How Anne Murray's hometown honoured her in 1989
Singer from Springhill, N.S. didn't want a museum, but agreed to a centre
How should a proud community honour its most famous living export? If it wants to maintain the export's co-operation, words matter.
"We don't call it a museum, Valerie," singer Anne Murray told Midday host Valerie Pringle on May 17, 1989, about six weeks before the opening of a new building honouring her in Springhill, N.S. "We call it a centre."
Murray, whose rendition of the song Snowbird reached gold record status in 1970 and made her a household name in Canada and around the world, was donating her personal memorabilia for the centre.
Murray told Pringle she still spent six weeks every summer in Nova Scotia.
Sodbusting in Springhill
When Murray returned to Springhill in June 1987, the town had been "sprucing up" for the occasion, reported the CBC's Lena Sadewskyj for the local Halifax news program 1st Edition. Murray had just donated $100,000 to the local hospital.
"And she's about to break ground on a new museum," added the reporter, who described Murray as "the most famous singer in Canada."
Springhill residents shared fond memories and noted Murray was "very much admired" in town before the singer set to her task.
"Are we all ready?" asked Murray, shovel in hand, as a crowd of onlookers cheered and applauded while the singer placed her red leather boot onto the shovel to break ground.
Holding up a framed gold record, Murray explained in a speech that it had been given to her on an American TV talk show in 1970.
"It kind of symbolizes how this whole thing all began," she said. The record, commemorating her hit Snowbird, would be the first exhibit in the new centre, said Sadewskyj.
'I emptied my house'
Almost two years later, as the Springhill building was nearing opening day, Murray made it clear the project wasn't a museum, but a centre devoted to her accomplishments.
"I nixed the museum very early on," Murray told Pringle during their interview. "They can call it that when I'm gone."
The singer, who first gained notice as a member of the cast on the CBC production Singalong Jubilee in 1966, said she had made some considerable donations to fill the centre, as had her mother.
"I just emptied my house into the centre, where people can see all the memorabilia for the last 20 years," Murray said.
'A shrine to a small-town girl'
Murray was back in Springhill for the opening of the centre that bore her name on July 28, 1989.
"It's a shrine to a small-town girl who fulfilled all her dreams and more," said CBC reporter Paul Jones on 1st Edition.
Archival video showed Murray in performance as Jones enumerated some of her many accomplishments, which to that point included winning 26 Juno Awards and 10 Grammys.
Opening day was "like a holiday," said Jones, who said "everyone in town" had come out to see Murray.
In the former mining town, where the population had dwindled by half since Murray's birth there, the centre was viewed as "an economic shot in the arm."
Murray herself grasped for the words to describe the feeling of seeing a tribute to her in her hometown. According to Jones, the centre had been built at a cost of $1.5 million and was expected to attract between 60,000 and 90,000 visitors per year.
"I'm sort of numb," said Murray at a press conference. "It's a very unusual experience."
Murray is the subject of a new documentary, Anne Murray: Full Circle, playing in cinemas across Canada on Dec. 2 before coming to CBC-TV and CBC Gem on Friday, Dec. 17.
