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The eventual result of her work was the publication of Sally Go Round the Sun by McClelland & Stewart of Toronto in
1969, ten years after she had first begun to collect children's songs. Like the majority of Edith's books, Sally Go
Round the Sun was meant to be accessible to a general readership. Edith took care to ensure that the layout, page
turns, and illustrations were carefully planned. The publication's scholarly apparatus was not neglected, simply
moved out of the way, to a section that comprises the last 11 of the book's 146 pages. These give brief directions for
playing the games, indicate sources of the versions she used, and list a number of comparative references.
Edith continued to mix work with travel as the 1960s came to an end. She remained involved in the world of folk
music, as a scholar and fan. In 1969, she attended the International Folk Music Council meeting in Edinburgh. A
highlight of the conference for her was the ceilidh . After the conference, she went to Blairgowrie to hear the Singing
Stewarts; she then found time to visit a folk club inYorkshire, and attended a concert at Cecil Sharp House in London.
The experience led her to say, "I was delighted with the vigour of the British folk scene... it made me most envious for,
as you know, Canada has nothing to compare with it" (Johnson 1996: 12). Edith was also pleased to find that several
songs she had collected were being sung by British singers (Fowke 1990: 297).
Mariposa Folk Festival
Despite her literary success, nothing remained more important to Edith than the music itself. Throughout her life,
Edith continued to feel that folk music should be accessible to the public. This is evident in her endless involvement
with radio broadcasts, books, magazines, and the recording industry. It also explains her involvement, from the
beginning, with the Mariposa Folk Festival.
The festival was named after the fictitious town of Mariposa, which had become known through the prose of
Canadian author Stephen Leacock. Leacock had lived in Orillia, and the town inspired his writing. In 1961, the Orillia
Chamber of Commerce had been searching for a summer attraction and settled on the idea of a folk festival.
Edith was involved from the start, serving on an informal advisory board which included Ian Tyson, Estelle Klein, Ted
Schaefer, Ed Cowan and the president of the festival, Ruth Jones. The first festival was held in August, 1961, in
Orillia. The following two were also held in Orillia, but troubles with crowds and vandalism in 1963 forced the city to
relinquish its support of the annual gathering. The festival did survive, however, and for the next few years it was held
at Innis Lake, eventually moving to Toronto Island in 1968 (Sharp 1977: 178-91).
The Mariposa Festival presented many major figures in commercial folk music, including Bob Dylan, Ian and Sylvia,
Joni Mitchell, and Gordon Lightfoot. It also presented some of the lesser known. Edith remained involved in the
festival because of her desire to have the public become aware of some of the traditional Canadian folksingers she
had discovered. Over the years, she assisted in arranging for some of her informants, such as O.J. Abbott, Tom
Brandon, and Mary Towns, to sing on one of the many Mariposa Festival stages.
Mariposa was a folk-music smorgasbord for Edith. In a visit to Toronto's CBC radio archives in March, 1998, I located
a tape of a 1968 report on the festival that Edith had prepared for the CBC music program Metronome. The piece was
described by the announcer as "A sound picture prepared by Edith Fowke." In the report, Edith enthusiastically
commented on many of the types of music presented at the 1968 festival, and played short samples of each. She
mixed these musical examples with brief excerpts from interviews she had conducted with folksingers Joni Mitchell,
Tom Kines, and Steve Gillette, as well as rural blues singer Bukka White.
Edith's report certainly provides the listener with an idea of what occurred during that particular festival and also
records first-hand her interviewing technique. Edith asked very straightforward questions, and never got in the way of
the replies. After listening to this tape, I was left with the impression that musicians genuinely enjoyed speaking to
her. It also seemed to me that she thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of what she was doing (Fowke 1968).
