The Long and Splendid Musical Era of Mrs. Eveline Mary Foster
Mrs. Eveline Foster, on the left, in the orchestra pit at the Grand Opera House for the November 1916 performance of The Geisha. In the middle is musical director Richard J. Devey and his wife, who was stage manager. The two on the right are unidentified. This is a detail from a larger photo: Balsillie Collection of Roy Studio Images, Peterborough Museum and Archives (PMA) 2000-012-003805-1 (Geisha). The full photo showing the orchestra and stage for The Geisha performance appears later on this page.
“I hear music, mighty fine music.” (Frank Loesser and Burton Lane, 1940)
Making music, teaching music, promoting music, influencing generations: in a few words that’s what Mrs. Eveline Foster did in Peterborough from 1910 to her death in 1968. She was a local star who never faded – though she was most often off to the side, many times with her back to the audience.
Eveline Foster and her two children, Irene (standing) and Myrtle, 1916. Balsillie Collection of Roy Studio Images, PMA, Bio 16009.
In the years of so-called silent film Eveline Foster worked professionally, playing piano and violin in motion picture theatres and elsewhere. She was a regular in the pit at the Grand Opera House from the 1910s to the 1930s. One of her favourite gigs was playing on the boats that cruised up and down the Otonabee River and Trent Canal. She was a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother who also found time to be a musicians’ union secretary – a worker and an artist combined.
Peterborough has always had plenty of fine music, and still does. For almost seventy years this woman, usually referred to simply as “Mrs. Foster,” contributed an outsized proportion of the city’s musical fare.
When she was inducted into the Peterborough and District Pathway of Fame in 2002, the committee stated: “To those who knew her or felt her influence, Eveline Foster represents the best in our musical tradition: a love of people and the making of music for the pure joy of it.”
They added, quite rightly: “A humble woman, she poured her heart into her music.”
Eveline Foster may indeed have played “for the pure joy of it” – but she was also a working artist, using her musical skills and talent to earn a living in support of her large family. Music was her chief occupation for life.
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Music has always been integral to motion pictures – and the so-called “silent film” period was no exception. From the start of the storefront motion picture theatres in 1907, music was a prominent part of the daily silent film programs.
Examiner, Aug. 24, 1910, p.1. The Royal Theatre and the Princess — both under Mike Pappas for a short time — and their music. This was about the time Pappas went to Toronto to find films and more music.
Countless musicians — like Eveline Foster — played their instruments to accompany a range of different types of motion pictures (with a trap drummer often creating sound effects). Between films, “illustrated songs” were popular draws: with projected slides, a singer accompanied by a pianist, and audience participation.
“Come and hear good music and songs,” said the ads. Or “Special music . . . will make you all sit up and take notice.”
The theatres needed musicians, or at the very least a pianist, during both afternoon matinees and evening screenings, and the musicians were not necessarily the same for each program. A member of the audience at an evening show could have a quite different filmic experience compared to someone in the afternoon – depending on who was playing or how many musicians there were.
In Peterborough the notes and tunes on those occasions quite often originated in the agile hands and fingers, and very quick mind, of Mrs. Eveline Foster.
She was a multi-talented woman with her own distinctive flare for making mighty fine music – whether classical or popular tunes, swinging dance music, or square dance. As pianist and violinist, she proved “equally capable as a solo player or with a small musical group or a full-scale orchestra.”
Over the years she managed to change with the times and was always in demand. In the 1950s, according to reports, she could play the “soft type of dinner music at social gatherings” or “produce music to the liking of the teen-age groups.” In the 1960s, well into her seventies, she played every Saturday night at the Sergeant’s Mess in the Armouries. She performed for gym classes at the YWCA.
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It was in the early 1910s that a certain name began popping up in the theatre advertisements of Peterborough’s daily newspapers: “Mrs. Foster” — sometimes identified as a violinist, sometimes as the leader of her own orchestra.
Review, April 19, 1912, p.5. The newspaper ads theatres featured the music to be heard as much as the films to be seen. “Mrs. Foster’s Orchestra make up a very good bill of music.”
Who was this Mrs. Foster? It took me quite a while to track her down. The first place I turned to, the Peterborough city directory listings, were not much help. The 1912 directory, for instance, had a long list of “Fosters,” 19 in all, 5 of them, judging by their given names, women. Most of the females appeared to be single rather than a Mrs. (two were widows). Which one was she?
It took me a while, searching here and there, but I eventually discovered this woman’s full name – Mrs. Eveline Foster (though often her first name was spelled “Evelyn” — at least once it appeared as “Eva”). It turned out that she was well-known around town and had fashioned a long career as a working musician and teacher. According to one account, written in 1975, she was “a part of almost every instrumental group in the city from the days of silent films and the Conservatory Orchestra to the present Symphony Orchestra.”
