The closing act
Published Saturday October 11th, 2008
Allan Kelly was the last singer to perform in every Miramichi Folksong Festival, all 51 since 1958. He was one of the last of the regular festival performers who worked in the lumber camps where people sang and traded the old ballads. Story by Derwin Gowan
Allan Kelly sang almost to the day he died - Wednesday of last week at 105.
"The last song he sang at the table here was Before the Battle Mother, and he sang a French song," his daughter Theresa Holmes recalled in a telephone conversation Tuesday, the day after the funeral.
He sang the same song in August at the Miramichi Folksong Festival, his final performance as it turned out.
People kept their hopes up through the festival week that Allan would be up to singing. Festival director Susan Butler finally told the audience one evening that she might announce something special a bit later - she was waiting for a telephone call.
Folksong festival regulars, if not everybody there, knew this meant that Theresa and others were getting Mr. Kelly ready and into the car for the drive down to the Lord Beaverbrook Theatre.
He could no longer mount the steps to the stage, but he got a heartfelt standing ovation as his wheelchair was pushed across the floor in front of the 100 or more people.
The stage crew set up the microphone. The noise died completely when he started into the song Before the Battle Mother, which he dedicated to the soldiers in Afghanistan.
He remembered the words, still had wind and voice enough to carry the tune a capella and, even from his wheelchair, held his audience.
Allan Kelly's passing breaks a link with the past. He was the last singer to perform in every Miramichi Folksong Festival, all 51 since 1958. He was one of the last of the regular festival performers who worked in the lumber camps where people sang and traded the old ballads.
With Kelly and many others gone, another generation must decide what to do with Miramichi's fine song tradition.
Kelly and his late wife Léontine (Doiron) survived hard times in their earlier years. He was one of a family of 17 children at Pointe-Sapin, she one of a family of 10 children from Tracadie.
They married in 1924, cleared a farm at Busby, and later moved a few miles to Beaver Brook where they operated a store and service station, among other things. They moved to Newcastle in 1962. They had 11 children of their own plus two others whom they raised. Mrs. Kelly died in 1990 at 82.
As the seventh child in his family, people said Allan would have a gift. The priest who baptized him in 1903 told the family that the gift would show itself in time.
Years later, Kelly had no other explanation as to how he learned 500 songs in French and English, able to recall the tunes and all the words. He played the mouth organ, too.
Some songs he learned in the woods, on a fishing boat with his father, from working with a railroad crew in Ontario, on harvest excursions to western Canada, at church and social occasions, from Léontine and his in-laws, from anybody with verses to share. He sang many of these songs at the festival over the years: False Knight upon the Road, The Steamboat Alexander, The Butcher Boy and, the last one, Before the Battle Mother.
In recent years he sang Danny Boy in honour of his brother Daniel killed overseas in the First World War.
Folklorists discovered him, Ronald Labelle from the Université de Moncton, Sandy Ives from the University of Maine, Margaret Steiner from Indiana among them.
The Kellys adopted Labelle as an honorary grandson. Steiner came from Indiana for the funeral.
Labelle arranged for the Kellys to make their one vinyl recording, Suivant l'Étoile de Nord, in 1983.
In an interview in 1986, Allan said that he once wore out four men on the two-handed cross-cut saw until the boss matched him with a partner who could keep up with him.
"He was a tough man, yes," Theresa said. "He taught us, the girls, how to cut the wood too. We were lumberjacks too, we had to be." Spruce budworm got into their woodlot, and the family could not afford to lose timber.
In January 2004, he spoke on the passing of Marie Hare, another notable Miramichi Folksong Festival performer.
"All the people are gone now," he said, referring to the old singers. He was still on his feet then, and vowed to return to the festival that summer. "If I am able to go at all, I will," he said.
"He left a good tradition for the Miramichi," Theresa said. "I hope they keep the tradition going."
Derwin Gowan is a Telegraph-Journal reporter in Saint John.
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