Former Saultite remembered as pioneer in Canadian music industry

Linda Dawe is remembered as one of Canada's first female independent music promotion representatives and as a pioneer in the music industry.

She succumbed to cancer on March 20.

Dawe's first job in the music industry was as a writer at Beetle Magazine in Toronto. In 1974, she was hired as a promotion coordinator for what became MCA Records and, in 1985, she established Music Brokers with Chris Allicock, going on to promote a long list of Canadian acts that included Blue Rodeo, Rita MacNeil and Roch Voisine.

She is remembered for her uncanny ability to support and engage creators and to keep them focused and creative both on the road and in the studio.

FYI Music News remembered her "as a fighter, for the rights of women, particularly women in the music business; for her family, both familial and the artists she worked with; for love, an emotion that caused her unimaginable pain."

She is also remembered for her part in the CBC documentary The 40 Year Secret which follows the stories of several women who were sent to orphanages to deliver their babies in the 50s and 60s to save their families from the shame of unplanned pregnancies. 

The father of the baby Dawe was forced to give up for adoption was her high school sweetheart, Raymond Cave, and the two found each other again at a Sir James Dunn high school reunion forty years later. 

By then, Dawe was widowed. She and Cave married and then successfully found and were reunited with their daughter Karyn.

Messages of loss and affection on Dawe's Facebook page show the spectrum of lives she touched and the depth of people's respect and affection for her.

She passed away peacefully at Southlake Regional Health Centre in Newmarket on March 20. She leaves behind a son, a daughter and two grandchildren as well as a loving extended family.