OUr History: Who Wudda Thunk?

In 1979, the Josephburg Choral Society began as an idea. Two guys, Erv Miller and Dennis Fjestad, felt that their community needed an all-men’s choir. They were co-leaders at the United Church of Christ in Josephburg, Alberta, a small town of about 200 people 35 minutes north-east of Edmonton. Unfortunately, they had no money and no singers. Fortunately, they had a church to practice and sing in, they were entrepreneurial, they lived about 5 minutes due east of Fort Saskatchewan that had a population of about 10,000, a petroleum and petrochemical complex that was starting to grow on their doorstep and a potential director, Erv. It didn’t take long to pull together a group of guys, reportedly about 12 of them, who liked to sing and to use the church as their practice venue and their hymnal as their source of music. But, there was still no money and nobody to listen to them. Would anyone want to hear them?

46 years later, with hundreds of concerts and thousands of people in the audiences the group is still performing but in a very different world. This group is still thriving because it was prepared to change to meet the times. Let me tell you about how changes in; people, music, our name, the source of singers and ringers, how we sang, where we sang, how we generated revenue and the addition of other types of musicians propelled us from 1979 to today.

The Early Years (1979 – 1990)

Initial concern that “no-one would want to listen” changed to the realization that “people did want to hear us”.  The tight harmonies of a four-part male group were popular. The added confidence encouraged us to expand our member search to include other church communities, and where & what we sang. We made it clear that the group was non-denominational. 

Our first public concert was a Christmas concert at the Moyer Recreation Centre in Josephburg and continued there throughout this period.

Neva and Deana joined their husbands,Erv and Dennis to form a quartet that altered the “dress code”, lightened the repertoire and put a smile on people’s faces. Then in 1983 the big change came with the addition of a handbell choir, the Belles in Harmony, due to the generous donation of three octaves of handbells by the Strohlein family. So here we were, a group that included a male chorus, a handbell choir and a specialty quartet; that by all accounts was and still is the only one of its kind in the country, with the opportunity to provide this particular vocal and instrumental music. Most of the music was spiritual but we were starting to learn that humour was also an important ingredient to a successful concert.

The assumption or at least the standard of the day was that handbells were played by women. And indeed, over the years many of the men’s wives did take up the bell ringing either as first-timers or as transfers from other handbell choirs. It was great to have the women involved in the start of building a real family of musicians. Of course, we didn’t restrict the bell ringers to just spouses of the singers; any woman who liked the music was welcomed to participate.  And outside of the performing, spouses were always included in extra curricular activities.

So, where and how were we going to expand where we sing?  Expansion would have to involve either members who were well connected or a paid promoter or both. We chose both. Initial success within Alberta was due to an Alberta organization, Alberta Presents, that promoted musical entertainment to rural communities. Concerts were in churches and community halls. The number of venues started to grow. We were also blessed with members who were well connected to the Moravian Church and the United Church of Canada enabling the growth of our concerts in rural communities. By the mid 80s we were starting to tour in earnest with a bus within the prairies  .But  we weren’t content to be confined by the Alberta border so gigs at Expo 86 in Vancouver, and air/road tours to the Maritimes and Phoenix were organized. 

Our primary philosophy was two-fold. Our children were invited to come along because without them many of our members would not have been able to  travel. And secondly, we were prepared to not make any profit on these one-nighters, week-enders or week-long trips. We were performing for the joy of performing, to improve our quality and to build strong family relationships within the group. And in that, we succeeded. To minimize the financial burden on either the Society or its members the proposal to each of our host communities was:

JCS will provide promotional material, transportation in and out of the community and a 2 hour concert for which it takes 60% of the gate receipts. $10 was the suggested ticket price.  Total gate receipts per performance ranged from $750 to $1250 netting $450 to $600 to JCS, typically not enough to cover the bus.

Our host will distribute promotional material to their community, and provide the venue, a pot luck dinner before the concert (including their community members if they wished), billets for as many of our members as want them and breakfast the next morning in exchange for 40% of the gate receipts. Their church members incurred most of the expenses for the pot-luck, billeting and breakfast and the church netted $300 to $400. 

Members paid for flights (if they were part of the tour), lunches, dinners (if not covered by a church pot-luck), incidentals, gifts for our billeters, hotel rooms (if they didn’t want to billet) and a mandatory extra fee to cover what the Society didn’t have in its budget.

