MISSISSAUGA MUSIC WALK OF FAME

He’d grown up immersing himself in the Bon Jovi albums Slippery When Wet and New Jersey and was blown away by the songs and the band.

He was a budding guitarist who might have found a little fuel for his big musical ambitions that night in a couple of lines of one favourite song that the band played, a song that was the calling card of his own youth: “We’ll Make it I Swear – Livin’ on a Prayer.”

You might say his prayers began to be answered on April 14, 2011, when he got a call from an unknown New York number. “Hi Phil. This is Jon Bon Jovi. Give me a call.”

That’s what began the slow integration process that five years later saw the man they call Phil X officially succeed Richie Sambora in a band he’d idolized for many years.

Not bad for a kid who launched his career singing Elvis.

Phil grew up in a Mississauga household filled with music, mostly Greek music. After being given his first guitar (a copy of a Vox hollow-body teardrop model) which he could barely hold at age 5, he watched and learned as his musician father Peter played bouzouki and sang.

It was Phil’s father who, during his band’s intermission at a “big fat Greek wedding” convinced his son to play and sing Blue Suede Shoes and Teddy Bear.

The audience was enthralled with the 8-year-old — and he was enthralled with their enthusiastic response.

At 17, he was bartending at his Dad’s pub. The Magnet in Westdale Mall. When Dad went on vacation, Phil booked his own band to play the small corner stage.

For six years Phil played in a band named Sidinex, which was his surname spelled backward. They played covers of metal bands and made an EP in 1985 that placed in the top 25 in Q107’s Homegrown contest.

After a sound man for Frozen Ghost heard him play he alerted producer Arnold Lanni who checked him out at The Gasworks, then rushed him into the studio to record with Frozen Ghost. After working with Aldo Nova he succeeded Rik Emmett in Mississauga’s ultimate metal band Triumph.

Starting anew after moving to L.A. in 1997, Phil was painting producer Scott Humphrey’s garage when Tommy Lee needed a guitar player for Methods of Mayhem.

The paint strokes were swapped for guitar strokes on a Les Paul. Phil’s work must have been impressive because it quickly led to additional sessions for Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper, with whom he recorded Brutal Planet.

A Chris Daughtry recording in 2005 cemented his growing reputation. Phil X has since marked the spot as “supreme session guitarist for hire” on records by Chris Cornell, Avril Lavigne, Kelly Clarkson, and Thousand Foot Crutch, to name just a few.

And he still finds time for his own band, Phil X and The Drills.

What marks Phil’s work is total commitment — whether squeezing the last ounce of energy and sound from his instrument, straining for that last squeal out of his voice or searching for the exact pace and tone that best suits the material.

Phil’s a generous teacher – as a series of legendary YouTube videos attest.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, he should be flattered at the seemingly endless supply of copycat efforts.

He’s also generous with his time, whether on GTA school visits or guesting at clinics or on podcasts.

When a 25-year-old Mississauga woman and hobby musician died suddenly of congenital heart failure a beloved guitar she had designed was donated to a local guitar shop. Phil heard of it and played it in concert at a Bon Jovi show at Air Canada Centre to honour her memory and her creative flair.

That brought immeasurable comfort to her grieving family.

Phil X and his irrepressible style epitomize the infectious energy that’s at the heart of the music he plays.

He says he still gets goosebumps when he kicks in with the talk box on “Livin’ on a Prayer.” Which may explain why so many of the rest of us also have that same reaction. He’s never lost the joy of performing that thrilled all those people at that long-ago wedding.

And he’s able to convey that same sense of joy to his audience every time he picks up a guitar or sings.

An exemplary career that’s taken him from a childhood covering Elvis to electrifying Bon Jovi means Phil X marks the place on Mississauga’s Music Walk of Fame.

What Brian Smith remembers most about the fledgling Malton rock ’n roller he met while they played lacrosse together as teens in the mid-1960s was that “he had a hell of a scream on him.”

Smith, a guitarist, lived in Westwood Village. Jim Tovey, a singer, lived in Victory Village. Smith had a band called The Soul System.

Tovey had a band called The Grass Impact.

The bands would get together to jam. Eventually they would join forces.

“The reason we got Jimmy in the band – which was renamed The System –  was because we heard him scream one night,” says Smith.

