The Travellers to be Inducted into the Mariposa Hall of Fame
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If you are a Canadian, you know our version of Woody Guthrie’s classic This Land is Your Land – where Vancouver Island, Bonavista and the Arctic Circle are cited instead of the New York Island, California and the Gulfstream waters. We can thank the Travellers for that national treasure of a song, which they altered and made into a genuine Canadian folk song (and a hit record.)
The Travellers grew out of folk singing sessions at Camp Naivelt, a Jewish socialist vacation community west of Brampton in the 1950s. Modeling themselves after Pete Seeger’s group The Weavers, the band had tremendous success in a nation that seemed reluctant to promote home-grown talent. Led over the years by banjo player Jerry Grey, the group has had many members come and go over the years. Sid Dolgay, one of the founders of the Mariposa Folk Festival, played the mandicello in the group for a number of years. Joe Hampson, husband of Sharon Hampson of Sharon, Lois and Bram fame, was another key member.
The group produced several popular records in the fifties and sixties and toured extensively across Canada. In 1962 they were part of a cultural exchange with the Soviet Union and toured parts of Russia. They played for Queen Elizabeth during her 1964 tour of Canada. In 1967 they played at Expo 67 in Montreal and in 1970 represented Canada at Expo 70 in Osaka Japan. They entertained Canadian military units in Germany and Cypress and were equally at home on university campuses. The group made numerous radio and television appearances over the years on shows such as Haunted Studio, Pick the Stars, and had five television specials of their own. They received a Juno nomination for their children’s record Merry-Go-Round in 1980. In 200, a National Film Board documentary chronicled the band’s history.
When the Mariposa Folk Festival began in 1961, The Travellers were the headline act and they repeatedly appeared over the next several years: 1962, 1963, 1968, 1990, 1993, 1995, and of course in 2000 at the first festival back in Orillia in over 37 years. Over their long career, the group has sung about and promoted values related to labour solidarity, peace, civil rights and social justice – values also espoused by the Mariposa Folk Festival. Therefore it is fitting to finally see The Travellers inducted into the festival’s Hall of Fame in 2019 alongside Sharon, Lois and Bram and Owen McBride.
By Mike Hill
In 2010, Jerry Gray of The Travellers conducted the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s unique rendition of This Land Is Your Land.
Bonnie Dobson’s Song, “Morning Dew”, to be Inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame at Mariposa Folk Festival
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Bonnie Dobson’s anti-nuke protest ballad, Morning Dew, was inspired by the award-winning 1959 film “On the Beach,” based on Nevil Shute’s novel about the extinction of humankind in the aftermath of nuclear war.
At the height of Cold War tensions in 1961 Dobson, a folk singer, was performing in Los Angeles at the Ash Grove club. She had been deeply moved by “On the Beach,” and after discussing the film with friends, composed Morning Dew. “I had never written anything in my life…. this song just came out and really it was a kind of re-enactment of that film in a way where at the end there is nobody left…. apocalypse, that was what it was about.”
Morning Dew is a dialogue song between the sole surviving woman and man; she is naïvely in denial; he is the hopeless voice of doom. Radiation has turned the morning dew – yesterday’s life-giving water – into an annihilator. In the film, the Australian government issues suicide pills so people can hasten death; Dobson’s line “I thought I heard my baby cryin’ ‘mama’ / You’ll never hear your baby cry again” recalls the scene where the horrified young mother realizes she must give her infant a suicide pill. Dobson’s mournful descending melody effectively portrays the nuclear rainfall and humanity’s downward spiral.
Dobson performed Morning Dew, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar, at the first Mariposa Festival in Orillia in 1961 then in New York City in 1962. A 1969 orchestral version was produced by Jack Richardson (The Guess Who’s producer).
From these folk roots Morning Dew metamorphosed into a powerful blues-rock protest anthem, with subsequent singers adding lyric variations. On his 1964 recording with Vince Martin, Fred Neil (composer of Everybody’s Talkin’) revised the opening line from “Take me for a walk in the morning dew” to “Walk me out in the morning dew.” Next Tim Rose on his 1967 Columbia single copied this and added a line. The Grateful Dead heard Rose’s version and in 1967 premiered their own elongated poignant cover, using electric instruments, at San Francisco’s “Human Be-In.” The song is now strongly identified with the Dead, appearing on several albums including “Cornell 5/8/77” (one of Billboard’s top 15 albums).
Numerous covers followed, notably Lulu’s gritty soul single paired with To Sir, With Love (No. 52 on Billboard’s Hot 100 in September 1968 and RPM’s No. 55). Jeff Beck recorded Morning Dew with Rod Stewart on “Truth” (No. 15 on Billboard’s album chart). The Allman Brothers and Nazareth followed in 1972, the latter also recording it in German as Morgentau in 1981. Blackfoot’s hit on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart in 1984 added the line “Thought I saw a flash in the sky this morning.” Some covers add “What they’ve been sayin’ all these years has come true.”