Somewhat surprisingly to me, I might even have heard her playing first-hand myself, because for a while she was a featured performer at Knox United Church, which I attended with my family from the 1940s to the 1960s. My Grade 8 teacher, Walter Downes, took piano lessons from her! Even more: I found that much later on I had played slo-pitch for years with her grandson, Nick Foster.
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The name “Mrs. Foster” became especially prominent in Peterborough in 1912 in ads for the new Red Mill Theatre on George Street.
Review, March 25, 1912, p.5. Announcing “the same old genial smile” and Mrs. Foster’s “The Nightingale Violin Solo.”
The Red Mill was not exactly new; it was taking over the space of the Crystal Theatre, which had been opened in 1907 at 408 George St., on the east side not far north of Hunter.
In 1912 the Red Mill was a small, cozy place of about 200 tightly crammed seats. Its ad told anyone interested in paying a visit to expect that “same old genial smile” – meaning the place itself, not any particular person.
The main attraction announced that March was, as often, not a film but music — in this case “the Nightingale violin solo,” to be performed by “Mrs. Foster.” According to the advance publicity, Mrs. Foster had made “her first debut to the public at Massey Hall, Toronto, a short time ago.” (One wonders when she made her second debut.) In the big city on that occasion, apparently, the Nightingale solo had been “the greatest rage.” Now, in Peterborough, the promo pointed out, it alone would be worth the price of admission (five cents).
As if the “Nightingale” called for a birdly follow-up, a day or two later Mrs Foster performed “The Canary” song selections, said to be one of her own “masterpieces.” Accompanying Mrs. Foster was a Mr. F. Loundes on the piano. Two singers, Mr. [William] Donaldson (baritone) and Mr. [George] Ayres (tenor), were there too, delivering “all the latest song hits.” The theatre, in essence, was the Hit Parade or Much Music of its time.
A popular tune of the day. I suspect this was the song being played that day by Mrs. Foster: monographic, F.B. Haviland Pub. Co., New York : [1911], Library of Congress collection 2016571666.
By April the Red Mill was referring to the presence of “Mrs. Foster’s Orchestra.” It was “of a high order of excellence, both from a classical and popular standpoint.” The little theatre had its pretensions: “The Red Mill Picture Palace seems to grow more in popular favour each week, and the cream of Peterborough’s society and business folk are nightly represented.”
The constant was Mrs. Foster, along with a variety of singers and the short, silent films of the day. That summer, too, she was also turning up at the Princess Theatre, just across the street from the Red Mill. She and her mother would play regularly at motion picture theatres for the next decade and a half.
Evelyn Foster, on the left, stands outside the Red Mill Theatre with other employees towards the end of March 1912. The owner, Herbert Clayton, is in the doorway. Other employees at the time were singer George Eyres, usher Charles Leahy, and singer William Donaldson (who would double as an usher when requested). This photo is from the Balsillie Collection of Roy Studio Images, PMA, VR 7918-2. The film So Speaks the Heart played at the theatre March 27-28. The photo appeared in the Examiner, April 1,1912, p.1, and in a December 1957 Peterborough Weekly Review article about Eveline Foster.
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A studio photo of Ernest Fenwick taken in earlier days in Tunbridge Wells. Eveline ordered a copy of this photo from the Roy Studio in Peterborough around 1911. PMA Bio 9473.
This Mrs. Foster was born Eveline Mary Fenwick, March 10, 1888, in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, 30 miles southeast of Central London. She was the daughter of Ernest E. Fenwick and Agnes Louise Davis. She had a brother, Ernest Stanley Robert (known as Stanley), born in 1889, and a sister, Dorothy May, born in 1893.
Father Ernest was deputy town clerk of Tunbridge Wells before health problems set in around 1903. In 1907 or thereabouts the family relocated in Canada, settling at first in Toronto.
When they arrived in Canada, Eveline was already an experienced, accomplished musician. Prompted by her mother (also a fine musician – a concert pianist who came out of the Royal Academy, London), Eveline started taking violin lessons at the age of seven, studying at London’s Guild Hall School of Music. At the same time she was also learning to play the piano. At the age of fourteen she was performing in a school orchestra. A year later she was teaching music.
A letter of recommendation from Madame Levante, April 18, 1908. Thanks to Nick Foster for this document and for several photos that appear here.
