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an interview with Phil Thomas I had been wanting to get a profile of Phil into the Bulletin for quite sometime, but it was a fairly academic proposition until one night at the 1996 AGM in Toronto. We were campedout in Judy Cohen's living room, and I was feeling guilty about grabbing the couch (though I grabbedit despitemy guilt). I watchedPhil lay out one of thosethin foamiesthat backpackersuse, under which he carefully laid his trousers. "Keeps the crease,"he said, "old army trick." Once we were both settled, he regaledme with someof the stories here, and I was kicking myself that I didn't have a tape recorderwith me. Fortunately, Phil was as good a storyteller in the heat of an afternoon in Vancouverthe following summeras he'd been at midnight in Toronto. Phil Thomashas been a significant figure in the cultural life of this nation; had he done nothing else but collect and publish Songs of the Pacific Northwest (Saanichton,BC: Hancock House, 1979), this would be true. But as a teacher,as an active memberof this Society (of which he is an honorary life member), as a performer, and as a occasionalsongwriter-who knows what ripples he has cast?Whatever he's done, he's lived an active and interested (and therefore interesting) life. An alternatetitle for this interview was "Oh, my-all the funny things you seein life! tl This is not a sentencethat you'd hear from the fashionably jaded or the self-centred. We wish Phil a long life and lots more songs, and we thank him for all that he's done for the Society and for Canadianarts. [GWL] GWL-I'm just going to push you off the the JubileeHospital; that's where sheand cal sweepstakein Victoria. My father top of the hill, and I think you can coast my father met. There was the beginning cameback and was interning in the Jubi- down yourself.. .. Your life in music, art, of social consciencein my mother's fam- lee Hospital and met my mother. ily. Her half brother becamepremier of There was just my brother Glen and science, teaching Ontario. It was the United Farmers, myself; he was four years older. He had PJT-I was born in 1921 in Victoria, which ultimately became part of the a voice. That's important. My mother, DC. My father came there when he was CCF. They becamethe governmentafter while growing up in and nearBarrie, had a very small boy in the early 1880sfrom the first world war. attended a ladies' college at Whitby, Owen Sound, Ontario. My grandfather One of my friends, as a young man, Ontario, had donethe Toronto Conserva- startedoff in Owen Sound, and in the de- was a gunsmith's son, and when I was tory kind of thing. She had a beautiful pressionof the late 1870s,he went to the overseasin the war, Dick came to my voice and could play the piano. So we States, to North Dakota, and then they mother and said that he didn't agreewith had music in the house. Sheused to play came up to Victoria. He started off as a his father, who just wanted to shoot all accompanimentsfor my brother as he be- bricklayer. He told me one time, "I used the Asians, and he needed someoneto camemuch more of a singer. When I was to drink a bottle of whiskey a day." His talk to. My mother had beenencouraging very young, she would play the piano, wife was Emma, Emma Glover, whose the YWCA making an auxiliary down in and I would sing. father, by the way, was a lay preacher, Chinatown becausethey wanted there to My Aunt Marian from Winnipeg and they used to say of my great-grand- be a place there for young women. My had sent me a book when I was three father [Chants] mother was a small-l liberal. She said and a half, nursery songs, a beautiful, If you're not a lover of old father that you live in the ripples you make; the beautiful book, with an acknowledgement Glover, influence you have on people is not about where the songscame from, Eng- you 'U nevergo to heavenwhen you die. always known. lish folklore. That was the book that 1 used that, by the way, in writing a My father was not going to be a really turned me on. We always had the couple of extra words for the "All-go university person, but he won a sweep- nursery rhymes-I still, when we moved Hungry Hash House". [Sings] stake, and this paid for his way. The out of Victoria to Vancouver in 1936, If you're not a lover of the landlady's older son had gone to university and be- had nursery rhymes on my wall! All daughter, you 'u never get a secondpiece of pie. came a doctor. and my father came the- My mother came out from Ontario, along, and he went to McGill with the Higgledy piggledy, my black hen from a farming family, to be a nurse in money he won from the horse race, a 10- All these things were part of the wall paper. But this other songbookwas very special-whose was this? have a damn good voice. He was a important. The little white pill rolled down the hill, crooner, and then he could also sing Dame, what makes your maidens lie. It rolled into the bunkhouse things, the John CharlesThomas "Green maidens lie, maidens lie? Eyed Dragon With The Thirteen Tails," Dame. what makes your maidens lie. G-Vernon Dalhart? CarsonRobison? 011 Otrisrmas day in the morning? and all this.! My father drownedon November11, And P-No Frank Crumit, that's who it Dame, what makes your ducks to die... 1944, on the Cowichan River, where he was. We got stuff from CarsonRobison Their wings are clipped, they cannot fly. was flyfishing. It was high water, and he All these little edges, you see, were and those people, but not directly. We was warned not to go down, but he went there, and I loved that kind of thing. It's got it through the street singing. overboard from his boat. He may have not smarmiedup like Disney stuff. This "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum," and been pulling up his anchor and had a is real stuff. Eleven more months and ten more days I'll be out of the calaboose. heartattack-who knows what happened? My motherused to play the piano for You see, there were songs that the kids They didn't-get his body until the next me, and she also had the A.A. Milne knew, but we didn't know where they spnng. songs. I really didn't like those songs, camefrom. Someof them may havesaid, but I loved this other, folklore stuff. So, nOh, we have an old record of that at G-I get the impression that the music as time went by, when I heard anything home " We did have windup gramo- was more associatedwith your mother that was an echo of that, I respondedto phones, but we didn't have a big col- than your father. Was he involved in it immediately. lection in our own family. music? I took piano lessons,but I didn't get My brother had a voice and was very far. Thesewere a trade, I think. The singing in the choir at Christ Church P-He would sing, piano teachergave us lessonsas an alter- Cathedral.The next door neighbour, Mr. Oh, you beautiful doll, and heYou wouldgreat big, singbeautiji41 "Darktowndoll Strutters' native to paying for my father's medical Davies, was the organist and choir mas- services.Both my brother and I took pi- ter, and he would take my brother to sing Ball ., and , ano lessons,but it didn't go very far. I in the choir. My brother was four years playedin a coupleof recitals, but I didn't Boola boola, older; he was born in 1917, when my fa- Boola boola, pursueit. I went over to the drums later. ther was overseas,so my father did not which went, obviously, back to his We got a radio about 1927or so, and have a proper identification with my bro- McGill college days. And that becamea part of our world. I usedto ther and treatedhim badly, I thought. My mother was a lady, listen to-what was this fellow's name? Perhapsto compensatefor this, Glen Like yours, I will allow, SethParke;r! It supposedlycame out of a identified with the popular culture figures And, sir, you wouldn't dare insult me now Maine fishing port; people would come such as Bing Crosby and Russ Columbo. together, supposedlya Sundayor Satur- If Jack were only here. Thus with his talent, good voice, the Oh, I've come to this great city, day night gathering, and they would do encouragementof my mother, and the To find a brother dear. hymns. "The old captain" was there, you Christ Church choir master who lived I've got it backwards, but these are see, and there were all these characters next door, he focussedhis high school things my dad used to sing. He didn't with their characteristicvoices. I usedto life on singing. He had his own program have any particular voice; it just would listen to this-1 don't think anyoneelse in on Victoria's radio station CFCT, and come out, you know. the family usedto listen to it. Eventually sangwith the danceband at the Saturday But my mother was a trained we got so that we could hear WLS in night dancesat the Crystal Gardens,the musician, and she wanted to sing.

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