Cougar Annie revisited
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Music, story and slides at Lions Hall event
The legendary Cougar Annie will be brought to life on Sunday, Nov. 8 at Lions Hall as Katrina Kadoski brings her original songs, stories to the island.
As caretaker at Cougar Annie’s Garden, in its spectacular setting of coastal rainforest in Clayoquot Sound, Kadoski has in many ways inhabited the persona of Cougar Annie since she arrived there two and a half years ago.
“She has been living on the land in a way similar to Annie, and has a personal connection to what it might have felt like to be a young woman, on the land, with all the work, in all kinds of weather,” states press material. “Her show will provide a deeper sense of both the land and the pioneers who lived there.”
The stories of Cougar Annie, who survived in the wilderness by her wily ways, having arrived on these forbidding shores almost 100 years ago, have been the subject of a huge repository of folklore. Kadoski has drawn upon many sources as she composed her more than 30 songs and narrative about this colourful character and her unconventional life.
Having won a Rotary Music youth vocalist scholarship at age 9, she has since become a skilled guitarist and songwriter, and has studied piano and banjo to accompany many years of vocal training in jazz, musical theatre, opera and more. Her voice has been described as powerful, sweet and unapologetic.
Her debut CD of original songs, Whirlpools, was recorded in Calgary and released independently in 1998. She has since performed in Canada, the USA, Ireland and England.
Kadoski will be accompanied by Hugh Fisher on guitar and back-up vocals. Fisher’s music career has spanned 35 years in which he has played in many bands from acoustic folk to big band swing jazz and worked with many creative artists on original music, playing New York’s famed New Music Seminar in 1989 and CBC’s Brave New Waves with 3 O’Clock Train. Fisher released his debut CD of original songs — Civil Tongue — in 1999 and is working with Kadoski toward producing a new CD of their Cougar Annie tales and pioneer ballads in early 2010.
Cougar Annie’s Garden is now owned by the charitable organization Boat Basin Foundation — www.boatbasin.org. The foundation works to maintain the heritage site where Ada Annie Rae-Arthur (Cougar Annie) eked out an existence for herself and her family, and steward the surrounding 177 acres of remote west coast forest that has become the site of an educational retreat facility.
As well as drawing from her original songs on this topic, Kadoski will show a series of slides, both new and old, of the area, accompanied by narrative drawn from her considerable research on the area and Cougar Annie.
Doors for the Nov. 8 show open at 7 p.m. with the performance at 7:30.
Suggested donation is $10 for adults and $5 for children.
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