Helen Creighton

Subject: Helen Creighton
From: Dave T
Date: 14 Apr 99 - 05:18 PM

This idea started in the thread, "Nova Scotia question..." (one of these days I'll take the time to learn how to place a link to thread in a message). Naturally, Helen Creighton was mentioned in the discussion. Apparently there was a campaign a while back to get her picture on a stamp, but she hadn't been dead for the required ten years (see the contribution from George Seto). Well, the ten years are up, so let's rectify the situation. Write your MP, contact your local folk music association if you have one, etc.

Dave T

Subject: RE: Helen Creighton
From:
Date: 15 Apr 99 - 12:48 AM

Yes. Thanks Dave for starting the thread. For Canadians, Helen Creighton IS the person who has made the most significant inroads into the traditional based singing and storytelling lifestyle available throughout the Maritime region particularly before the advent of radio and television.

She started in the 20s, I believe, going out with a friend and writing down the stories and songs. Later she would take a tape recorder in a wheel-barrow. Note this was during a time when it was not considered proper for a young woman to be going around the countryside. She did this for the love of it. Helen Creighton collected the stories and songs of Maritime life in all of its myriad forms.

The Helen Creighton Folklore Society sent in an application to the Canadian Postal Service to request a stamp some time after her death in 1989. At the time, the authorities said that they could not issue a stamp because she had been deceased for less than their 10 year requirement. BUT they should keep the file on hand for consideration at a later date. Being as how this year, 1999 meets the 10 year minimum, AND as it marks the 100th anniversary of Helen Creighton's birth, I and others think it would be appropriate for them to issue it, or at least announce they WILL issue it.

I am uncertain as to whom we need to write to, but at the very MINIMUM, I think it would be the Postmaster, and the MPs, and the Prime Minister.

If ANY Canadians are among the Mudcat Cafe's readers, please consider sending in a request to these officials asking them to consider celebrating the life of one of Canada's most remarkable women.

Other events are happening in the province to mark this ocassion. One of the plans mentioned is that of requesting the Nova Scotia Government MARK this year by making the Nova Scotia Song its OFFICIAL FOLK Song. Nova Scotia doesn't even have an official SONG but it was felt appropriate to request it to be the Official Folk Song. Nova Scotians, please consider writing your MLA and our Premier to honour Helen Creighton by doing this.

If you're coming to Nova Scotia, and Halifax, please e-mail me for more information on other festivities which have ties to Helen Creighton.

Subject: RE: Helen Creighton
From:
Date: 09 Sep 00 - 11:49 AM

As a reminder, this September, Word on the Street here in Halifax will have a contingent of people from the Helen Creighton Folklore Society.

I will be one of them. If you're here in Halifax around the 24th of September, please stop by the tent.

Subject: RE: Helen Creighton
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 09 Sep 00 - 02:23 PM

Damn midnight shifts, wish I could be there George... Good idea about the stamp though ... Yours, Aye. Dave

Subject: RE: Helen Creighton
From:
Date: 09 Apr 02 - 11:42 PM

Time, gentlemen, and ladies, please.

The Helen Creighton Folklore Society is in the process of trying to get the Canadian Postal Service to bring in a special stamp to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the collection of Nova Scotia's most popular and famous song - The Nova Scotia Song (Farewell to Nova Scotia).

In 1933, a young Helen Creighton was travelling in the Pepeswick region of Nova Scotia. It was later printed in her first book, Traditional Songs in Nova Scotia. Sadly the book is out of print.

We are hoping to have people across the country initiate a letter writing campaign to both the Cdn Postal Service, and your local MPs, and the Prime Minister's Office. If you would, please ask them if they would support a Commemorative stamp to recognize the collection of this song.

Hopefully, they will be able to do something, if pressed about this.

If not, we can start again, perhaps right away, for a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the event.

Let's see what we can do.

Canadians, please note, letters to the Prime Minister, and (I THINK) to your MP's in their Ottawa office, may be sent without a stamp.

Oh, I bet the Governor-General would support this.