This was written by Bill Rompkey at the request of Isobel Watts and submitted by me, Carolyn Rompkey. We came to North West River, Labrador in 1963. Bill was the principal of the Yale school, and I taught grades 5 and 6. Bill passed away in 2017.

Bill writes …

A joy that we will never forget is our time associated with the United Church in North West River, and especially the choir which I directed. What a joy to find a group singing in four-part harmony. It made Wednesday and Sunday evenings unforgettable. We would practice on Wednesday evenings and that was always a fun time because everybody was relaxed and laughing at the mistakes we made. We tried to do a different anthem every Sunday evening.

We discovered that although technically a United Church, it indeed was a village church. The choir, in addition to those of the United Church, had Unitarians, Presbyterians, Moravians, and Anglicans. We had never encountered such ecumenism and it was refreshing.

I bought a big Philips reel-to-reel tape recorder at the BX in Goose Bay, and I would lug that to the Church on Wednesday evenings and record. The quality was not that great because the microphone was very elementary, but something special was captured. In addition to anthems, we always practiced special music for Christmas and Easter, and that was recorded too.

The organ in those days was an old pump organ played by Maud Chaulk and also by Eileen Baikie. We decided we needed something better. So we put together a reel of what we thought was a good selection of what we had done, wrote a cover note telling something about the Choir and sent it off to RCA Victor in Montreal. Low and behold, an LP appeared which we thought was not bad at all. Others did too, for we sold enough LPs, together with other contributions, to buy a new Lowry electronic organ in Montreal. The new organ was installed and gave us joy for some years. Whenever things would go wrong we could not call Montreal, but luckily, Joe Smith, the CBC technical wizard in Goose Bay would come down and fix it.

In those days, there was no bridge across Goose River or North West River. There is a wonderful picture of Rev. Walter “Paddy” Sellers, the United Church minister in the Valley, and Ev MacLean smiling triumphantly in a rowboat with a big wooden crate bringing the new organ across the river.

The LP, which later became a CD, sold well beyond North West River. VOWR, the radio station at Wesley United Church in St. John’s, played it often. Dr. Don Cook, the head of Memorial University Music School, called us “one of the best rural choirs in the Province”, which we cherished.

Often after the Sunday evening service, the Choir would visit shut-ins and sing for them. That was always a joy. I remember Juddy Blake in particular; he was bedridden by this time, and I know he enjoyed the singing just as he did on his trapline when Dr. Burry would broadcast over his short-wave. But Juddy gave us more inspiration than we did him. His body was weak but his spirit was strong, and we always came away with memories of the spirit of that man.

After this, Carolyn and I would go to Jack and Annie Watts’, where we were treated to a cup of tea and goodies and Jack’s yarns. Those days are long gone, but the memories linger, and will always be there for us as a special part of our lives.