Tovey was doing his best James Brown and really struck a nerve with his future bandmates. “We knew that anyone who could scream that good would give us a great added attraction,” Smith laughs.

Tovey’s next door neighbour, Bert Mellen, played bass, Al Cairns was on drums, Smith was on guitar and Mike Whitham, the only one who from Brampton, was on keys.

Anyone who knew the enthusiastically independent Jim Tovey will enjoy the thought of him fronting  “The System.”

The band played Malton’s two community halls, local high schools and shows at Bramalea Civic Centre where they were often double-billed with another young group named Rush.

Rush bassist Geddy Lee often sat in the front row while The System played, keeping a sharp eye on the work of Bert Mellen to see what he could pick up.

The System’s repertoire of Rhinoceros and Steppenwolf covers, mixed with originals by Smith and Tovey, earned them a spot on the CBC-TV summer show Drop-In, where they played three originals.

Tovey auditioned to host another CBC show but lost out to some guy from Hamilton named Martin Short.

Jim at first appeared headed for a career as a visual artist – his primary arts passion in high school – before the magic of the music carried him away.

He quit high school to play full-time, a decision that didn’t sit well with his parents.

A farmhouse in the country on Airport Rd. where Jim and Bert lived was where the band rehearsed, partied, wrote, rehearsed, partied and rehearsed, not necessarily in that order. Smith stayed there on weekends because his parents wouldn’t let him live there full-time.

“We played every weekend, then went back to our families,” says Smith. “That was the start of it all.”

Jim was a natural showman, who could contort his body in strange ways. He had a confident stage manner, loved to lean out into the audience, swing the mic out and pull it back in and use his very loud voice to full advantage.

Smith, who did imitations of other band’s singers to warm up audiences, couldn’t imitate his own band’s lead singer because he was always changing his approach.

“He was born to be a frontman,” says Smith, who runs his own music promotion business in London, Ont. “He could quickly get people in the palm of his hand.

In a premonition of his future career as a carpenter, Jim cut up chunks of wood before one show, had The System’s name stamped on them and got the audience to play percussion, getting  everyone involved — a collaborative style he favoured in all his careers.

He’d studied voice at the Ontario Conservatory of Music and made his singing debut around age 10 in the Christmas Eve concert at Our Lady of The Airways Church.

He would prove to be a much better singer than altar boy.

After The System broke up, Jim was in several groups, including the regularly rotating membership of Bond.

His late brother-in-law Dave Cooper recalled on his blog that “Jim had this idea for a show band called the Alpha String Band. We played Jethro Tull, Moody Blues, that type of classical-inspired rock. We had these coloured suits,  pink, blue and white, a different colour for each set.”

The group formed after Tovey met John Oglivey in the subway, lugging a huge case in which he carried his cello.

One can just imagine the conversation:

Jim: “What’s in the case?”

John: “A cello”

Jim: “Cool. Want to be in a band where you get to wear different-coloured suits?”

In his blog, Dave Cooper explains that Jim later lured drummer Paul Nixon  – best known for his drumming on  Downchild’s original “Flip, Flop & Fly” — to join him, Brian Smith, and “Shady” George Bland in Rockit-88. Most of the band lived together in a house in Westwood Village.

It was a bluesier band that morphed into a group called Live Jive and then transformed into Hott Roxx, the band which survived the longest and for which Jim is probably best remembered. It featured guitarists Dave Harrison and Papa John King and toured extensively showcasing the music of The Rolling Stones.

That ended abruptly when an explosion and fire at a Thunder Bay bar destroyed their uninsured equipment.

Their many friends in the business held a benefit concert — but Hott Roxx never recovered.

Jim, with his wife Lee’s assistance, crafted a second career as a carpenter. They moved to Mississauga in 1989 and he started another career as Ward 1derful councillor in 2010.

Music remained a powerful force in his life.

In 1994, Jim got up on stage with a band at the Grosvenor Exchange bar.

From the moment he nailed a Jaggeresque straight overhead kick to start off Chuck Berry’s “Oh Carol,” Andrew Dixon knew he’d found a fellow-traveller. It took about a month of convincing but Tovey joined the band known as The Primitives. It included Dixon on lead guitar, David Smith on rhythm guitar and backing vocals Bob Heinrich on bass and Dan Hill, later replaced by Stuart Hull, on drums.