In 1906, at eighteen, Eveline joined Madame Marie Levante’s much-travelled “Celebrated Orchestra of Ladies” – “Sacred Concerts a Speciality, Splendid up-to-date Repertoire” – and went on a grand tour of England and Scotland. During those youthful years she also played a few times as a fill-in for the Royal Academy orchestra in London.
Early on her father had given her a very special violin: a Ruggeri, made in 1688, from the Cremona School, the workshop that also produced the famed Stradivarius. She had it, and played it, for life.
Once in Canada, with father Ernest in poor health, the women in the household were major contributors to the family income. In Toronto, working out of her home at 368 College St., near Bathurst, mother Agnes brought in money as a piano teacher. Eveline, Dorothy, and Stanley lived together a short distance away, at 176 Clinton Street. Dorothy took a job as a “hand-folder” for the W.J. Gage book publishing company; Stanley worked as an elevator operator; and Eveline taught music.
Eveline, still only twenty-one years of age, also went on a nine-month tour of Western Canada in 1909–10 with a branch of the travelling adult education and entertainment organization Chautauqua. (For that job, a letter of reference from Madame Levante’s women’s orchestra must have helped.) Sometime in 1910 Eveline and her mother both began playing the piano to accompany the motion pictures at Toronto’s Crystal Palace theatre at 141 Yonge Street. In that same year Eveline appeared as solo violinist on stage at Massey Hall.
It so happened that Mike Pappas, the owner at the time of two Peterborough motion picture theatres, the Royal (est. 1908) and the Princess (est. 1909), made frequent trips to Toronto via train in search of films and vaudeville acts. On one such visit in the summer of 1910 Pappas spotted Eveline and her mother making their music at the Crystal Palace. He was impressed enough to offer them jobs to play in Peterborough.
As Eveline remarked years later, “That is how we happened to come here in the first place.”
The glittering lights of Toronto and the Crystal Palace motion picture theatre, on Yonge St. near Richmond, c.1915. Archives of Ontario, F 4436.
At the Crystal Palace the women had to improvise and make quick decisions on how to match their music to the film content. In that busy time in Toronto, Eveline later remembered, “A movie pianist had to know 50 or more musical numbers for one show” – and that was with three changes of show per week.
An instrumentalist had to be at ease playing a huge variety of different music, all of which somehow related to amplifying the “realism of the movie being shown.” As a Peterborough Review writer later put it, describing the experience of Mrs. Foster:
When the hero and heroine were together, the music played was sweet and low. The music changed when the villain appeared. And, when horses and cowboys raced across the screen . . . the music brought forth by the accomplished fingers of the pianist was a thrilling addition to the performance on the screen.
The pianist had to watch the screen closely and had to be able to switch from one type of music to another on a second’s notice. This was because it would never do to be playing fast dance-type music if pictures on the screen suddenly changed to a deathbed scene or other scenes requiring slower music.
The sighting by Mike Pappas of mother and daughter in Toronto proved to be a fortunate moment for the city of Peterborough.
Examiner, Sept. 17, 1910, p.1. This ad is the first I spotted related to Eveline Fenwick/Foster.
Shortly after, in September 1910, Eveline made her first appearance at the Princess Theatre on George Street. The main film that day was a version of Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, along with the usual illustrated songs – with words flashed on the screen and the audience singing along to accompanying music. It was announced that the songs would be delivered by Miss McKenzie, a pianist, and “Miss Fenwick,” a violinist said to be from London. “These ladies as Musicians have few equals.” Not only that, but this Miss Eveline Fenwick would play “a number of solos” while the moving pictures themselves were being shown.
She would have been playing, then, both to accompany the films and in the breaks that occurred while the “operator” (or projectionist) was changing the reels of films. A promotional news piece mentioned that this “clever violinist” had recently played a long engagement at the Crystal Palace in Toronto.
Examiner, Oct. 13, 1910, p.1.
A month later Pappas had Eveline Fenwick playing at the larger Royal Theatre. Although her mother’s presence as a musician was not reported, Agnes too was also providing regular rounds of music at the theatres. When a 1911 census-taker came to their door, both mother and daughter reported their “chief occupation” as pianist, “at theatres.” I believe that the plural “theatres” is significant.
It was a time when the city’s main-street business of motion picture exhibition – a very new thing – was booming. By 1910 three theatres (Crystal, Royal, and Princess) had popped up. In addition, the huge Grand Opera House (est. 1905) served up both lavish live entertainment and motion pictures. In 1914 a fifth motion picture theatre, the Empire on Charlotte Street, would join the ranks.
Mother and daughter were providing music for these houses on what seems to have been a full-time basis: the 1911 census record shows Agnes as being employed for 50 weeks, at 50 hours a week; Eveline had also worked 50 weeks the previous year, but 30 hours per week. That was a whole lot of music being made.
