A CHRISTMAS CAROL

Last year my Christmas season highlight as far as performing was to play a few songs at a fundraiser in Calgary for the Hillhurst United Church. I know the picture above does t look like I’m having fun, but I was. Really!! The church is over 100 years old and the roof is unstable and needed significant repairs.  Apparently the parishinors literally raised the roof when they sang their hymns and now it needed to be screwed back down.  David Gray, retired CBC radio host led the charge in gathering a group of creative minded people to revive a tradition from eastern Canada where a cast recites an evening of Dicken's A Christmas Carol intermixed with music.  That where I came in - to sing three or four songs throughout the readings.

To a sold out crowd, Alberta radio and TV personalities, along with a few musicians, raised over $15,000 for the repairs.  There was something about how unprepared, unrehearsed, and flying by the seat of our pants we all were, that made the night one of the most inspiring and fulfilling evenings of this career of mine.

So obviously, we did it again this year.  With David Gray, Barb Higgins, Julie Van Rosenthal, Tim Tamashiro, Jonathon Love, Wayne Immonen, Nuna Collins, and myself, we raised approximatly another $15.000.