They’ve played together since, across the GTA but especially up-and-down Brown’s Line.

His political career slowed the band down a bit, but Tovey continued to co-write songs and the band performed periodically, including backing him at the Waterfront Festival for the song he wrote to celebrate Hazel McCallion’s 40th year in office.

The chorus he wrote perfectly captured the intersection of a disaster and a political coronation:

“When the train it went flying

and the tankers were torn

That was the moment

the legend was born”

In the last few years whenever he felt people were giving him too much credit for one of the numerous projects he’d gotten rolling, Jim was fond of saying that nobody accomplishes anything alone.

It’s true that it often takes a community of people convinced to believe in a good cause before it can be achieved.

But there’s usually a main instigator – somebody who hears “no” and translates that into “there’s still a chance.”

The truth is that Mississauga Music Walk of Fame would not exist except for Jim Tovey’s love of music and his insistence that local players – be they musicians or singers or promoters or composers, be celebrated in – and by – the community that fostered them.

When Jim and Lee visited a music walk of fame in Philadelphia, which was then recreating itself as a city of the arts, Jim saw many names he didn’t recognize. He realized that enshrining names in stone in a local park would educate the public and celebrate many worthy Mississaugans – famous and not so famous – at the same time.

He suggested a “pilot project” that – like so many of his temporary ideas – has turned into something pretty permanent. He recruited a committee and cajoled staff and council on board – using the charm that made his mother say that, even as a child, he could sell anything to anybody.

The rest, as they say,  is history — our collective musical history celebrated.

He even helped install the stones the first couple of years.

Jim Tovey was a dynamite package of passion, plans and persistence.

Take, for instance, his idea to have some kind of physical recognition in Port Credit’s streetscape of the village’s rich music and festival culture.

He had the bright notion of having the pedestrian crossing at a major intersection marked in the shape of piano keys.

In the city that Tovey’s piano hero Oscar Peterson called home for the last 35 years of his life, it seemed most appropriate.

But the official answer was no.

So Tovey went home and figured out  – to scale – how it could be done, then went to the works yard to chat with the template maker.

The next week he got a call to visit the works yard to see the test strip of piano keys that had been painted on the parking lot.

When they were installed at Hurontario St. and Lakeshore Rd., a  photo of the “piano keys” intersection taken from on high from a nearby condo went viral on the Internet.

That was the Jim Tovey that people in the musical and political communities shared –  a man bursting with ideas from his hyperactive imagination with an infectious way of expressing them — so everybody sang along when it was time for the chorus.

The piano keys were just a quirky little dab on our landscape but they spoke volumes about the talent of the City of Mississauga’s musical frontman – James Michael Tovey.

We welcome him into the place that clearly wouldn’t exist without him: Mississauga’s Music Walk of Fame.

It is my honour today to induct Clifford Gordon Hunt onto the Mississauga Walk of Fame. It was 23 years ago when I met Cliff, who looked pretty much the same as he does now only with more dark hairs than white ones.

By that time he had already established himself as a pre-eminent Canadian music mogul‎. Right out of high school, Cliff played in a band called The Brass Union. to be honest The Brass Union was before my time, and when I asked Cliff what their claim to fame was, he gave me one of those stares that says, maybe you shouldn’t bring up The Brass Union.

He then did what many players did when they figured out touring is grueling and went over to the business side. His first gig was sitting alongside future Rush managers Vic Wilson and Pegi Cecconi booking bands at Concept 376 which at the time was Canada’s biggest booking agency booking bands like The Guess Who, April Wine, The Stampeders, etc.

Later he worked alongside his dad as the Associate Producer of the CNE Grandstand where he worked with artists like The Beach Boys, Chicago, The Jackson 5 and Frank Sinatra. If I stopped right now, Cliff probably would have done enough to have his name added to the Walk. But Cliff had another 40 years of deals to do.

Later he managed, worked with, and did record deals some exciting acts through the years including Triumph, The Diodes, Zon, Refugee, Lydia Taylor‎ and many others. I met Cliff in 1993 and together we managed a band signed to Warner Music called the Killjoys who went on to win the Juno for best new group.

Cliff saved his master stroke for last. In 1999, Cliff started a company called Musicrypt. The digital age was upon us and record companies were looking for a more rational solution for delivering music to radio stations.