Eveline’s father, the ailing Ernest Fenwick, would live only until 1916, and for the last four years of his life was confined to home. The long hours of paid musical performance that Agnes and Eveline put in were necessary in making ends meet; Agnes also did regular piano teaching.
Sister Dorothy worked as a book sewer, continuing something similar to the trade she had practised in Toronto. But she also had musical talent. A strong singer, a soprano, she also took to the stage around town from time to time. She appeared, for instance, at Victoria Hall (formerly known as Bradburn’s Opera House) at a Soldiers’ Wives and Mothers Club event in November 1915. The program also included her mother, at the piano, accompanying her sister on violin. Dorothy sang a solo, “Somewhere in France,” and at the close, as part of a duet, the “Women’s National Anthem.” In January 1916 she “displayed a nice soprano” in a duet, “When You Are Wed to Me,” in a Peterborough Operatic and Dramatic Society production of the comic opera San Toy at the Grand Opera House.
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Along with seeking out musical engagements, Eveline Fenwick also found romance in Peterborough. In a ceremony at St. John’s Anglican Church in April 1911, at age twenty-three, she married John A. Foster, age twenty-nine. John Foster had been born in England, in Birmingham, in 1882. John seems to have held a number of different jobs here and there, now and then. The family memory is that Eveline met up with John when he was an usher at one of the theatres. In the 1910s he worked as a “window washer” in the downtown shopping and business area; later on, in the 1920s, he sometimes worked as a house painter.
Examiner, Nov. 16, 1914, p.12. John advertised regularly for work in the newspaper.
The newly married couple moved in for a time at the bride’s parents’ home at 866 George St., near Hilliard, before taking up residence in a house at 8 Benson Ave. in the north end.
The opening of the First World War in August 1914 would change things, too. Eveline’s brother Stanley (who had remained in Toronto) immediately went off to war, and in the following year so too did John Foster.
Examiner, Dec. 11, 1915, p14.
Unlike many of their fellow soldiers, both Stanley Fenwick and John Foster survived the war. Stanley injured his knee severely jumping off a parapet into a trench and was invalided home in May 1916. John was in the army for a harrowing four years – joining up in March 1915 and returning only after demobilization in March 1919. He served in the Battle of Zillebeke (June 1916) and “was one of the handful of men of his regiment who came through that engagement safely. He had a number of narrow escapes, being buried three or four times by shells during the terrible bombardment.” After that he was at the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Lens, and the Battle of Passchendaele. He spent his last year of the war in the south of France with the Canadian Forestry Corps.
As was the case for countless others, the war experience must have marked John Foster for life. During the war the Examiner regularly printed letters sent home from the front, including those of both John Foster and Stanley Fenwick. John provided a particularly vivid account of his experience in June 1915, shortly after the Battle of Zillebeke (or Hill 60):
Just a few lines to let you know that I am still in the land of the living. . . . It would be useless to try to explain how things were so I won’t try. My ears ache if I touch them and there is a constant ringing in them from shell explosions. I was lucky enough to get buried twice and driven into a dugout once and knocked end over end dozens of times by the concussion[,] and after trenches and everything were laid flat, four more fellows and myself crawled out into an open field in full view of Fritz and got into a ditch. We crawled on our hands and knees through mud and water and then lay in the water on our sides for ten hours until dark. Then our shells drove us out. My poor old watch got full of water and stopped at 1:30 p.m. It is so rusty now that it will not run any more so I shall keep it as a souvenir of that day.
Examiner, April 28, 1917, p.1.
A portion of John Foster’s military service attestation paper, March 29, 1915, National Archives of Canada, Ottawa.
Before John had gone off to war the couple had started to raise a family, and after her marriage Eveline was most likely playing a little less on a daily basis in the theatres. Early on they had two daughters: Irene Eveline, born June 6, 1913 (d. 1968), and Myrtle, born in 1915 (no exact date). From 1915 to 1919 Eveline got a small separation allowance from the Canadian government ($20 a month) and along with her mother continued to bring in a little extra by playing and teaching music lessons.
Examiner, April 15, 1915, p.11. Mrs. Foster’s Orchestra at the New Tiz-It. Competing against the well-known serial Adventures of Kathlyn at the Royal.
In February 1915, just before John’s departure, mother and daughter did a “splendid” violin and piano duet at a “B Squadron” concert at the Armouries. Both Agnes and Eveline were identified as being part “of the Royal Theatre Orchestra.”
A couple of days after that Eveline was featured at the opening of the new Tiz-It Theatre (which took over the space formerly known as The Princess).
