Profile: Todd MacLean

by Jane Ledwell

Todd MacLean (photo: Alanna Jankov) Everything in life is about community. It’s a continuous chain of community,” says Todd MacLean, whose community activities range from playing keyboards in the rock band English Words to writing about musical performances for The Guardian to working on his wife Savannah Belsher-MacLean’s fashion magazine, Panache. We are chatting on Victoria Row, a street that Todd’s brainchild, the Nigwek street festival for an organic PEI, will soon transform into a celebration of music and organic food under the banner that “something good is growing.”

“[Arts and] culture fuel community. It enhances community, and makes it more beautiful. It inspires community. It’s how we can get up in the morning and face another day,” he says. Just recently, Todd and Savannah moved to rural PEI to a home with “four or five different views of the Pinette River.” In the morning, they see the sun rising over fields of ripening  wheat. “I literally get chills watching the  wheat harvest, “ Todd says. “I have strong emotion connected to food and its production.”

Johnny Belinda

by Jane Ledwell

Elmer Harris’s play Johnny Belinda is an Island story of the kind you are not likely to see elsewhere on the Island this summer, filled with the harshness of Island life as much as with its hope. The play is familiar from screen versions and a mainstage musical adaptation, but, remarkably, Harris’s original play (based on true characters and situations Harris knew as a summer resident at Fortune Bridge) has never had a professional production in Canada—until now. The Montgomery Theatre has mounted a tremendously moving production in North Rustico.

Profile: Rowan Fitzgerald

by Jane Ledwell

Rowan Fitzgerald (photo: Alanna Jankov) After 30 years as a junior-high instrumental music teacher, 22 of those years at Queen Charlotte, Rowan FitzGerald is retiring. “Mr. Fitz” is a consummate band teacher, so when he decided to retire to be a stay-at-home dad, he says “people were aghast.” But, he says, “It’s no contest. It’s a no-brainer.”

Profile: Catherine O’Brien

by Jane Ledwell

Catherine O'Brien (photo: Alanna Jankov) It seems the things I fear the most, I have to do,” says Catherine O’Brien, gamely. A nationally successful musical theatre performer, she is “absolutely apoplectic at auditions”—a fact that has not prevented her gaining roles in prestigious festivals across Canada, including the Charlottetown Festival, which brought her to PEI. Catherine arrived here in 2000 for roles in Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon on the Confederation Centre mainstage, and, she says, “I not only fell in love with the Island, I fell in love with an Islander.”

Profile: Susana Rutherford

by Jane Ledwell

I’m in the family business,” stained glass artist Susana Rutherford has been known to say drolly, when asked what she does. “I’ve often joked to people I wanted to be an accountant—but I wasn’t a rebel.”

Despite growing up in a family that included visual artists Ambika Gail Rutherford and Erica Rutherford, Susana wasn’t always encouraged to choose a life in the arts. “I’d say my parents were perhaps discouraging of a career in crafts at a certain point. ‘You’ll never make a living with that,’ they said. And you know, they were probably right,” she laughs.

Profile: Jon Matthews
by Jane Ledwell

Jon Matthews (photo: Alanna Jankov)

This summer, if you pulled up to a drive-thru to buy a burger, you could expect to be asked, “Want fries with that?” If you pull in to a concert to hear a favourite fiddler or band, expect to be asked, “Want Jon Matthews with that?” The busy musician, producer, and Magic 93.1 broadcaster has only had six nights off since mid-June. “It’s one of those cases that you have to make hay when the sun shines—if you want to be a full-time musician living on PEI,” he says. All summer, Jon performed at Brackley ceilidhs with Cynthia MacLeod, various venues with the Celtic Ladies, and on the side with many others—in addition to bar shows with his own band.