Christmas Meeting
CHAIRMAN The President, Edward B. Jolliffe, Q.C.
MR. JOLLIFFE:
Your Honour, Ladies and Gentlemen: The members of The Empire Club of Canada and their guests extend a most cordial welcome to His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor and his daughter, Mrs. Haldenby. Although this happy occasion falls within his first year of office, his presence here today is in keeping with a time-honoured tradition attached to the Annual Christmas Party of the Club. This Club has always endeavoured to perform a public service by the exchange of informed opinion. It is loyal to a united Canada and a continuing Commonwealth, whose head, the Queen of Canada, is represented by you, sir, as her Lieutenant-Governor in and for the Province of Ontario. This being a Christmas Party and something of a family occasion, it is also fitting that we welcome you here for the first time as our Honorary VicePresident and a member of the Empire Club family. Your Honour:
His Honour the Lieutenant-Governor brought greetings on behalf of the Queen to the Empire Club of Canada’s Christmas Party.
We welcome here also His Honour’s daughter, Mrs. Haldenby, in token whereof our Immediate Past President has a certain duty to perform.
Mr. Gore presented a bouquet of roses to Mrs. Haldenby.
Mr. Jolliffe presented to the Immediate Past President, Mr. Graham Gore, an illuminated Certificate, signed by our Honorary President, the Governor General of Canada, and presented a bouquet of roses to Mrs. Gore.
MR. JOLLIFFE:
I should also say a word of welcome to certain guests who are here today, those secretaries who have assisted our officers and directors in making it possible for the Club’s work to be carried on, and who have done many long hours of work to that end. They may, like the Club’s own office secretary, prefer to remain anonymous, but we are most grateful for their courtesy and co-operation.
We should all like the Christmas season to be one of peace on earth and goodwill to all men, a season of joy. It would not be the same, it could not be the same, without music.
We are going to hear today from a group of two, a most unusual couple who have made a distinguished contribution to music in this city, Merv and Merla Watson. Mrs. Watson holds four degrees from the Royal Conservatory of Music, in voice, piano, the viola and the violin. She is also a composer, having written almost 100 songs and a Folk Mass which has often been performed. In 1962 she toured the Middle East with the C.B.C. Concert Party which visited our troops in the Suez area.
Mr. Watson is a Bachelor of Music, University of Toronto. Since their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Watson have performed at Universities and on radio and television in Canada, the United States and Europe. They have also made two long-play recordings, which grew out of the School-house Concert series.
That series encompasses not only music but art and drama and resulted in about five concerts a year attended by many thousands of people. It has been described as a new popular art form in the Christian tradition and is identified particularly with “the School-house,” Toronto’s oldest school-house, at the corner of King Street and Parliament Street, which was built in 1848 at the extravagant cost of three hundred pounds sterling. It was used from 1857 to 1887, when Toronto’s educational budget was about $25,000 per annum. It is now a base for the Schoolhouse Singers, led by Merv and Merla Watson.
Their programme here today includes the comic and the reverent, Christmas music and other music, the English language and other languages, the piano and other instruments.
I now introduce to you, Merv and Merla Watson.
