St. Thomas Music Festival History
Prepared by Elaine Harrington Catchpole
St. Thomas Music Festival Committee
September 2025
The story of the St. Thomas Music Festival starts with the inception year of the Rotary Club of St. Thomas May 24, 1950. Establishing the Rotary Music Festival was one of its first projects and as we know, it was so successful that we are now celebrating the 72nd year. The Festival initiated the first of many projects reflecting the Rotary’s vision of community service. The purpose of the Music Festival was to fill a vacancy in musical performance opportunities created when the Elgin Junior Farmers and Girls’ Institute Festivals were discontinued. By this time, the Evening Music Club was holding successful high-quality concerts at Knox Presbyterian Church; the Festival would provide for the development of a new group of local, young musicians for its programs as a stage in their careers.
The organization of the festival lay with the Rotary executive. The Rotary President, Dr. Glenn Sawyer called upon members for the new Festival Board: Frank McDonald, Chairman, Fred Armour, Treasurer, Frank Sanders, Scholarships, and Allan Harrington, Supervisor of Music in the Schools, who served as ‘the originator of the Music Festival’. Mrs. Eleanor Thomas was appointed Secretary. The new Board was highly successful in calling upon leading festival musicians from Stratford and London to assist with its opening years. These were experienced professionals well known in conducting, directing, teaching, and encouraging the growth of musicianship among young people. They were also the first adjudicators: Martin Boundy, Bandmaster of the London Symphony and the London Police Boys Band; Dr. Roy Fenwick, Superintendent of Music for Ontario Dept. of Education; Arthur Rose and Clifford Poole of the Music Dept. University of Western Ontario; and Earl Terry, Director of the Earl Terry Singers.
The first Rotary Music Festival was held in November 1952 at Knox Presbyterian Church. Entries by the second year numbered 600, an enviable number for today. The support of the St. Thomas churches to supply the venues for performances was present at the start and continues today. In 2022, St. Thomas Christian Church took over the sponsorship of the Music Festival for the Festival year 2023. With the cooperation of the Rotary Club, the Festival sustained its financial support and scholarship funding. At this point, the name of the Festival changed to St. Thomas Music Festival.
Enthusiastic support from the schools was strong and showed well in all music categories. The main classes were for voice, piano, strings and instruments. Training in choirs and band instruments was available in the schools, and many students took advantage of it. The large number of entries would instil a lively competitive spirit ideal for newspaper reporting and the St. Thomas Times Journal did that. In the first years, the popular instrument was the accordion with its performance ensembles. This changed to the guitar and ensembles, and today the popular instrument is the ukulele. In the early years, the newspapers would report the schedules for all the performances, then all the results of each class and the names of winners and marks. The general public was well informed but eventually shifts in public reporting meant alternatives relied on smaller news outlets and on the internet.
The programming of the Festival remains relatively constant over the years with the Syllabus divided by instrument, classical and popular pieces. In today’s world, there is a sympathetic effort to include individual creativity; different, maybe unusual, instruments and public changes of values in adjudication and marking. In 2024, the festival revived choral speaking (Speech Arts) and found that it also filled a gap in programming to include students unable to participate otherwise. To encourage career progression, the St. Thomas Music Festival now holds a membership in the Ontario Music Festival Association and supports applicants who compete in piano and voice with other candidates from other Festivals in the province.
The Rotary Music Festival developed a strong award capability with a financial base which would provide awards with monetary attachments from bank interest. This system survived until the bank interest was no longer sufficient. Today, an established scholarship program relies on annual donations. In addition, a system of bursary support for costs for students and busing has been established and is funded by the Committee members. At the start, a number of the awards for individuals and groups were shields and trophies, to be taken home and valued with great pride. The large trophies for schools and churches were admired in trophy cabinets for a year and returned for the next year’s winners. However, some may still be there. One remained in Festival storage and was presented for the first time in many years in 2025. The major awards for high marks in voice and piano were the Rose Bowl and the Silver Tray. These have now been replaced with financial awards for each senior class level.
Computerized support: The history of the computer and its role in the Festival is a fantastic record of the changes affecting our world of recordkeeping, printing, publishing, of registration and payment processing, and of outreach to the public. Until recently committee members and volunteers spent long hours preparing the final program. Fortunately, the early days were recorded in the newspapers. While paper still provides good records the festival has adjusted to the new world of website and data storage. Computerization was most welcome, and with the continuing upgrades almost all of the activities are now on-line. A new computer system, Ciniki, is being introduced in the 2026 program year.
The challenges over the years have been met with great determination to resolve them. In 1975 the Festival was cancelled for two years for financial reasons and reinstated as the 25th Music Festival in 1978. Scheduling is always vulnerable to weather and the snowstorm in 1980 forced the rescheduling of 652 entries and 2000 participants. Another snowstorm in 2023 forced rescheduling of a number of entries and participants. Of special note were the COVID limitations in 2020 and the Festival programming shifted to virtual performances. This was achieved by the then Chairman Frank Exley, and Ian MacArthur, computer developer and programmer. The Festival survived and numbers of entries are slowly returning to pre-COVID numbers of over 300 entries with the welcome return of the schools.
Over 72 years, the Festival has had a good number of chairpersons, Rotary members with their spouses, music teachers and community folks who worked faithfully with the Festival making it a real community project. During the first decade it was one of the largest in Southwestern Ontario and attracted families who remained as participants over successive generations. We would be remiss not to remember Ray and Shirley Broadbent who co-chaired the Festival approximately 18 years; John Macdonald who received an Outstanding Contribution Award for 32 years of work on the Music Festival; Ron Somerville who chaired it for 4 years; and Gerald Vreman who provided professional leadership and support for many years.
In addition, without the venues, the Festival would have been hard pressed to function. Over the years they were Parkside Collegiate Institute, and Arthur Voaden Secondary School; Churches: Central United Church, Centre Street Baptist Church, Fellowship Christian Church, Knox Presbyterian Church, St. Thomas Christian Church, Salvation Army Citadel, and Trinity Anglican Church.
To quote Ron Somerville - “It was the love of volunteers and entrants for their experiences in the Festival that made it a great success."