I enjoy travelling to McKellar, north east of Parry Sound to attend the annual Interprovincial Music Camp performance on the Sunday before Labour Day. In February this year, I spotted a hotel room available in North Bay which I’m sure was an error on the part of the management but no matter I grabbed it. North Bay is about an hour and quarter from McKellar; plans were locked, Mumtaz was travelling to the concert with me for the very first time.

IMC Concert

WARNING IMC TALK AHEAD … the rest of our travels follow, feel free to skip this section if you wish.

• Every year (different from my time at IMC) the concert begins with a choir of all campers followed by a performance of campers, staff and faculty that prepared a choral performance. This year the all campers chorus was curated by an Indigenous Music advisor. The performance was great, next year, perhaps a little less exposition would be welcome. I believe that the choral work is a great innovation to the IMC programme.
• This year the performances were organized differently … band performances were presented one after another followed by orchestra performances. No real problem with this but I prefer the old format.
• Another innovation since my time at IMC is that all campers participate in a performance at the end of the concert. Up until last year, this was the Lohengrin Suite by Wagner. There were a lot of problems with this: it is tough to get all 300+ campers into position; the performance really was the symphonic orchestra, you could see that the other musicians weren’t seriously prepared. This year the entire set up was reorganized. The final piece was the very famous “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony; the symphonic orchestra played the exact piece written by Beethoven; the other musicians played supporting parts specially written for the performance; a group of about 30 campers were prepared by the choir master to sing the choral portions. The logistical difficulties were still there but I felt that the result was terrific; a great improvement.

The novice groups were better this year; enjoyable.

The Concert Band was also good, I feel that the conductor should programme a “crowd pleaser” in the future.

The Symphonic Band was also very good although I thought that they were better last year, the final piece “Metroplex; Three Postcards from Manhattan” was great.

Colin Clarke, conductor of the Oakville Youth Orchestra, returned to IMC this year fresh from having been awarded the Order of Canada. I think that he is brilliant and I keep tabs on the excellent OYO. The performance was good with Sabre Dance as the pivotal piece; I felt that the strings were a little weak in one section but I listened to the performance on YouTube and it sounded better to me.

The Symphonic Orchestra was terrific again this year, they played the Carmen Suite Number 1 which I absolutely love and they were great. The second piece Mars by Gustav Holst was performed excellently but is not exactly a favourite of mine.

North Bay

I have flown to North Bay many times but never visited or explored the area. It is only an hour and half from McKellar and we had a room for 2 nights. We were disappointed that the military aviation museum was closed on Labour Day contrary to advertising; otherwise, North Bay has a lot to offer. Prepare for some strenuous hiking at Duchesnay Falls; the Laurentian Ski Hill provides great views of the area and some nice trails as well; the tower at the top of the ski lift was closed for Labour Day but the views purport to be quite spectacular. We also recommend Laurier Woods; they are beautiful and you can walk on trails with virtually no elevation changes; driving to the woods can be quite startling as they are in an industrial area of the city which looks quite bleak until you actually pull into the parking area. Finally the exquisitely maintained lake front including carousels and kiddie trains.

Highway 17 to Ottawa

I’ve wanted to make the North Bay to Ottawa drive on Highway 17 for a long time and we highly recommend it. We enjoyed the drive to Pembroke where we spent a couple of hours. Pembroke is a very nice town with a great river front park. The trip from Pembroke to Ottawa is typical freeway driving. We had a great time in Ottawa otherwise.

The Road Home

The trip home was very familiar for us. It starts with a bagel run at Kettlemen’s and sandwiches for the road. We chose to make the trip very leisurely with 3 stops including a pie purchase at the Big Apple in Colborne Ontario.

The photo below is Mumtaz relaxing after the IMC concert with Lake Manitou Wabing in the background; click on the photo for the photo album or click here for the video slide show.