'One of the friendliest, most open and beautiful festivals I’ve ever sung at' (7 photos)

You may not recognize her name immediately, but Bonnie Dobson’s songs have taken on a life of their own. Arguably her most famous composition, Morning Dew has been covered by everyone from Robert Plant, Nazareth, Jeff Beck, The Grateful Dead, Greg and Duane Allman, DEVO and a multitude of others.

The Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist was initially part of the Toronto’s folk revival scene in the early 1960s. As with many Canadian musicians of the day, Dobson was lured away to the United States where she recorded a series of albums. One of those albums, Bonnie Dobson at Folk City, contained the song Morning Dew.  

It was in 1964 when Dobson was invited to perform at a small, 2-day music festival in Sault Ste. Marie that the trajectory of her music career and life would ultimately change.

The Algoma Folk Festival was created by a group of friends, including the late Dr. Alan Gordon and Max Iland. The festival featured an all-Canadian lineup of talent.

“That festival was much more than fun. For me, it was actually life-changing,” says Dobson. “I had been living in … Chicago and New York and doing all of my work. I came back [to Canada] to do that festival and it was just the most amazing weekend.”

The lineup which featured Dobson, also included The Travelers, Alan Mills, Jean Carignan, the Chanteclairs, Alanis Obomsawin and an up-and-coming singer songwriter named Gordon Lightfoot.

“That weekend was the first time I heard Gordon Lightfoot and he was amazing … I remember watching Alanis Obomsawin perform and she was absolutely wonderful. Then there was Alan Mills, and a fantastic fiddler named Jean Carignan, who was amazing too. The whole weekend was spectacularly good.”

In the days before Canadian content rulings and national artists being played on local radio, the vision of the Algoma Folk Festival was ahead of its time, especially considering it was held in a community the size of Sault Ste. Marie. Taking a page out of the Mariposa Folk Festival in Toronto, the Sault festival featured children’s, francophone, indigenous, as well as both established and unknown Canadian folk musicians. The festival program used the image of Mishipishu, the 400-year old pictograph painted on a rock face cliff in Agawa Bay in Lake Superior Provincial Park.

“It was a wonderful festival. I don’t know how to describe it. For them to have organized that festival was singular.”

For Dobson, it was the camaraderie with the other performers, as well as the organizers that made the event special.  She knew The Travelers, who were friends with her sister when she was a summer camp counsellor in Ontario. She had done some television work with Alan Mills.  She knew Beverly and Klaus from the Chanteclairs, who were part of the Toronto folk scene.

But it was the organizers of the event who provided her with the most unique memories.

After one of the parties at the end of the festival, Dobson had an unlikely opportunity: “to shoot the St. Mary’s Rapids” in a canoe.

“I liked canoeing, but I had never done any white water canoeing. Max Iland, who was a superb canoeist, and another of his friends, asked if I would want to go white water canoeing. I said, ‘Yes, I would.’ So at 5 o’clock in the morning, we are standing on the train trestle looking down at the St. Mary’s River rapids plotting how we would get through them. We actually shot those rapids, the three of us.”

Dobson insists she felt safe as both her guides were expert canoeists.

“I had canoed but I hadn’t done that. They actually allowed us through the canal. We went through the canal with a [water] displacement of about two inches and it was written up in the local paper. It was hysterical. It sounds silly, but I remember actually standing looking at that river and saying, ‘If you make it through those rapids Bonnie, you are moving back to Canada.’”

Dobson made it through the rapids, and true to her promise, moved back to Canada.

“I remember thinking, ‘Bonnie, you are living in New York and you’re really not that happy there. You’ve had a wonderful weekend with all these Canadians, why not move back to Toronto?’”

The following week, Dobson got on a plane, flew to Toronto, found an apartment and made a plan to stay.

“I went back to New York and told my landlord I was leaving. The following week I packed up everything and moved back to Toronto. It was one of the best moves I ever made. My time in Toronto until I moved to England [in 1969] was really happy.”

Dobson moved to London, England and spent many years there. She would come back to Canada, spending time in Wolverton, Ontario, before eventually winding up in Shropshire, a county in England.

“I often say to my English friends, ‘You could take the whole of England and drop it in Ontario and nobody would notice.’ But for a small country, it still has these amazing areas that are really quiet and beautiful. The cities are teeming but the countryside is fantastic.  Shropshire is a beautiful and very remote with a ten-minute walk to find your nearest neighbour.”

Despite being recognized as one of the folk greats, and having a long list of the who’s who of music recording her songs, it wasn’t until about six years ago that Dobson had a late-career revival with renewed interest in her music.

She recorded and released a beautiful new album called Take Me for a Walk in the Morning Dew in 2014 and began touring in support of it. Sadly, a personal tragedy struck and Dobson decided to get off the road and spend time with family and friends.

“I still play and sing all the time, but I’m not performing a lot. It’s nice to just have time with your friends and family and not have the pressures of being on the road.”

After all her years in England that small festival in Sault Ste. Marie in 1964 still holds a special place in Dobson’s heart.

“Unfortunately, I never have been [back to Sault Ste. Marie]. That was my first and last time, but it was really important in my life.  It is such a pity that [the festival] wasn’t a great success,” she says, noting the modest turnout for the festival. “It certainly was a success musically. It was brilliant.”

Dobson recently pulled out some of the old photographs of the event as well as the festival program.

“What I really remember is how everybody was so incredibly nice. It was just one of the friendliest, most open and beautiful festivals I’ve ever sung at. It had an atmosphere that I can’t even compare to anything else.”