Lumbering Songs of the Northern Woods
Publications written or edited by Edith were now being issued on a regular basis. A year after Sally Go Round the Sun
was published by McClelland & Stewart of Toronto, the University of Texas Press released Lumbering Songs from the
Northern Woods. This 1970 publication was similar to Traditional Singers and Songs from Ontario, in that it was
based on Edith's field recordings. The transcription of the songs, from tape to musical notation, was done by Norman
Cazden, who also provided a musical analysis of the tunes in an essay at the beginning of the book. Each song text
and melody line is printed, transcribed closely from the singer's taped performance. The singer's name and home
town, and the date of the performance is noted, along with a text prepared by Edith outlining the history of the song
and the events it describes. The songs were grouped in five categories: The Shantyboys at Work, Death in the
Woods, The Lighter Side, The Shantyboy and his Girl, and L'Envoi.
In describing how Lumbering Songs from the Northern Woods came into being, Edith said that after she had
completed Traditional Singers and Songs from Ontario, she found she had a substantial number of lumbering songs
left over. She felt there was value in assembling them into a publication, because "the lumbering songs gave a more
vivid impression of what it was like to work in the woods in the late nineteenth century than you can get by reading
about it" (Weihs et al. 1978: 12).
In the book's introduction, Edith provides a brief, but informative history of the lumber industry in Ontario. She also
mentions that all 65 songs had been collected by her since 1957 and all but three came from Ontario singers, or
Quebec singers living just north of the Ottawa River.
Folklore Advocacy
In 1971, Edith Fowke joined the English Department of York University as an Associate Professor to teach folklore
(Johnson 1996: 18). This was a logical extension of her activities. She would never hesitate to take any opportunity
available to educate people about Canadian folklore and folk song. Edith Fowke was definitely an advocate for the
formal teaching of folklore in Canada. In Maiiy Voices: A Study of Folklore Activities in Canada and their Role in
Canadian Culture, Carole Carpenter writes (1979: 419):
In her brief to the Symons Commission on Canadian Studies (1972-1974); Edith Fowke argued strongly for
the institutionalization of folklore studies since such studies have a unique importance in any nation's
scholarship and have been neglected in Canada. The general academic community and the wider populace
remain largely ignorant of the nature or value of folklore studies, according to Mrs. Fowke. . . . In his report, To
Know Ourselves (Ottawa, 1976), Commissioner Tom Symons specifically recommended the establishment
of many more folklore courses throughout the nation.
Canadian Vibrations Canadiennes
In 1972, The Macmillan Company published Edith's compilation Canadian Vibrations canadiennes. She had
designed this volume to be a songbook that would reflect some of Canada's unique realities in the 1970s. There are
70 songs with lyrics accompanied by a melody line and guitar chords, as in her earlier folksong collections. However,
the first 30 are contemporary, split evenly between such English Canadian composers as Gordon Lightfoot, Ian
Tyson, and Joni Mitchell and French Canadian composers like Raymond Lévesque, Felix Leclerc, and Gilles
Vigneault. The next 30 are from the past. Again half are in French, and half in English, including some songs Edith
had collected. The next nine songs represent other Canadian groups: native peoples, as well as those of German
and Ukrainian descent. The final song in the book is "0 Canada." Each song is supplemented by a brief account of
the song and the composer. The book is unique in that Edith included a wide range of Canadian folk song,
combining traditional songs in several languages with a large serving of contemporary items.
The next year, 1973, saw Edith's publication of The Penguin Book of Canadian Folk Songs. This songbook contains
82 songs with text and melody line; guitar chords accompany sonic of the songs. 52 of the songs are from previous
collections; the rest, from Edith's field collection, appear for the first time (Thomas 1978: 12). A section at the end of
the publication contains extensive notes for each song. In a 1978 interview, Edith elaborated on the purpose and
success of the book (Weihs et al.: 12):
I found that my books weren't being distributed in the StMes or Britain. There was a Penguin Book of English
Folk songs, American Folk Songs, and Australian Folk Songs, so I thought, "Well, there should be a
Canadian Book." Strangely enough, the major sale is in Canada, so it isn't really doing what I hoped it would
do.