Mrs. Foster’s Orchestra “will make you all sit up and take notice at this play” (with the word “play” still being used to denote a motion picture).
The ads showed Eveline playing at the Tiz-It steadily until the end of May at least, but she probably continued in a more unheralded fashion after that. In July that year she was at the Princess, playing piano during the motion pictures and, with her violin, accompanying “a regular employee” of the theatre, Burton Peters, as he sang the illustrated song. When the Empire opened on Charlotte Street on July 24, 1914, its “orchestra” consisted of Mrs. Foster on violin and a Miss Coulter as pianist.
Examiner, March 23, 1915, p.4.
Examiner, April 15, 1915, p.11.
Unfortunately, the newspaper ads or accounts only rarely offer the names of the everyday musicians who played during breaks and accompanied the silent films or the “illustrated songs” so popular at the time. The promotion of the theatres took the presence of varied musicians more or less for granted, which makes it difficult to say exactly when or how much Eveline (or her mother) played at the theatres. What is known is that a theatre like the Tiz-It (in business from February 1915 to May 1917) constantly advertised its three- or even five-piece orchestra. Eveline Foster was probably there playing both piano and violin and during these silent film years kept busy going from one theatre to another.
Examiner, March 18, 1916, p.7. Featuring Special Music” by Mrs. [Agnes] Fenwick.
Her mother was there too. In March 1916, for instance, the Red Mill advertised: “Hear Mrs. Fenwick in her special selections of Irish Airs for St. Patrick’s Day.”
Examiner, May 11, 1917, p.15. Under the direction of the Conservatory of Music’s Ruppert Gliddon, the violin section included nine players, including Mrs. Foster. The orchestra alone, it was said, was “worth the price of admission.”
Eveline was clearly also a regular at the Grand Opera House. As part of the Peterborough Operatic and Dramatic Society she played in a number of engagements at the opera house (including San Toy, which featured her sister as a soprano soloist). She was in the pit as a violinist in the well-known comic opera The Geisha in November 1916 and again in May 1917 for the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta HMS Pinafore. A month after that she played in a lavish local production of A Greek Slave (her mother played the piano at rehearsals).
The Geisha: A Story of a Tea House, an Edwardian musical comedy, was performed at the Opera House on Thursday, Nov. 30 and Friday, Dec. 1, 1916, by the Peterborough Operatic and Dramatic Society, under the direction of Richard J. Devey (organist and choirmaster at St. John’s Anglican Church). The presentation was “in aid of the Funds of the Peterborough Progressive Club” – to help the Peterborough boys overseas. Devey had also staged the Geisha in 1910, along with many other events over the years at the opera house. The orchestra included violins (three, one whom was “Mrs. Foster”), cornet, clarinette, bass, and drums. Devey probably played the piano. Oddly, the program for the evening listed seven musicians, all male except for Mrs. Foster. Possibly the woman in the photo next to Devey was filling in for one of the male violinists. Balsillie Collection of Roy Studio Images, PMA 2000-012-003805-1.
Examiner, Dec. 24, 1917, p.11.
In the 1910s the Grand Opera House was thriving, with both live attractions and motion pictures, and musicians were in great demand. With its large stage and accommodations the Grand Opera House was fully capable of handling the big companies. Eveline later said: “Peterboro was known as a good theatre town whose citizens would turn out in large numbers to see a good show.” She played the piano at some engagements, and the violin at others. She filled in for the theatrical road shows when they needed an extra player. The Friday and Saturday evening shows, she said, filled every available seat on the three floors. The orchestra would play prior to the actual start of the show, during intermissions – and throughout the performance of plays, vaudeville, and motion pictures.
Just weeks after John returned from the war in spring 1919 the couple moved to a house at 585 Patterson St., where they would stay for the rest of their lives. More children followed: Celia, b. Dec. 5, 1920; Edna May, b. Feb. 20, 1921; Roy Richard, b. July 19, 1924; and Roy Edward, b. 1929. But in her guise as Mrs. Foster, even with her growing family, she continued to play at the motion picture theatres until the coming of sound in 1929, when the need for musicians like her fell by the wayside.
Until then, as the long-time Peterborough auto and bicycle merchant Marlow Banks remembered, “Mrs. Eva [sic] Foster, an accomplished local pianist, would sit in the pit below the stage at the Capitol and give her musical imagination free rein. . . . She seemed to know just what kind of music to play to suit the film.” For a time Eveline served as the leader of the Capitol’s orchestra — an August 1921 news item indicated that she was adding a “bass-viol” to the group, bringing it to six members. The theatre, Eveline later recalled, would have “various types of orchestras consisting of several players to as many as 15 or more.” Its publicity boasted that under the direction of Mrs. Foster they had “one of the very best small orchestras on the Paramount circuit in Canada.”