Until Cliff came along, record labels would deliver a physical record to a courier or radio promoter and have them hand deliver a copy to the radio station music director. While incredibly personal, it was also bereft with problems. You can just imagine ego driven arguments between radio stations over who would get the new U2 song first. And what if the courier lost or worse copied the song before it was widely available?

In one grand swoop, Cliff changed all that. With Musicrypt, Cliff would deliver music instantly to all, fully, securely so that no stealing could take place, and better still open a direct channel of communication between radio station and the labels.

Cliff’s solution was widely embraced. It was not too long before Cliff’s solution was used by over 95% of the Canadian music business and widely used throughout the U.S.

Today, the company, now called YANGAROO is the world leader in music and video delivery being used North America wide as well as Europe and Latin America.

If that wasn’t enough, Cliff’s team tweaked the software to become the voting tool for The‎ Junos, the GRAMMYS, the Emmys, the Golden Globes, the Academy of Country Music Awards, MTV Video Music Awards and the Canadian Screen Awards to name the most notables.

Cliff’s contribution to the international music community is significant. Long after he is gone – and based on his mother who is here with us I suspect that will not be for a long while, Cliff’s fingerprints will continue to be all over it. It is seldom recognized but should be a source of pride for all Mississaugans and Canadians alike.

I would like to talk for a moment about Cliff the man.

Cliff has lived his whole adult life in Mississauga, right now living just down the road in Port Credit. His two children, Adam and Shauna, both married, live nearby in Mississauga as well.

Cliff has always been proud of his Mississauga background and couldn’t be happier that his kids and his children’s children still reside in the same place. If you stop and ask anyone about Cliff, I’m sure they’d all say the same thing. He is affable, genial and never ever has anything negative to say about anyone. He is a gentleman’s gentleman. His picture is in the dictionary beside the phrase Class Act.

If the Mississauga Walk of Fame was just about accomplishments in industry, Cliff would be a shoe in. If the Mississauga Walk of Fame was only about devotion to family and community, Cliff would be a shoe in. And if the Mississauga Walk of Fame was solely about the measure of a man’s inner qualities, Cliff would be a shoe in.

With Cliff, you get a three for one. A pioneer of the entertainment business, a devoted family man and community oriented person and a class act all the way.

So it is my great honour to present to you, the newest member of the Mississauga Walk of Fame, Mr. Clifford Gordon Hunt.

Rob Wells has been in the studio with some of the most famous musicians in the world, but it’s the tinkling from behind Westacres Public School that really get his musical motor running. It may not be the Justin Bieber or the Ish or the Nelly Furtado or the Olivia Newton-John or the Selena Gomez product that he’s shaped for the public – but it cuts to the heart of what music is really all about.

Over the past few years, Rob has hosted a Songwriters’ Circle where some of his musical playmates, like Randy Bachman and Matt Dusk, drop by to play at an annual concert. The proceeds go to his local school in Applewood Acres to support and sustain its music program. Rob’s personal interest has helped support, sustain and inflame students’ passion for the pursuit that is his life’s work.

“Music is related to so many different aspects of life,” he says, noting that Albert Einstein, who played violin and piano, insisted that the theory of relativity was a “musical thought.” He’s not the first one to notice that “math, patience, focus, listening skills, give-and-take, and response” all seem to be intimately connected to music. That’s why walking by West Acres and hearing kids banging on bongos or pummelling the xylophone gives him such a thrill.

Some of those kids would be thrilled themselves to know that Wells and his engineering co-conspirator Chris Anderson worked with Justin Bieber not far away from the school to produce My Worlds Acoustic, an unplugged album of songs from Justin’s first two albums.

Rob was a mild-mannered computer animator, writing songs for himself in his spare time until he attended a game-changing one week songwriters’ course with 40 other would-be musicians at Metalworks Studio in 2001. He went from “incredibly nervous” the first day to “depressed” on the last – not because his dream was shattered but because the course was over.

The rest, as they say, is history. Wells, like his brother Rob, is a highly sought-after writer, producer, player and collaborator who works with many of the best-known contemporary acts in the business.

