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The sound truck arrives at eight AM. The sound man and his techies
unload a moving van of speakers, cables, mikes and stands, honkin' power
amps, and a mega-channel mixing console, known as "the board". John
has done sound for the main stage for the Winnipeg Folk Festival for years,
so this gig, the first one of the summer, is for him literally an annual
walk in the park.
Morden was incorporated under the Municipal Act of Manitoba in 1882. An agricultural service and manufacturing centre of 6000 people 110 kilometers southwest of Winnipeg, it harbours a cadre of Ph.D's developing new strains of sunflowers and flax at the federal government research station. That, a 3M plant, and the museum of paleontology assure the town visitors from afar. In 1990, the cultural Mennonite mafia of Winkler, the larger yet collaborative community eleven kilometers to the East, decided to have a folk festival, and booked Steve Bell, since the recipient of a Juno, to head the lineup in Morden's better suited park. For an entire Sunday, a family can take in three stages of continuous entertainment for twenty three bucks, subsidized by the province, the town, two charitable foundations, wealthy patrons, and a mob of volunteers, headed by long-suffering Dave. Dave is a married high-school teacher with three grads of his own, whose passion is staging musical events. From a distance he resembles a middle-aged roadie, but with a gift for conceptualizing all the elements of a festival and bringing them together. He quietly leads by hard working example, and virtually sets the standard for every task required, from putting up fencing to performing a fiddle tune. There is a mystic quality to Dave. Watching him work I get a sense of deep reserves of inner strength, not unlike those that were manifested by a then obscure Rabbi on the shores of Galilee twenty centuries ago. I wonder sometimes if Dave can feel the connection himself. I certainly did as I saw him directing the setup crew, crouching down to sketch a diagram in the sand of a 220 volt socket. Inspiring volunteerism to make things happen is no easier today than it was back then. It is a gift. One of the smart-assed mc's on the singer-songwriter stage introduces Katherine Wheatley, from Parry Sound. He asks the audience how many sensitive New Age guys it takes to change a light bulb. Because the joke was made up that hour, he feels confident in pre-empting the answer: "Well, they don't really change the lightbulb. They nurture it until it has a healing experience". Jerry Dykman
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