Phil Thomas: An Odyssey in Song

After a spell in the Canadian military during World War II, Phil Thomas earned his living for most of his adult life as an elementary school teacher and art teacher.He graduated with a B.Ed. from the University of British Columbia in 1949, but during the Cold War his left-wing political opinions made it difficult to obtain a teaching position in either Victoria or Vancouver.In consequence, his first teaching post was in the small coastal community of Pender Harbour, located on the western shore of the Sechelt Peninsula.It was there that he also began his unpaid career as a collector of B.c. vernacular songs, which spanned a more than twenty-year period, from 1953 to 1975.This article surveys his activities as a collector of folksongs from oral tradition in British Columbia.It also examines the way in which he combined his oral material with manuscript and printed sources to create a social history of British Columbia through the medium of vernacular song.Thomas encountered novelist and short-story writer Bill Sinclair in Pender Harbour in 1951.They had similar intellectual interests and political views, and they became fast friends.Sinclair had been born in Scotland, lived for a while as a cowboy in Montana, and by the early 1950s was working as a trollerman in the local fishing industry.He had developed considerable respect and admiration for the hard-working but fiercely independent local fisherman, and had written a dramatic narrative poem titled Bank Trollers.Thomas found a suitable melody and created a seven-stanza song based on Sinclair's text, which he also called "Bank Trollers". Banli TrollersAnd win-ter is on -ly a When the buds swell green on the C. coast, ~.f ading ghost, The trol -lers drive for the off -shore banks, With ice in their holds and ~gas in their tanks.You will see them leave from the landing slips, Turn -ing sea-ward, ~s mall wood-en ships.~ "You're welcome, welcome, stranger, although our home is plain-We ne'er have turned a stranger out on the Banks of the S'milkameen."She took me to her mother's home-she treated me quite well, Her hair in dark ringlets about her shoulders fell; I tried to paint her beauty, but true, it was in vain, For perfect was the Oroville girl on the banks of the S' milkameen.I asked her to marry me; she said it ne'er could be; She said she had a lover, and he lived in B.C., She said she had a lover, and true she would remain Until he came to claim her on the banks of the S'milkameen.So adieu, adieu, fair maiden, I never shall see no more, But I'll never forget your kindness, nor the cottage by the shore.So adieu, adieu, fair maiden, I'll drink to the flowing stream, I'll drink to the health of the Oroville girl on the banks of the S'milkameen.Thomas did a lot of other collecting in 1963.Much of it took place in Vancouver.From the children at Livingstone School he recorded fourteen skipping rhymes, and from Anice Halpin three songs: "McCarty", "Puddings and Pies" and "Marguerite".His best informant in the city, however, was undoubtedly Russell Miller.Miller knew a couple of World War I songs, "We Are, We Are, We Are Canadians!" and "D'Ye Ken Sam Hughes?".He also knew comic Irish songs ("Pat Malone's Wake"), children's verses ("The Owl and the Pussycat"), sentimental religious songs ("When Earth's Last Picture is Painted") and early country music standards ("Wreck of the Number Nine"), but he also sang a goodly number of traditional folksongs, English and Canadian.These included 'The Derby Ram", "No, Sir, No" and "Jack Monroe", as well as a broadside ballad, "The Irish Captain (The Lady Leroy)", and two traditional ballads, "The Gypsy Davy" (Child # 200) and "Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight" (Child # 4).In all, Thomas recorded twenty items from Miller, although only the two World War I songs appear in Songs of the Pacific Northwest (pp.98 & 102).Back in the B.C. interior, Thomas found a valuable informant in Pritchard, on the South Thompson River east of Kamloops.This was Nels McKim, who knew several railway songs, such as "The Soo Line Cannonball" and "Working on the Northern Railroad".The influence of Wilf Carter was Well, a loggin' outfit, so they say, Has got to be good, or it will not pay; But let me tell you 'bout one I know That was broke down more than she ever did go.

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