Canadian blues artists Long John Baldry and Serena Ryder have covered Morning Dew, as have acts from Spain, Germany, New Zealand and Ireland. It has been sung in Danish, and in French as “Maman, dis moi pourquoi.”
Dobson performed her song with Robert Plant at the Royal Festival Hall in 2013. On screen, Morning Dew features in “Long Strange Trip” about the Grateful Dead, and Robert Plant sings it in “The Banger Sisters.” The National performed it on Stephen Colbert’s television show in 2016.
In 2018 the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” advanced its Doomsday Clock to two minutes to midnight. Says Dobson about Morning Dew’s relevance today: “Actually I think that the song, if anything, is more of this time, of the present than it ever was then.”
Folk singer Bonnie Dobson was born in Toronto in 1940. Influenced by The Weavers, The Travellers, Pete Seeger and Paul Robeson, she was part of the 1960s’ urban folk movement, appearing often at US colleges and clubs, Toronto folk clubs and festivals, and on the CBC and BBC. She was rated by “Time Magazine” as second in popularity only to Joan Baez, and had hits with I Got Stung (1969) and Good Morning Rain (1970). She moved to London in 1969 and toured extensively in the UK and Europe until 1989 when she decided to return to university. She studied Politics, Philosophy and history at Birkbeck College and ended up running the Faculty of Arts until 2007. In 2013 she returned to the music business, releasing the album Morning Dew.
About the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame
The Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame (CSHF) honours and celebrates Canadian songwriters and those who have dedicated their lives to the legacy of music, and works to educate the public about these achievements. National and non-profit, the CSHF is guided by its own board of directors who comprise both Anglophone and Francophone music creators and publishers, as well as representation from the record industry. In December 2011, SOCAN (the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) acquired the CSHF. The Hall of Fame’s mandate aligns with SOCAN’s objectives as a songwriter and publisher membership-based organization. The CSHF continues to be run as a separate organization.
The Person Whose Grand Idea Was Mariposa Folk Festival
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Behind every grand idea there’s usually one extraordinary innovator, and this was the case with Mariposa Folk Festival in 1961. Ruth Jones-McVeigh was that spark and visionary driver. Due to her passion, today we can look back on a rich body of folk music history; recall festival memories that are etched into our collective conscience; regale with stories of pivotal performances and moments; and take stock of the generations of musicians that earned audience recognition, some with career-launching appearances, at Mariposa Folk Festival.
If it wasn’t for Ruth, there would never have been a Mariposa Folk Festival.
Ruth Jones-McVeigh started life in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on December 20th, 1926. An only child until the age of 13, she had a bit of an adjustment when her brother came along, but they became very good friends over the years. Despite tough times coming through the Great Depression, her mother somehow found the money for Ruth to take piano, ballet, figure skating, riding and singing lessons. Sadly, when Ruth was 15, the world fell apart for her and her family. Ruth’s father, who had been away periodically during the war, left them for good. A wrenching emotional struggle between her parents ensued, culminating in divorce.
Skip ahead a few years, and Ruth is the 22 year-old bride of Dr. Crawford (Casey) Jones, a medical doctor in the Canadian Navy who was 7 years her senior. They had four children together – two boys and two girls – and a house on Lake Couchiching, in Orillia. The house was pretty run-down when they purchased it so, along with being a mom, Ruth became a renovator, decorator and gardener. Once, she decided she wanted a patio off of the kitchen, so she built one. She dug out an old oil tank that had been buried in the ground for ages, levelled everything off, then mixed and poured the concrete.
Casey served as Superintendent of the Ontario Hospital School and, after becoming a psychiatrist he maintained a private practice in the family’s house. It was around that time that Ruth caught the folk music bug. She had been taking trips to Toronto once a month to treat herself and to get her hair done when she started visiting the Village Corner, one of Toronto’s early folk clubs. Folk music became an addiction, and she became friends with lots of people on the folk music scene including Don Cullen who operated the Bohemian Embassy folk club. (Don is a good friend of Mariposa Folk Festival to this day. He gave permission to use the iconic Bohemian Embassy name for one of the festival stages).
It was about this time that John Fisher, a motivational speaker engaged by the federal government, was travelling across Canada with the message that “Every community should have a ‘hook’ to hang tourism on”. Ruth heard him speak, and later, while she was confined to bed with the flu, the idea struck her. She decided to liven up Orillia with a folk festival. Little did she know at the time, but her idea would do a lot more than give her town a needed boost – it went on to become a folk festival of national and international renown.
