had a 350-person tent, a backup band called the Bar X Boys, and a trick horse named Kitten. The horse had a repertoire of stunts, including knot untying and kneeling in prayer. For what was called the automobile act, she rested on her back while Edwards sat on her belly holding a front hoof in each hand, as though steering.
At each show, a young girl from the audience was brought before Kitten. Asked how many children she would bear, the horse would slowly paw at the dirt, until the crowd collapsed in laughter as the count reached thirteen, fourteen and sometimes fifteen.
The travelling menagerie eventually included Babe the singing dog, Blackie the high-diving dog, and Butch the walking Dalmatian, who could traverse 400 metres on his hind legs while carrying a 2.5-metre pole balanced on his front paws. Pearl Edwards performed in the circus as a featured attraction billed as “Pearl the Elephant Girl.” Dressed in frilly costumes of her own design and making, her act included standing on the shoulders of a rearing elephant named Susie. The talented pachyderm was also capable of playing the harmonica, a skill that eluded her biped partner.
Edwards moved his radio show to CKNW in New Westminster in 1947, when much of the listening audience on the outskirts of Vancouver was still living a rural life. He began recording in Toronto in 1949 for RCA Victor, releasing singles and albums on the Camden label. Many of his compositions were also recorded by other artists, including My Nova Scotia Home, My Fraser Valley Home and Beautiful British Columbia. He had a penchant for Wilf Carter tunes, several of which can be found on his recordings. A man whose livelihood had depended on keeping abreast of technological change—from radio to 78 rpm records to 33⅓ vinyl to cassettes to compact discs—was not cowed by the computer age. Alberta Slim sold music online from his personal website.
Edwards and his wife moved to New Westminster outside Vancouver in 1947, later settling on the south side of the Fraser River in Surrey. They wintered in British Columbia and spent their summers criss-crossing the nation.
The couple decided to abandon their itinerant life after the birth of their second child. The circus critters were sold, save for Kitten Jr., which was taught a repertoire of tricks in the family’s basement. The colt performed at charity functions.
Alberta Slim continued to record and perform, while Pearl Edwards operated the family’s Bar X Motel on the King George Highway. The couple also operated a mortgage brokerage business known as Bar X Enterprises, through which they purchased, improved and resold residential properties.
Every August, Pearl returned briefly to her former carnie life by working the midway at the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver. Her game was Duck Pond, in which a small prize was guaranteed all players. It was her particular skill to encourage fathers and boyfriends to spend large sums—one quarter at a time—in an effort to win a large stuffed animal.
A year before his death, Alberta Slim released a cassette tape including a new composition, The Phantom of Whistler Mountain, to celebrate the awarding of the 2010 Winter Olympics.
While cowboy music fell out of style long ago, Edwards enjoyed a revival in recent years for his dedication to an almost-lost form. His ninety-second birthday was celebrated at the Railway Club, a hipster hangout in Vancouver. He also performed at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival and the Stan Rogers Folk Festival in Canso, Nova Scotia. A display honouring Edwards can be found at the Apple Capital Museum in Berwick, Nova Scotia, in the heart of the Annapolis Valley. In 2003, he received a lifetime achievement award from the BC Country Music Association.
That same year, he appeared on the main stage at Rootsfest in Sidney, north of Victoria. His appearance at a workshop with Amy Sky, Stephen Fearing and John Mann of Spirit of the West was notable for the enthusiasm of Edwards’s yodeling. His white hair cascading past his shoulders, a cowboy hat on his head, he yodeled until he was nearly hoarse, as though he knew time was limited and he had better yodel while he could.
December 6, 2005
Alberta Slim began his country music career during the Depression by hopping on freight trains and singing for his supper. He played and toured until 2003 when, at age ninety-three, he could no longer travel to perform. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CALGARY PUBLIC LIBRARY, COMMUNITY HERITAGE AND FAMILY HISTORY DIGITAL LIBRARY
John Juliani
Theatre Director, Founder of Savage God
(March 24, 1940—August 21, 2003)
John Juliani was a provocateur in life as on stage. A man passionate about the possibilities of theatre, he roused reverence in some, antipathy in others.
His most infamous act was to challenge the Stratford Festival’s newly hired artistic director to a duel. Robin Phillips’s offence was that he was British when Juliani and others were certain a land as grand as Canada was capable of producing a director for its Shakespearean theatre. What he called a “romantic gesture with tongue in cheek” earned cheers from Canadian theatre directors and sneers from much of the theatre establishment.
Juliani was an unabashed Canadian nationalist, a dedicated fan of the avant garde, an ardent defender of the right of actors to a decent living, a champion of playwright George Ryga and a tireless figure so commanding as to develop an intense loyalty among acolytes.
At the same time, he was seen as a kook, a dilettante and a street fighter. One critic called him “the Tiger Williams of Canadian theatre,” his pugnacious approach earning him comparison to a notorious hockey goon. In his defence, Juliani explained that he was merely a “true believer” with opinions on controversial subjects.
Juliani’s credits were long and varied, including spontaneous sixties street happenings such as the staging of his own wedding as a theatrical performance and brief appearances on such 1990s television dramas as The X-Files.
From 1982 until 1997, Juliani was executive producer of radio drama for CBC Radio in Vancouver. He helped to bring to air many celebrated productions, including the provocative Dim Sum Diaries by playwright Mark Leiren-Young.
Juliani also possessed a head-turning beauty with a profile as striking as a Roman bust. Radio host Bill Richardson commented on his handsomeness at a raucous memorial after his death, calling him a “hunka hunka burnin’ love.” Some said he had the looks and bearing of a Shakespearean king.
John Charles Juliani was born in Montreal and raised in a working-class neighbourhood. He attended Loyola College and was an early graduate from the fledgling National Theatre School. He spent two seasons as an actor at Stratford before being hired as a theatre teacher at Simon Fraser University in 1966. The new university atop Burnaby Mountain east of Vancouver was a hotbed of radicalism in politics and the arts. Juliani bristled at an imposed curriculum and so infuriated the administration that he was banned from the campus in 1969.
Juliani was heavily influenced by the writing of Antonin Artaud, a Surrealist who championed a theatre based on the imagination. He long sought to erase the barrier between scripted text and sensory impression, between performer and audience, to mixed success.
After moving to the West Coast, Juliani launched a series of experiments in theatre. He credited these productions to Savage God, which was less a troupe in the traditional sense than a title granted to any performance involving Juliani. The name came from William Butler Yeats’ awestruck reaction to Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi: “After us, the Savage God?”
Savage God defied explanation, though many tried and even Juliani offered suggestions. Savage God was “an anthology of question marks,” he once said. (It