In the 1920s her mother continued to play piano in the silent film theatres, including the Allen (which replaced the Royal briefly, from 1919 to 1921) and the Capitol, which opened in 1921. In addition to playing at the Capitol, Eveline turned up at the Royal Theatre in December 1921 as a “High-Class Pianist and Violinist.” On Nov. 1, 1922, a front-page Examiner article announced, “Royal to Show Cream of Films.” Owner Mike Pappas would screen “feature pictures, serials and comedies” with the top stars – and had also “engaged a new orchestra, with Mrs. [Eveline] Foster as violinist and Miss [Lillian] Hurley at the piano.” She easily shifted from one theatre to another.
Examiner, Dec. 21, 1921, p.14. The “high-class pianist and violinist” was undoubtedly Eveline Foster. Meanwhile, in this ad Mike Pappas goes to great length in extolling the virtues of his theatre as a “locally owned” enterprise.
Examiner, Nov. 2, 1922, p.11. The evening of the 2nd saw a capacity crowd; the standing room only sign had to be placed out front, and several hundred persons were turned away. The special attractions, The Sign on the Door and the opening episode of the Buffalo Bill serial were “backed by four reels of comedies and entertaining music by Mrs. Foster and Miss Hurley.”
Examiner, Jan. 13, 1925, p.11. Jan. 13, 1925, p.11. The World of Passion (U.K., 1923) was distributed in Canada by Dominion Films, which had a close connection to the Grand Opera House. Its original title, The Wandering Jew, was altered for the Canadian market. It was presented at the opera house with “live” prologues (conceived by Mrs. W. McKee Bingham) preceding the first and second halves of the screening. As a report said, “The music for the entire production is under direction of Mrs. Eveline Foster.”
Examiner, Jan. 19, 1925, p.11. The “Incomparable Royal Six,” led by Eveline Foster, provided both an overture before the film and “the musical setting” — that is, music to accompanying the film itself. A few days later it was a seven-piece orchestra, newly installed in a curtained enclosure.
Examiner, March 31, 1925, p.11. “The rapture of young love against the roar of the French Revolution,” said the press notice. In this case Eveline Foster did not have to improvise. The studio, Metro Pictures Corp., provided exhibitors with a musical score. As an Examiner notice, “ ‘Scaramouche’ Opens to Big Crowds at the Royal,” put it: “The musical accompaniment is written for the production and under Mrs. Foster’s able direction adds much to a perfect evening’s entertainment.”
By the end of January 1925 Eveline Foster, as first violinist, was leading the Royal’s new seven-piece orchestra. For three days one week the band played the “Florodora” overture (by Leslie Stuart), “in charming, soft-toned style.” The members also played “incidental numbers throughout the pictures” screened, making “delightful accompaniments to the various portions. There is a quality of brightness to the playing of this septette of musicians that is exceptionally attractive.” Another evening, among other popular numbers the band played “Eliza,” the new song hit said to be sweeping the country.
Examiner, May 23, 1925, p.15. As a regular member of the Capitol Orchestra, Eveline Foster’s name was not in the ad, but a newspaper article mentioned her involvement.
Although seemingly no longer director of the Capitol’s orchestra, Eveline was still a regular there. On May 21, 1925, she was in an orchestra led by pianist Miss Florence Gladman, and including “the best talent in the city.” The occasion was a special “Sacred Concert” — a benefit for a family whose father had recently died in a drowning accident.
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In the 1930s, when making music to accompany silent films was no longer an option, Eveline Foster still found plenty to do, even in the waning days of the Grand Opera House. In 1932 she was in charge of the orchestra for an opera presented at the opera house. In 1933 she played at the opera house before a capacity house in a YWCA pageant and also in a local production of the opera The Bohemian Girl, directing the orchestra and playing both violin and piano. In 1934 and 1935 she provided accompaniment in a department store fall style revue held at the Capitol Theatre, playing for some dancing that provided “a pleasing interlude in the showing of styles.”
When the Peterborough Orchestral Society made “its first bow” to the public at the YMCA Hall in 1936, Mrs. Foster was there. The Orchestral Society played classical and light opera, and Mrs. Foster, as first violin, was among sixteen other artists, including seven other violinists. In a rendition of “Ballade and Polonaise” by Henri Vieuxtemps, and accompanied by pianist Florence Gladman, Eveline “scored a personal triumph,” said the newspaper. “Her mastery of technique and sureness of tone were displayed to the fullest advantage.”