Another important dimension of Ruth’s story is that her grand idea came to her during a period of profound personal sadness. She saw Orillia as stultifying in many ways. On top of that, Ruth was unhappy in her marriage, with Casey very focused on his work and Ruth feeling that she had no partner in life. Ruth needed a diversion, and the festival was a good one. Also around that time, she met someone else, an Afro-Canadian singer-guitarist named Doug – and the two fell in love. For a while, Ruth lived with one foot in each camp, trying to keep up appearances for Casey, a brilliant and generous man who loved her very much in his own way. He was also a wonderful father, and the kids adored him. Soon, however, Ruth was feeling torn apart.
Ruth never worked at anything before or since, as hard as she worked on that first Mariposa Folk Festival. Her diary from those days, which is now housed in the Mariposa Folk Festival archive at the Clara ThomasArchives and Special Collections at York University, attests to it.
Needless to say, that first Mariposa Folk Festival was a big success, and it served as a harbinger of great things to come. Ruth is always careful to point out that the first Mariposa Folk Festival could not have happened if Casey had not donated the start-up funds; if the whole family had not pitched in, stuffing envelopes while singing folk songs; if her brother, David Major, had not put her in touch with Ed Cowan, the first festival producer; and if her grandfather, Tom Freeman, then in his 80s, had not taken his very first flight to visit from Nova Scotia, to look after the four kids while Ruth buzzed around doing radio and television interviews to promote the inaugural festival.
Friday, August 18, 1961, the first day of the very first Mariposa Folk Festival, saw two thousand enthusiastic and generally well-behaved attendees set up their lawn chairs in front of a medieval-themed stage at the Orillia Community Centre (Lion’s Oval). Double that number showed up on Saturday night. The impressive line-up included O.J. Abbott, Omar Blondahl, Jean Carignan, Alan Mills, Jacques Labrecque, The Travellers, Al Cherney, Bonnie Dobson, the Canadian folklorist Edith Fowke, Merrick Jarrett, Alan McRae and Peter Wyborn, Finvola Redden, Ted Schafer, Mary Jane and Winston Young, the York County Boys and, of course, Ian Tyson and Sylvia Fricker. Ian Tyson also designed the original Lion’s Face Sun Logo of Mariposa Folk Festival.
After that first festival, Ruth moved to Toronto where she worked at the Royal Ontario Museum as an assistant to the archivist, cataloguing paintings in the Sigmund Samuel Gallery of Canada – a job she loved. She also worked at Ronalds-Reynolds advertising agency – another dream job. Doug got a job in New York City as co-accompanist for Harry Belafonte, with John Sebastian, founder of The Lovin’ Spoonful. Ruth took a job (working illegally) as assistant to the director of a hospital in New York. One day, when Doug was returning to Toronto for a gig, he was stopped at the border. The authorities found out that he had entered the U.S. illegally, and now he couldn’t get back to New York. Meanwhile, Casey had developed leukemia, ultimately dying of the illness.
Soon after he was barred from the U.S., Doug left Ruth. It was a profoundly traumatic time, but Ruth picked herself up, packed the VW with everything she owned, and drove to the west coast. Casey sent their two daughters out to live with her, and he also helped her with the down payment on a house. Ruth went to work in the public relations office of Vancouver General Hospital.
Ruth then met Gerry, a professional forester 13 years younger, and a new chapter opened in her life. They had a mutual love of hiking and the woods and reading and music. After living together for a year, they married. Although Gerry wanted kids, Ruth was unable to conceive, so they adopted a baby girl. By the time their daughter joined the family, Ruth was pregnant. Just short of 45, she gave birth to her son Thom, 18 years after giving birth to her last child. The four McVeighs moved to Vancouver Island.
Following a series of ‘events’ including changes of jobs when Gerry was fired, Ruth wrote a book about living with swans in the wilderness titled Fogswamp, published by Hancock House, and went on a promotional tour across Canada. After the tour, they moved to Guyana, where they spent two wonderful years – mostly happy and always interesting. After Guyana, they returned to Canada, settling down in Ladysmith on Vancouver Island, where Ruth wrote her second book, Close Harmony – the story of a seniors’ musical group based in Penticton, B.C. Gerry couldn’t find work, so the two of them agreed that wherever one of them found a job, the other would follow with the kids. Ruth got a job as an Assistant to Jim Manly, an NDP Member of Parliament in Ottawa. Gerry and the kids followed but, due to economic the down-turn in British Columbia, they couldn’t find a buyer for the house. Unable to carry two residences, they declared bankruptcy.
Around this time, Gerry had a complete breakdown and was diagnosed as bipolar. Although their relationship sputtered on for another decade, they eventually divorced. Ruth went on to write one more book entitled Shifting Ground, an autobiography mostly about living with a bipolar partner, a relationship that survived 25 years.
