Edmonton, where Eila (6) gave us her spider impression and Medicine hat where we stayed with Chamber Singer extraordinaire Mark Ward and his wife Pat (9). The rest of our prairie stops in Regina, Saskatoon, Brandon and Winnipeg were filled with wonderful hostings and  several workshops given by Connie and I (4,11).

From Winnipeg, we travelled south through Minnesota and Michigan, stopping in Kitchener and Toronto for more colleague visits.  Continuing West, we spent 5 nights R&R in the Buckhorn, Ontario  cabin of John Barron (11), before visiting longtime friend Glen Fast, conductor of the Kingston Symphony, and his wife (12,13).  We then drove through Quebec and Nova Scotia to Sydney (15,15a.16) and caught the ferry to Portuguese cove, arriving late at night driving to Burgeo (17,18,19), the home of Barbara & Gerald Barter, VP of the Kodaly Society of Canada (Connie being President at the time.) My first remark on arrival at 11pm was, “Barbara, Can’t you and Connie find an easier way to communicate. Barbara and Gerald treated us to a most enjoyable 3 days in Burgeo. In addition to their hospitality, we saw the intense beauty of a Newfoundland outport and were taken on a fascinating day trip onto Newfoundland Tundra mounted on one of the their 2 “Quads”(20).

Turning south, we visited several of Connie’s colleagues in Halifax (22,23,24).  This was a great opportunity for me to visit the archive at Pier 9 which contains the records of a significant percentage of arrivals of Immigrating Canadians, including my mom and her family (25). Continuing south we spent a night in historical Lunenberg (27) and the next night in Millinocket, Maine, (Stephen King country 28).  The next 4 nights were spent in Boston, where we vistited Watertown, our sojourn (35) during our 1980/81 Sabbatical where Connie taught at the Kodaly Institute of America (29), and I did research at Harvard.  Our hosts were Connie’s colleague… and ……. ….. . (32) (They treated us to a Boston Philharmonic concert (31), where ….. was principal percussionist and a recital at the New England Conservatory of his percussion ensemble.  We also had the pleasure of a visit with American Kodaly pioneer: (33)

The rest of our trip included visits with Connie’s relatives and some of my former students, starting with brother Bob in Albany (34,35). This gave us an excellent opportunity to visit nearby Schenectady where Connie spent her early years (36). A visit to New Haven Connecticut was one of our highliights to return to “where it all started”  Connie and I met when I was a Grad Student at Yale (66-60) and she, returning to the U.S. after a year of study in Hungary, was teaching in Hew Haven and I was returning from my year of teaching at Vassar. We saw Sprague Recital Hall (43), where I had performed my recitals, her apartment house (41) and my upstairs rental (42) and of course the beautiful chapel of Harkness Tower (43a.b.), where we were married in 1970. We also stopped in to see dear friends from the time, who were all living at the same seniors home: my landlady, Elizabeth Crump-Miller (38), my mentor’s wife Carol Heath (39) and my sponsor at Yale, Jean Winchell (40).

The last leg of our trip took us to Waynesboro, Virginia, where Connie had grown up and where her parents retired in the early eighties.  On the way, we stopped to visit my former student Robert Kwan in Westchester (45).  After graduation in 2000, Robert won the prestigious organ Scholarship to St. George’s Chapel (the Queen’s Chapel) for the 2001/2002 year (for which he earned the singers’ nickname “E. Power Kwan”.  We took a day trip into New York, had lunch with another Chamber Singers Alumnus, Mark Bell, who treated us to a meal at Bobby Flay’s restaurant in Manhanttan (45) following which, we made a visit to MOMA (46). On our way to Waynesboro, we spent time with Connie’s cousins, Margo and and Kimberly in Baltimore (48,49).

Lastly, we spent three weeks in Waynesboro with Connie’s mom Dot (50,51), visiting her dad Al’s memorial and grave (52,58).  It was very much a “home” time, since we have spent so much time there over the years with many friends: Connie’s high school friend Charlene (53), and Ed Plunkett (retired county attorney from Stuart’s Draft) and her high school boyfriend Ronnie (56). Mom’s best friends, Olive (60)and Harold Prettyman gave us an opportunity to visit Harold’s retirement project, a model railroad and Waynesboro scene (61). We took a side trip to Charlottesville to visit my long time Chamber Singer alumnus, Chris Morash (59), now a Dean at a nearby Charlottesville Catholic church. Another day trip was to Yogaville, Virginia, an ashram two hours away (57). Finally, we spent Christmas with Connie’s mom and friends (53,54,55,62).  All that was left was the long drive back to our vacation trailer in Castlegar and New Years with Alexis.