He thrives under the pressure of going into the studio in the morning with an idea and, in collaboration with the artist and lyricist and the rest of the band, emerging with a completed product. “By the end of the day you have a track and people are freaking out about it – that’s the best.” The writing is still the best part of the job. “It soothes my soul… lowers my blood pressure. It’s the best therapy of all time.”

His music has appeared in countless TV shows, film scores and too many CDs to count. He’s doing the new Katharine McPhee album in Hollywood and writing for the new Degrassi series on Netflix. If you walk into the new dinosaur museum in Calgary and catch the epic chase scene that greets you, listen carefully to the chase music. That was written by Rob.

From dinosaurs to Daisy Dares You, Wells has it covered.

It was 2003 when Rob first heard one of his songs on the radio. It was Craig Smart singing What Went On. That’s when he says he first thought, “Wow, I can do this.” Wow, can he ever.

Welcome to the Mississauga Music Walk of Fame Rob.

When John and Michelle Phillips decided they wanted to start a band in the early 60s, they thought first of a guy – or rather the voice of a guy – that they’d heard sing while they were on a Hootenanny tour in the southern U.S.

They’d heard that his group, the Halifax 3, had just broken up. The Phillips’ put out word that they wanted to get in touch.

Not long after, Denny Doherty showed up on their doorstep. They sang together that day and by the end of it, the Phillips’ knew they had the foundation of their new group. “Denny’s voice really was what started to create a sound we loved,” Michelle said in a documentary made for PBS to celebrate the beautifully layered harmonies of the Mamas and the Papas 40 years later.

It was Doherty who lobbied John to have his friend Cass Elliot join the group to create what he called “Harvey — the 5th voice that was created when the four of us sang together.”

Coupled with John’s imaginative songs, they created the blend of nuanced harmonies and stunning vocal arrangements that earned the Mamas and Papas a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. The group only lasted two-and-a-half years, but nothing evokes the 60s era of love and peace and San Francisco quite as quickly as their California sound.

Doherty was a coastal guy, all right, an East coast guy originally from the Maritimes. When musical work dried up in Halifax in the mid-80s and a bunch of his peers moved to the GTA, he moved his family to Mississauga because he’d heard it was a great place to raise kids. He lived here until his sudden – and far too early death – in 2007 at age 66.

He wrote much of Dream a Little Dream, the Nearly True Story of the Mamas and Papas, in Mississauga. It is still running in periodic stage productions in Canada and the U.S. Doherty also became a star to a new generation of kids. When he went to Clarkson Village for ice cream at his favourite Baskins and Robbins, he’d often be recognized by the toddlers first – as the Harbour Master from the Theodore Tugboat CBC-TV series.

Then their mothers would recognize him as an old rock ‘n roller. He would be heartened to know that his two grandchildren still enjoy watching Theodore Tugboat, or “the grandpa show” as it’s known in their household.

The Doherty homes in Park Royal and, later in Lorne Park, were filled with friends, music, laughter and story-telling, especially by the patriarch of the house who was a master of the art.

Although most people would associate his voice with the opening strains of Monday, Monday or the line “All the leaves are gone” from California Dreamin’, Doherty’s favourite Mamas and Papas’ song was a ballad called Dancing Bear which shows off his legendary voice in its purest form.

John Phillips had long recognized the magic of the Doherty sound. He not only wrote great songs for it but he acknowledged it when he penned a short musical selfie of the group called Creeque Alley.

It provides a fitting epitaph for that special timbre: “Denny, you know there aren’t many – Who can sing a song the way that you do.” There certainly were not.

It’s a pleasure to add Denny Doherty’s name today to the Mississauga Music Walk of Fame.

When John Bride talks about his career, he makes it sound as if he was over his head in most of those formative musical groups he played in and which are part of the rich musical heritage of Mississauga and Toronto in the 1960s and 70s.

From the time he formed his first band, called the Odds ‘n Ends, at Clarkson’s Hillcrest Public School, John was always looking forward, moving on to bigger and better bands.

In high school, he started Papa Grey, which rehearsed at a house just up Stavebank Rd. from here, then joined Brutus, which briefly transformed into The Ugly Ducklings when that group’s lead singer Dave Bingham joined up. Then John won an audition to play with a group of older guys in Greaseball Boogie Band. “What have I gotten myself into?” he wondered when he saw the mock fights onstage and the lead singer eating a tube of Brylcreem a night to impress Greaseball’s fans.