The Society paid for the bus.

These trips were very popular with our members and our audiences but they didn’t help fill the bank account and we had to find another source of revenue. Other than singing and ringing, what else were we good at? Eating was the answer. So, in 1984 the Country Church Cooking was published – a 168-page collection of “Kitchen-tested Recipes” that included beverages, breads, salads, main dishes, pickles & relishes and desserts. Every recipe was tested not by kitchens, per se, but often by the group while on its road trips. Rumour has it that everyone put on 5 pounds. It went on to be a Canadian Best Seller and generated many thousands of dollars through the 1980s. But when the print run ran out we decided that, rather than reprinting, we should focus on what we did best, singing and ringing, to generate the ongoing funds we needed.

Our music was expanding to include more secular pieces and we now performed with about 20 men and 10 handbell ringers. Total venues performed in had increased to over 100. All the men’s songs were performed by memory – a touch of professionalism that extended through the next period. Performances around the Edmonton area were restricted to one Christmas concert at the Moyer centre, isolated one-off paid concerts at other churches and we started to perform at seniors’ residences pro bono (as our community give-back).

The Travel Years (1990-2010) 

Travel peaked during this period with several one-week trips around British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan and further afield to Ontario and the northern US (Minnesota,  Wisconsin and N. Dakota). Our philosophy remained the same about how we funded these trips but the concerts around Edmonton suffered. 

Several of our members formed a group, Measure for Measure, that ran for several years during this period. Their numbers ranged from 3 to 5 and, loosely speaking, they sang music that the men didn’t sing and the bells didn’t ring – a hard-to-define genre that we hoped would generate a new audience. 

To promote the Christmas Concert and to encourage new members we performed at the Fort Saskatchewan Heritage Days, had a float (a trailer with hay bales that we sang from) in the Fort Saskatchewan Santa Claus Parade. More recently and for a few years we also attended Fort Saskatchewan Registration Day where community groups could promote themselves to generate new members.

But money continued to be an issue and we weren’t going to reprint the cook book. Rather, we had decided to focus on singing and ringing. What about selling our music so people could listen to us all the time, at home? It was the age of the CD. Our first, “We Love to Sing” was a 15 piece compilation of what the men had performed up to the early 1990s, about 60% spiritual and 40% secular.  Our second, “It’s Tune Time”, brought in the Belles and Measure for Measure and was a 24 piece compilation of both spiritual and secular although the spiritual had dropped to about 25%. Our third and last, “Yuletide Treasures”, was an 18 piece compilation of Christmas favourites. 

This period saw our first venture onto the internet with a website in 2008.

Our repertoire was expanding but too slowly because it was taking a long time to memorize the pieces. We now performed with a high of 25 men and 10 handbell ringers. Total venues performed in had increased to about 150. Performances around the Edmonton area were restricted to one Christmas concert at the Moyer centre but the one-off concerts around Edmonton were reduced as we focused our energies on CD production and the week-long tours that occurred every two years in the spring.

The Challenging Years (2011 – 2025)

This has been the most challenging period of our history. Many things changed that we had to react to. Each change below (in bold italics) is followed with our reaction. 

1.  We were tired and didn’t relish the long trips anymore. We agreed that we would discontinue those trips and focus on our home turf of Fort Saskatchewan, Strathcona County and east Edmonton.

2.  Our repertoire (other than Christmas) was not extensive enough. It was OK when we only saw an audience once but now that we are focusing on a smaller area and seeing the same people more often, it is important to keep the music fresher.  And as our members aged and turned over it was harder to even keep our older music fresh.   That meant that we had to rely on our sheet music rather than memorizing everything. Our mantra now is to provide new music sooner but recognize the value of older music as appropriate.  

3.  We were getting too old to set up at the Moyer Centre. Set up had been a long tiring procedure which we were ill-equipped to handle and the acoustics weren’t optimal. We moved our Christmas concert from the Josephburg Moyer Centre to Fort Saskatchewan with the building of the Dow Centre, Shell Theater that provided the setup and audio-visual needs that we needed.