Over the years since she founded Mariposa Folk Festival, Ruth maintained contact and was able to attend the festival many times. In the late 1980s, when told of an effort to close down the Mariposa Folk Foundation due to financial problems, Ruth again jumped into action. She hopped in the car and headed for Toronto to attend a special general meeting of the membership of the Mariposa Folk Foundation, where the motion to wind-down the organization’s affairs was to be considered. Ruth’s attendance may well have saved Mariposa Folk Festival from the dust bin of history. Some of the people who were lined up to vote in favour of the motion put forward by former Artistic Director, Estelle Klein, could not bring themselves to support it in front of Ruth. The motion was defeated.
Although the Festival continued in various locations for several more years, it eventually made its way back to its birthplace of Orillia. Thanks is due largely to the dogged persistence of Tim Lauer, an Orillia resident and friend of Ruth’s son Bruce Jones, who would not give up on the dream of Mariposa Folk Festival returning home. As Mariposa Folk Festival entered its 40th year, it returned to its birthplace, was embraced by the community, and gained a new foothold to recapture its former glory.
Ruth Jones-McVeigh has 6 children, 10 grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren and counting! Her published books are Fogswamp, Close Harmony, and Shifting Ground. She contributed to, and approves of, this article.
Filmed Interview with Ruth Jones-McVeigh
In the following interview with Ruth Jones-McVeigh, she explains how she came up with the idea for a folk festival in Orillia back in 1961. She also comments about the impact of the festival on the community in its early years, and on the fateful decision in 1964 of Orillia Town Council to secure a court injunction against staging the festival in the town that year, forcing it to move. Ruth also speaks about the leadership role of Mariposa Folk Festival in the folk festival movement, including its pioneering of the interactive music workshop concept, which is now a mainstay of folk festivals around the world. She also gives us a glimpse into her own personal history, including stints in New York City, Guyana, Vancouver Island, and back to Ontario. Ruth says she hopes that Mariposa Folk Festival will “keep on keeping on” long after she’s gone. After all these years, she remains an integral member of the Mariposa Family, and we hope to keep her around for a long time to come. The interview was filmed on the afternoon of Sunday, July 7th, 2013, backstage in a trailer reserved for the Sunday Evening Main Stage Headliner, Arlo Guthie.
Behind every grand idea there’s usually one extraordinary innovator, and this was the case with Mariposa Folk Festival in 1961. Ruth Jones-McVeigh was that spark and visionary driver. Due to her passion, today we can look back on a rich body of folk music history; recall festival memories that are etched into our collective conscience; regale with stories of pivotal performances and moments; and take stock of the generations of musicians that earned audience recognition, some with career-launching appearances, at Mariposa Folk Festival.
Casey served as Superintendent of the Ontario Hospital School and, after becoming a psychiatrist he maintained a private practice in the family’s house. It was around that time that Ruth caught the folk music bug. She had been taking trips to Toronto once a month to treat herself and to get her hair done when she started visiting the Village Corner, one of Toronto’s early folk clubs. Folk music became an addiction, and she became friends with lots of people on the folk music scene including Don Cullen who operated the Bohemian Embassy folk club. (Don is a good friend of Mariposa Folk Festival to this day. He gave permission to use the iconic Bohemian Embassy name for one of the festival stages).
Another important dimension of Ruth’s story is that her grand idea came to her during a period of profound personal sadness. She saw Orillia as stultifying in many ways. On top of that, Ruth was unhappy in her marriage, with Casey very focused on his work and Ruth feeling that she had no partner in life. Ruth needed a diversion, and the festival was a good one. Also around that time, she met someone else, an Afro-Canadian singer-guitarist named Doug – and the two fell in love. For a while, Ruth lived with one foot in each camp, trying to keep up appearances for Casey, a brilliant and generous man who loved her very much in his own way. He was also a wonderful father, and the kids adored him. Soon, however, Ruth was feeling torn apart.
After that first festival, Ruth moved to Toronto where she worked at the Royal Ontario Museum as an assistant to the archivist, cataloguing paintings in the Sigmund Samuel Gallery of Canada – a job she loved. She also worked at Ronalds-Reynolds advertising agency – another dream job. Doug got a job in New York City as co-accompanist for Harry Belafonte, with John Sebastian, founder of The Lovin’ Spoonful. Ruth took a job (working illegally) as assistant to the director of a hospital in New York. One day, when Doug was returning to Toronto for a gig, he was stopped at the border. The authorities found out that he had entered the U.S. illegally, and now he couldn’t get back to New York. Meanwhile, Casey had developed leukemia, ultimately dying of the illness.