According to the paper: “The applause that followed her brilliant rendition of this exacting composition was so enthusiastic that Mrs. Foster was forced to acknowledge the tribute by playing Haakman’s [sic] ‘Serenade’ in equally effective fashion.” (That would be the Dutch composer Jonny Heykens.)
Over the years in general the two, daughter and mother, played at patriotic events and farewell parties for troops (during the war years) and smokers, church services and special events, various anniversaries, ice cream socials, garden parties, summer fairs, local minstrel shows, and assorted dances and social functions (often in support of some worthy cause).
Examiner, July 15, 1918, p.8. Favoured by perfect weather, “The dance attracted scores of the young people to enjoy the splendid music provided by Mrs. Foster and Miss Florence Gladman.”
Examiner, Feb. 20, 1919, p.5. With mother, Mrs. Agnes Fenwick, providing “the instrumental,” Dorothy Fenwick singing, and Eveline Foster on the violin.
Examiner, March 27, 1920, p.9. Celebrating with Scotsmen (and women?) and playing the latest music as the “Symphony Three.” The Woodmen of the World Hall appears to have been located in the St. Alphonsus Lyceum building on Simcoe St.
Examiner, April 17, 1920, p.9.
Examiner, May 21, 1919, p.3. Excursions by boat to Stoney Lake — often with music on board.
Eveline and probably her mother as well were also in demand to play on the boats that took folk on trips up and down the river or canal. They went down the Otonabee River to Wallace Point, Jubilee, and Gore’s Landing, and northward over the Liftlock to Young’s Point – everything from cruising on moonlight excursions (with dancing) to trips to Sunday School picnics. The craft she remembered most fondly was the popular Stoney Lake. “They were pleasant times,” she said, “and people seemed to have so much good fun on the boats.” A trio of musicians, sometimes a combination of piano and two violins, played popular tunes and sometimes provided square dance music.
Eveline Foster fondly remembered playing on the lake steamer Stoney Lake. Here it is in 1914, in this case featuring as passengers the family of Peterborough projectionist Emile Baumer. Thanks to Gerry Armstrong, grandson of Emile Baumer.
When Agnes Fenwick died in April 1940 an Examiner article remarked that she would be “remembered by older theatre-goers in Peterborough as pianist in several local picture houses in the palmy days of the silent screen.” It mentioned her work as pianist at the Princess Theatre and “the old Royal” and noted that she had been “matinee pianist” at the Capitol Theatre too before the coming of sound pictures.
For Eveline Foster the flow of music continued in the 1940s and long after that, diminishing only slightly as she grew older. For instance, Eveline arranged a ten-piece orchestra to provide music for the first public showing of The Call of the Kawarthas, a movie produced by local photographer F.L. Roy and screened at P.C.V.S. in April 1941. Once again it was a charitable event, with proceeds going to the Women’s Auxiliary’s war work and the British War Victims Fund.
Over the years she could be found from time to time at most of the churches in town. At one time she played in a Sunday School orchestra at a large church; she helped to teach the younger ones to play. She did a violin solo at Knox United Church in February 1946. She taught music and held a student recital at Knox that same year.
Examiner, Oct. 16, 1920, p.8.
Examiner, Nov. 4, 1922, p.8.
Examiner, Feb. 16, 1946, p.3.
Examiner, Nov. 29, 1947, p.10.
A portion of the Canadian General Electric Musical Society, 1941. Eveline Foster, front row, middle. For full photo, see below.
She played in almost everything going over the years. Here, in the CGE Musical Society, 1941.
The Knox United Church Theatre Group, presentation of HMS Pinafore, date unknown (c. early 1950s). Eveline Foster is in the second row, second from the left.
She held a gold card (representing over fifty years) in the American Federation of Musicians Union, which she joined in 1908, and she was the local secretary for the union for some time. In the mid-1960s she was playing with a chamber orchestra and in the Peterborough Symphony Orchestra. For many years she played at YWCA gym classes, and her regular musical participation on Saturday evenings at the Sergeant’s Mess at the Armouries ended only in 1967. After the Capitol Theatre closed in 1961 and a long-lasting discussion ensued about what should happen to the building, Eveline took the trouble to write a letter to the Examiner: “We were talking about it at our practice and all agreed it would be a fine place for our concerts and other kinds of entertainment.” (In the end the Capitol Theatre was not saved for that purpose.)