He may not have been ready for their burlesque antics, but he was always ready to learn, stretch and extend his musical command.

Greaseball Boogie Band became Shooter which had a hit with a song he hates called I Can Dance. Then he and Ray Harrison created the consummate blues collar band playing out of the Cameo Lounge at the Hotel Isabella. John gave the Cameo Blues Band its name and a signature sound, with his highlight reel Fender Strat style.

Whether playing with the Partland Brothers, Cheryl Lescomb, Rita Chiarelli or Amanda Marshall, co-hosting weekly jams for years at the Fox ‘n Fiddle, or becoming a Monday night musical mainstay at The Harp with Tom Barlow, John Bride has always kept maturing as a player.

As Chuck Jackson, his old friend and former partner in the Jackson-Bride Band says, “John brings a band to life. It’s just like when you hear Otis Redding or Sam Cooke sing, when you hear that guitar, you know right away, it’s John Bride.”

“He commands that stage. Any band he plays with, he takes them up another notch.” John Bride is the epitome of the local guitar legend.

He knows the whole catalogue, handles every genre, has played all the venues, from the local high school gyms to the outdoor stadiums on bills with The Beach Boys and The Moody Blues, has opened for Ray Charles at Massey Hall – twice – is on a ton of great records and, best of all for us locals, can still be heard plying his craft weekly in Port Credit bars.

He knows his instrument, teaches his instrument, fixes his instrument for the lots of famous players – most of whom he prefers not to name – and lives his instrument. He got famous around town as a teen for playing a killer version of Robert Johnson’s venerable song Crossroad Blues.

With apologies to Mr. Johnson, when John Bride went down to The Crossroads and fell down on his knees, he asked the Lord for mercy and the Lord said – first – play the guitar please.

Welcome to the Mississauga Music Walk of Fame John.

For 36 years, Canada had a Friday night TV date with a lanky troubadour who lived in Mississauga. His name was Tommy Hunter and his game was country music.

He didn’t have hit records. He didn’t dance. He hardly ever wore sequins. He didn’t yodel. All he did was invite a nation onto his front stoop and his back parlour, assemble some friends to sing some familiar songs, get everybody to relax and then entertain them like crazy.

He was that most Canadian of celebrities, a star without apparent ego. He really didn’t need one because he put us all at ease right away, from the cream of the superstar country crop in Nashville to an impossibly young Eileen Edwards — later to become Shania somebody-or-other — making her national TV debut.

The collective blood pressure of the nation started dropping mid-evening as 10 per cent of the country tuned in to see what small pleasures Canada’s “Country Gentleman” had for us this week.

Despite an endless parade of producers who wanted to modernize him, gussy him up and turn him into a showcase for the latest musical trend, Hunter knew his audience well and knew that they wanted the real goods he was delivering – honest music delivered in an honest way.

“I don’t want any hot-shot material,” he once told an interviewer. “When a new writer comes along and says he wants to write comedy, I tell him he’s got learn how to write, “Hello folks,how are you tonight?”
When his audience tuned in, they “wanted to feel like they were putting on an old slipper,” Tommy says. Our feet have never been in such comfortable hands.

They called it The Tommy Hunter Show but they could just as easily have called it what they named a later CBC show — Heartland — because that’s where he touched this country. The show was a kind of regional religion in parts of Canada that otherwise had little in common.

That’s why, when Tommy went out to play the legion halls and churches and community theatres across this land, the public flocked to see him.
Over its lengthy existence, The Tommy Hunter Show had a consistency of character — the host’s character — genial and exuberant and gentle on our minds.

He has a special place in our local history because he wrote our theme song, “Mississauga” when the municipality was incorporated as a city 40 years ago. He even had the foresight to use the future mayor on backing vocals.

The song was his idea and he guided the whole process, getting the studio for free; collecting Mississaugans from all walks of life; putting them on a bus downtown; and making them an integral part of the recording party.
If Tommy Hunter’s one-time background vocalist is known as the “people’s mayor,” then surely Tommy himself should be known as the “people’s troubadour.”

The chorus of his civic theme song urged the listener to “Come on out to Mississauga, it’s the greatest place we know.”

It’s advice the rest of the country should heed — simply because it’s coming from arguably the greatest example of a home-grown, natural story-telling entertainer Canada will ever have the pleasure to know.