On May 31, 1974, Edith Fowke received her first honorary doctorate, from Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, in
recognition of her devotion to folklore. In an interview with the Toronto Star, Edith was reported as saying:
I'm rather pleased about it.... In this field I'm entirely self taught, but in the [Unitedi States at conventions, they
assume everyone has a doctorate so they keep calling me Doctor Fowke. Now I won't have to disclaim it.
(Fulford 1974).
1975-1996
Edith's formal recognition continued later the same year when she became a Fellow of the American Folklore Society
(Johnson 1996: 18). The following year, on October 25, 1975, Edith received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree
from Trent University in Peterborough. In the citation given at the convocation, Professor Alan Wilson recognized the
local aspects of her work (Trent Fortnightly 1975b):
Edith Fowke's most original work as a collector lies, of course in her adopted province, Ontario, particularly in
the Peterborough area, for which we have special reason to honour and thank her.
In the autumn of 1975, Edith delivered a series of evening lectures on folklore and folksong at Trent University (Trent
Fortnightly 1975a). In addition she continued to teach three courses on these subjects at York University. Edith
mentioned, in an interview with the Toronto Star, that the increased work had resulted in her having to cut back on her
song and story collecting. Edith commented: "Now I'm making my students do the collecting" (Fulford 1974).
Edith's Folklore of Canada was published by McClelland and Stewart of Toronto in 1976. This book has been
recognized as the standard text in the broad field of Canadian folklore (Thomas 1978: 13). In this publication, Edith
assembled significant writings from a wide variety of sources, dividing them into four groups, each dealing with the
folklore of a specific segment of the Canadian population. The titles of the four sections: The Native Peoples,
Canadiens, Anglo-Canadians, and Canadian Mosaic, provide an insight into how Edith Fowke perceived the nation.
In each section of the text, Edith walks the reader very carefully through the writings of the contributing authors,
explaining each piece of work before the reader encounters it, but most importantly, outlining the context within which
it should be read.
The publication of Folklore of Canada led to Edith appearing on the nationwide CBC radio program Morningside. In
1976, the hosts of the show were Harry Brown and Maxine Crook; together, they interviewed Edith about her book. I
listened to an audiotape of this show at the CBC radio archives.
The first part of the interview went very well, as Edith answered Maxine Crook's soft questions about folklore: what it
is, its presence in Canada, its categories, and where it was being taught at the university level. Edith then read a
legend from Nova Scotia. Soon after that, however, the atmosphere became tense as Harry Brown, a
Newfoundlander, confronted Edith about the ten pages of "Newfie" jokes which had been included in the book.
Edith argued she was merely collecting a tradition, and he should read the introduction to the section more carefully
to understand the context within which the jokes appeared. Brown argued she was perpetuating a stereotype. As the
exchange continued, he started to become quite hostile, at one point raising his voice noticeably and calling her "Miss
Fowke." Edith calmly stood her ground and made her points in a straightforward, yet polite, fashion. If there was a
winner in this argument, it was Edith. This audiotape remains as a permanent record of the powerful, yet quiet,
determination that she could exhibit (Fowke 1976b).
In 1977, publishers McClelland and Stewart of Toronto released Edith's Ring Around The Moon. This book was
intended to be a sequel to Sally Go Round The Sun but did not achieve the same success (Rahn 1998; cf. also
Thomas 1978: 13). In the "Introduction," Edith explains that Ring Around The Moon is designed for slightly older
children. Edith used some of her earlier tapes as sources for the material, but also gleaned material from the
collections of prominent collectors such as Helen Creighton and Kenneth Peacock. As was the case in Sally Go
Round The Sun, the source notes on the songs and rhymes in Ring Around The Moon are at the back of the book, out
of the way. Careful perusal of these reveals that on occasion, Edith would persuade her husband Frank to recite a
rhyme or two for her collection (1977: 151).
In 1978 Edith was appointed a member of the Order of Canada. It was very fitting, not only because of her contribution
to Canadian folksong scholarship, but because her contribution included all of Canada. Although Edith did most of
her fieldwork in one area of the country, she was not a regionalist. Edith's Canada included all the provinces and
territories, as well as both official languages.
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