And she smoked! At annual banquet of the musicians union, Feb. 6, 1950, held at the Aragon Dance Hall, Peterborough. Left to right: Gordon K. Fraser; M.P., Eveline; Mr. Murdock from Toronto, Canadian representative for the union; Mrs. Murdock; and Cecil Searles, secretary of the Peterborough local 191, American Federation of Musicians.
International Musician, March 1950.
“The Melodic Strings of Peterborough,” International Musician, April 1955, p.18. From an article, “Smaller Ensembles . . . their place in public performance.” Left to right: Olive M. Searles, piano; R. Cecil Searles, violin, leader, and secretary of Local 191; Bernard Holloway, violin; Thomas Smith, cello; Paul Konkle, bass; Eveline M. Foster, violin; George Simmons, violin.
Examiner, April 20, 1951, p.15. Back by popular demand.
Mrs. Foster was still giving music lessons, both piano and violin, until just before her death in December 1968. Among her countless students were well-known locals such as Del Crary, Stan McBride, and the entertainer Ernie Victor. She was always pleased when her students kept up their play, became even better, and made their mark locally.
A friend once said of her: “She has been terribly kind to her pupils – well, really so good to so many people and not for what she could get out of it.” Even in those later years, as one writer put it, her “ability with a piano and violin has not diminished. Her hands and fingers have remained agile over the years.”
All in all, Eveline “was quite a character, but very quiet,” says Elizabeth Harris, daughter of fellow musicians Cecil and Olive Searles. Elizabeth has fond memories of Mrs. Foster, who played in the string ensemble with her parents and taught her brother to play the violin. Eveline tended to keep her private life to herself and stay in the background, Elizabeth says. “She was not in the ‘in crowd’ musically speaking” — just “a very talented lady who didn’t give a crap about status.”
In the end both her talent and contributions were fully acknowledged. As the 2002 induction into the Pathway of Fame noted: “In recognition of her dedication to music and community, a trophy in her name is awarded each year at Kiwanis Music Festival.”
The caption does not jell with the story she gave in a 1957 article, in which she said she started violin lessons at seven, piano lessons at nine.
On the occasion of her 80th birthday, a gift of a money tree.
On the occasion of her eightieth birthday in March 1968, friends and associates organized a public tribute honouring her musical achievements, with an afternoon reception at the Rock Haven and a private family dinner afterwards. When the Examiner went looking for an interview, the (unnamed) writer found it a little difficult to pin her down. Apparently Eveline had been hospitalized in January and was trying hard to catch up on the music lessons that had gone missing. On top of everything else she was still doing household chores. When the paper did finally manage to make an appointment, the writer found, surprisingly, a very shy person who did not like to have her picture taken. “I’m so used to playing where there’s an audience, but I always have my back to them,” she said. She admitted that she didn’t really like doing solo work. “They should be just enjoying the music, not seeing me.”
Eveline remained until the end an admirer of the movies and stage shows that had been the focus of so much of her life. “I really enjoyed ‘The Ten Commandments’ and it is one picture I would not have wanted to miss.”
By that time her four daughters and two sons were all married; she had sixteen grandchildren and twenty-seven great-grandchildren. Her husband John died before her, in 1962. When Eveline died at Civic Hospital on Friday, Dec. 27, 1968, the Examiner paid tribute to a “noted violinist-pianist” who had “contributed her vast musical talent to the city for 58 years.”
*****
Many thanks to Nick Foster, Eveline’s grandson, who generously provided a good number of the photos and other images for this article. Thanks also to Walter Downes, and, as usual, to Heather Aiton Landry and Elwood Jones of the Trent Valley Archives and Jon Oldham of the Peterborough Museum and Archives.
Selected articles
Earl Lowes, “Local Pianist and Violinist Played in Peterboro Theatres When Show Prices were Five Cents,” Peterborough Review, Dec. 5, 1957, p.11.
“Seiji Ozawa Is Suddenly Humbled before Paderewski’s Autograph,” Examiner, Feb. 23, 1966, p.1. The story of how “Mrs. Eveline Foster, an elderly Peterborough music teacher,” got Ozawa’s autograph after his appearance at the Memorial Centre in Peterborough — with Ozawa surprised (and delighted) to be adding his name to an autograph book alongside a signature of Ignacy Paderewski, dated Aug. 31, 1902.
“Violinist-Pianist Celebrates Birthday,” Examiner, March 11, 1968, np.
“Noted Violinist-Pianist Mrs. Foster Dies at 81,” Examiner, Dec. 28, 1968.
Musa I Cox, “Women in Music,” in Portraits: Peterborough Area Women Past and Present (Peterborough: Portraits Group, 1975).
Mary Hetherington, “A Night at the Movies,” Examiner, July 27, 1997, for Marlow Banks’ recollection.