The Lifelong Ministry of Molly Boyd
This past January I had the opportunity to visit with Molly Boyd. She has been a musician all her life and at age 89 (or nearly 90 as she likes to say) she continues to share her infectious joie de vivre through her music, be that at church or out in the community. Molly was the choir director and organist at All Saints Anglican Church in Vernon for many years, along with her dear friend and “partner in crime”, Marjorie Close.
Molly has lived in the Vernon area for most of her life and her musical journey began with piano lessons at a young age and singing in the junior choir at All Saints beginning in 1948. By the time she was eighteen she had earned her grade 10 Royal Conservatory certificate, started taking pipe organ lessons, and had her first conducting experience when she was asked to fill in for the director of the junior choir who became ill that Christmas. Then, from 1955-1958 while she was taking her nurse’s training, Molly conducted the Royal Columbian Student Nurses Choir. After graduation, upon returning to Vernon this is when her crazy, busy life really took off. From 1959-1970 Molly was the organist and choir director at All Saints, she had started her nursing career, and married Alexander (Sandy) Boyd with whom she had five children and ran the Tillicum Valley Ski Hill. She also played guitar with the Folksong Four and led The Fillies, a folksong group at the Riding Club. Needless to say, this was all too much so she decided to retire from All Saints. That only lasted about a year. By 1971, the congregation was in desperate need of a good organist and that is when Marjorie Close moved to Vernon. She was offered the music director position, but didn’t agree to it until Molly agreed to return and share the position with her. This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship and musical collaboration. From 1971-1982, the “M&M” team led the adult choir and formed the Singing Saints Youth Choir. They produced three LP recordings, ran music camps at O.A.C. for seven years, and took the kids on road trips to sing in Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary and The Kootenays. Then, in 1978 “mice” made their first appearance in Molly’s life!
Have you ever heard about how the carol, Silent Night, came into being? The story goes that on Christmas Eve in 1818 the organ broke down at St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf, Austria after mice had chewed through the bellows. That led the organist, Franz Grüber, to quickly write this simple carol so that it could be sung and played on guitar that same night. This story captured Molly’s imagination, and then after reading Jack Richards’ children’s book, “Johann’s Gift to Christmas,” she decided to make it into a musical. With copyright permission from Richards’ publisher she used his words as dialogue and wrote her own lyrics for songs that were set to German and Austrian folk tunes. In 1978, the first production of Johann’s Gift to Christmas was presented at All Saints. It was then reprised in 1983 when Molly was living in Whistler. Following that, she was refused further copyright permission, but the publisher suggested that there was nothing to stop her from writing her own version of the story in her own words. So she did. In 2000, “The Mouse of St. Nicholas” was born and presented at All Saints. In 2003, another production followed at St. Michael and All Angels Cathedral directed by Joan Bubbs.
From 1982-1995 Molly and her family moved to Whistler. Sandy took a job at the ski resort and Molly worked as a nurse again, leaving All Saints and Marjorie behind. It was a difficult decision, but it wasn’t long before she founded the Whistler Singers and the Whistler Children’s Chorus. Caroling around the village and putting on a concert at the hotel every Christmas was a highlight for her.
By 1995, Molly was back in Vernon attending All Saints Church and joined forces will Marjorie, once again sharing the organist/choir director position, as well as leading the Vernon Community Singers together. They gave many concerts and caroled at Silver Star Mountain Resort as Molly had done with her choir in Whistler. However, this caroling was taken to a whole new level with the addition of a battery operated keyboard mounted on a table that was mounted a pair of skis and pulled like a sled. Molly walked behind it and played. Molly also took on the leadership of the Schubert Singers (a seniors’ choir) and played for vocalist, Sally Evans, with whom she worked for twenty years. Their program, “Songs of the War Years” was especially popular and they performed it at many care homes over those years. Gradually, Molly retired from her various conducting positions, ending with her retirement from All Saints when the COVID pandemic shut everything down. But, this was NOT the end of her journey!
In 2018, Molly had moved to Coldstream Meadows Retirement Community, a place which holds many special connections for her. It is on the grounds where the Vernon Preparatory School for Boys once stood and it is the place where a chapel called St. Nicholas was built. Molly’s father attended the school as a child and she was baptized in that chapel. Many years later, Molly’s mother lived on the grounds when the area became a retirement community. In the middle of it St. Nicholas Chapel still stands and inside it there is a lovely old pump organ that once belonged to Molly’s family. One can’t help drawing parallels between this and The Mouse of Saint Nicholas story. Both churches share the same name and both involve an organ that suffered damage. You see, when Molly was about five she was like that destructive little mouse in Austria. She remembers poking holes in the fabric behind the ornate fretwork and getting her fingers slapped for doing so. Now, decades later she plays that same organ every Sunday for worship services. In addition, she leads a weekly sing along group, plays at All Saints on occasion, and every Christmas she and her daughter, Heather, host a very popular Lessons and Carols service at Silver Star. She also plays at care homes and this spring, with about half a dozen concerts already lined up, she will reunite with Sally Evans to perform a program of Irish music. And so, the music continues…
