For decades, the world was a stage for Barrie Central Collegiate music students.
Under the tutelage and inspiration of teacher W.A. Fisher — for whom the still-standing auditorium of the late Dunlop Street West school is named — generations of students didn’t only make music, their life-learning experiences stayed with them forever.
Now an online — and ongoing — book about Fisher’s contributions to music, education and the community is being created by his son, Mark.
Four words best sum up W.A., he tells BarrieToday: “Unlimited energy and commitment.”
The younger Fisher has risen to the challenge of organizing decades — highlights between 1937 and 1972 — of photos and memories for Notes in Time: A History of W.A. Fisher and the Barrie Collegiate Band, but he’s not finished yet.
Fisher would like your help. He’s asking Barrie residents who have memories and/or photos they’d like to share about W.A. (as some folks fondly referred to him as) for the project to contact him.
For 80 years, from 1937 to 2016, "the Barrie Collegiate Band played a significant part in the history of Barrie as well as the development of music education in Ontario and Canada,” Mark says. “It is a story that needs to be told, particularly the first 35 years under W.A. Fisher before the written records and all memories are lost.”
He says the text of Notes in Time comes with many photographs of individual band members.
“But also a full band photograph for each successive year as seniors lost to graduation were replaced by new recruits in grades 9 and 10,” Mark says. “The photographs came from Barrie Central Collegiate when it closed, the Simcoe County Archives, W.A. Fisher's personal files and many band members.”
He’s currently been in touch with about 200 people who used to be in the concert band.
“However, there are many former band members I have been unable to contact who may have photographs or additional information and many of them are living in the Barrie area," Mark says.
Just a few of the many snippets Fisher has gathered so far are fascinating.
To rattle off a few, and in no particular order:
— The three appearances at the Mid-West National Music Clinic in Chicago in 1952, 1955 and 1967. “A very big deal for school music, especially in comparison to the Americans at the time,” he says.;
— A huge international music festival in 1947 in Montreal, including the involvement of a young Richard Nixon, who was a California congressman at the time;
— The 1958 trip to Europe on the Empress of France, the last of the trans-Atlantic liners;
— Concert band trips across the province, the country and the world;
— Many, many local concerts;
— And, of course, the band’s commitment to supporting the war effort with the collegiate cadet corps and including annual inspections in the Barrie Arena until the corps demobilization in 1965. “This was a big deal in the life of the school,” says Fisher.
He also reflects on a changing Barrie during the '50s and '60s.
“There are also periodic assessments of the changing nature not only of music education but also education in general,” he adds.