4.  Our non-paid men’s director and accompanist retired. We hired a paid conductor and a paid accompanist for the first time in the Society’s history. We had only two of each in our first 30 years. As a follow up to paying our men’s director we also agreed to pay our Bells director.  

5.  We subsequently lost our paid men’s director and accompanist twice. We hired new or temp replacements as required. Interestingly, most have had US backgrounds. They were/are well qualified and have improved our quality immensely. 

6.  We had lost contact with the people in our home market and were hearing that they didn’t like some of the music we were performing. We added a new Christmas concert in Sherwood Park that has been held at Sherwood Park United Church, and most recently at Trinity Baptist Church.  We added two spring concerts, one each in Fort Saskatchewan and Sherwood Park.  We’ve created a Men’s Music Selection committee to advise our directors on our men’s music interests and our audiences’ preferences. To help build better relationships with our home market, and with the advice of a consultant from Alberta Foundation for the Arts, we began to invite other groups to perform as part of our concerts. Six Minute Warning, The Suchy Sisters, The Gates Family, Alfie Myres, Calterra (2) and Strathcona County Youth Choir accepted our invitation and we performed with Festival Singers and at the Fort Music Festival. 

7.  As a result of now having to pay our directors and accompanist we didn’t have enough revenue to meet our expenses. We instituted member dues for the first time in the Society’s history, currently $100 per year.  As another source of revenue, we applied and were approved for a Casino which ran in early 2024.  We’ve also developed a better relationship with Strathcona County who has enhanced its grants funding for non-profit organizations to deflect the criticism that it was receiving about not allowing casinos in the county (a major source of funding for non-profits). Throughout this period other funders have been generous in their support, namely, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, County Clothesline, Dow Chemical, Shell Canada, Coop Ft Sask and more recently Freesons Ft Sask. 

8.  It was becoming increasing difficult to attract new members, at least from Sherwood Park. It was too far to go to Josephburg, they said. In 2019 the group approved moving to Sherwood Park, a larger population centre where is would be easier to attract new singers and ringers and to attract larger audiences without  unduly turning off those potential new members in Fort Saskatchewan.  The move took place in 2019 to Trinity Baptist Church and we were initially rewarded with an increase in men to 24 and indeed, bell ringers seemed easier to attract. Then Covid hit. 

9.  Covid caused cancellation of our concerts from spring 2020 to spring 2023.  We maintained a shadow Board, negotiated a reduction in rent from our building owner and cancelled the contracts with our three staff.  Trinity, our new building owner and our staff were very understanding. Effective Christmas 2023 things returned to normal with even better crowds.

10.  People who introduce us often call the men’s group a choir. “Choir” has a spiritual connotation, and we don’t want to be seen as a religious group, even if we practice and have concerts in churches and because we declare ourselves to be non-denominational (yet another religious term). We are a chorus with a strong bent on secular music but that also has an appreciation for the beauty of spiritual music because of where we have come from. And we’re prepared to perform spiritual music where it is deemed more appropriate. However, what’s important is what our audience wants, and we have seen that the secular music generates a more positive reaction. 

11.  Belles in Harmony was too feminine a name to attract men. As some men showed interest in ringing they were welcomed but it seemed appropriate to change the name to something more gender neutral so the “second e” was dropped from the Belles.

12.  Three octaves of handbells were too limiting for the kinds of music we wanted to perform. We’ve added a fourth octave and 3 octaves of chimes.

13.  Our sound system was too robust for the venues that we were now performing in. We now choose venues with good acoustics and with on-site sound techs. We sold our old system and purchased of a new one which enables us to go into seniors’ homes where a smaller system is perfect. 

This period has seen a new website in 2016 and a major upgrade in 2025.

We are focusing on two Christmas Concerts and two Spring Concerts and continue with about 6 concerts in seniors’ homes in our home territory split between the Christmas and spring period. Recent attendance at our two Christmas concerts approached 300. The men were engaged with the County to perform at the Highland Games in Sherwood Park in summer 2004 but had to cancel at the last minute due to the poor air quality because of the forest fires. Again, Strathcona County  has approached us for this summer. Membership is currently 20 men and 10 handbell ringers, but we’re still very interested in new members.  

The Future

We really don’t know what the future may bring! A lot has changed over the years but we’re still a viable and vibrant option for local live entertainment.  Our vision is to ensure that it stays that way.