Welcome to the Mississauga Walk of Fame, Tommy.

Before Eleanor Calbes, the role of Liat in Rogers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific was a minor speaking part. But when the producers of the 1965 show, overseen by Richard Rodgers himself, heard Eleanor sing as they rehearsed it for the New York City Centre, they came up with an idea.

Why not unleash that amazing vocal instrument on a reprise of Bali H’ai — the song of mystery and enticement that promises that place on the horizon where you can find, “your own special hopes/ your own special dreams.” That way the beautiful song could be reintroduced again later in the show. So the great man himself, Richard Rodgers, was summoned to hear Eleanor sing.

After listening to that sensational young voice sing just a few bars of the tune, Rodgers gave the thumbs up and the role of Liat was now a singing one — with a signature song.

Eleanor Calbes became the first soloist to perform Bali H’ai — and Liat’s longing for that magical place has resonated through every subsequent production of South Pacific. Such is the power of a special voice, and the influence of a special person.

Eleanor Calbes was born in the Philippines in 1940 and began singing in the church in the small town of Aparri where she was born. Blessed with the talent to dance and act as well as sing, Calbes was heard by conductor Nicholas Goldschmidt while on tour. She was riding a bus in Hawaii with the company when it was announced that there was a telegram from Goldschmidt. The bus fell silent as it was revealed that Calbes was being offered a scholarship at the Royal Conservatory Opera School in Toronto. Then the loud cheering began.

Without the means to get to Canada or to live here once she arrived, a determined Calbes set to work. She enlisted the aid of the Philippines Chamber of Commerce in Hawaii, which offered her money for the flight to Canada in return for three free concerts on the islands.

While on that concert tour, her story became public. Once people heard the magnificent voice that was being given an opportunity of a lifetime, perfect strangers helped send her on her way with the spending money she needed.

In Canada she made her mark with the Canadian Opera Company before moving on to Broadway where she performed in The King and I and Lovely Ladies and Gentlemen. She sang the part of Liat in Toronto productions of South Pacific, at the Lincoln Centre and made an appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Her resumé includes performances of Maria in West Side Story in Germany, a command performance for Prince Philip with pianist Victor Borge and concerts in the Great Hall of China. She has performed in The Philippines numerous times, including the premiere of the opera The Black Wolf and a final concert in 2005 with President Gloria Arroyo on hand.

After moving to Mississauga, Eleanor Calbes wasted no time immersing herself in the local artistic community. She became a one-woman building crew for musical theatre in this city and environs. In fact, she really introduced the city to opera, founding the Mississauga City Centre Opera in 1985. Opera thrived here under her watch.

She staged Fiddler on the Roof soon after Meadowvale Theatre opened in the late 1980s and sang the lead role in Madama Butterfly in 1991. Mississauga’s Musician of the Year in 1986, Calbes opened her renowned voice studio four years later.

Her impeccable professional credentials aside, Calbes’ greatest gift to music in Mississauga may be her talent for teaching. “She has a real ability to draw people in and challenge them,” her friend Paul Fletcher says. “She expects more of people than they expect of themselves.”

Example — she put Fletcher’s then 14-year-old daughter Kelly in charge of choreographing a production of Oklahoma at Meadowvale — much to her surprise. Something must have worked as Kelly is now associate choreographer of We Will Rock You in New York.

As Calbes’ own career wound down, she has helped numerous others launch theirs. Her students have worked, and are working, at Stratford, Charlottetown, the Shaw Festival, on Broadway and in London’s West End. They returned en masse to pay tribute to Calbes at her farewell concert last September and the genuine outpouring of love and gratitude on that stage was unmistakable.

Her public voice may be retired but Eleanor’s personal and professional influence reverberates throughout the cultural life of Mississauga – Ontario – Canada – and the Philippines.

When she left her native land for Canada, Eleanor Calbes had $20 in her pocket and a dream in her heart. Through God-given talent, relentless determination and plain hard work, she’s fulfilled that dream and brought her voice, and her passion, to the music she loves.

She meets all of the criteria for induction into the Music Walk of Fame, for she has gained renown on the national and international stage and spent much of the last part of her life enriching the cultural life of Mississauga and passing her gifts on to its future stars.