A musical journey to Order of Canada

Nearly seven decades ago a young girl sat in the pew of a Newfoundland outport chapel listening to her mother play The Church is One Foundation on the organ.

She went home to the family's piano, closed her eyes and sought the music on its keys.

“You just kind of dreamed how things were,” said Barbara Butler on Tuesday.

Along with watching her mother, Julia Butler, bring women into their home in Robinsons to organize events in the parish where her father served as pastor, they form her earliest memories.

Looking back from the vantage point provided by 71 years, Barabara sees clearer how through her love of music and organizing community Julia Butler was laying the foundation for a road her daughter would follow through life.

On Wednesday Butler was named as a member of the Order of Canada for her decades of work bringing music to places that have grown quiet.

IVANY NAMED TO ORDER

Also named was Ray Ivany, former Acadia University president and chair of the economic commission that penned Now or Never: An Urgent Call to Nova Scotians that is also often referred to as the Ivany Report.

They are the only two Nova Scotians of the 67 named Wednesday to the order.

The motto for the order of 7,000 Canadians from all fields of endeavor

translates from Latin to “They Desire a Better Country.”

For Ivany it was a career at the helm of this province's educational institutions — which beyond Acadia included terms at the University College of Cape Breton and the Nova Scotia Community College — and in championing economic development.

‘ABSOLUTE JOY’

To find her own true calling, Butler first had to admit her own limitation.

It was the late 1980s and she was the organist at St. Andrew's Parish in Halifax.

The church needed a new organ.

So it needed money. So Butler started organizing fundraisers under the banner of the St. Cecilia Concert Series (now known as Cecilia Concerts).

Naturally, the classically trained musician and organist thought to play in them as well.

“It was that I was too nervous — it takes a certain amount of stamina to perform publicly and I found that my role was not so much in playing but was in organizing so other people could play,” said Butler.

And so others could listen. From five concerts a year, Butler's efforts grew until she was organizing upward of 80 a year.

“I had people say I was organizing too many, but I found I couldn't stop myself,” said Butler.

Her passion became the old churches and halls of this province.

The buildings often are survivors of the economic decline that has drained the communities that once had the moxy to raise them.

They are buildings designed to echo with the sounds of voice and string.

As artistic director to Musique Royale she has found herself teaming up with the volunteers who keep oil in the furnaces of and patch the roofs over this province's architectural memory.

“It has been the people that you meet that has been the absolute joy of it,” said Butler.

Though retired now, she can't help but organize house concerts in the home she bought in Oakland, outside Mahone Bay.

RYAN TAPLIN • FILE Educator Ray Ivany and musical event organizer Barbara Butler were named to the Order of Canada on Wednesday.