The following note on Vic Lewis is excerpted from an article in the Canmore Leader, October 28, 1997, announcing the Second Annual Vic Lewis Band Festival.
Named to honour the musician who introduced band music to Bow Valley students in the 1940’s, the Vic Lewis Band Festival will host some of the finest school bands in Alberta.
Vic Lewis moved to Canmore in 1923 when he was 11. His father, a talented musician, told him, “If you want music in the Valley, you’ll have to go to the kids.”
School bands made up only a part of Vic Lewis’s musical career. His ambition as a young man was to become an arranger for big bands and orchestras. He teamed up with many fine musicians who called the Bow Valley home: Louis Trono, Johnny Byers, Jim Hutchings, and Emilio Casale, to name a few, and toured all over Alberta.
The festival is a fitting tribute to a musician whose legacy Bow Valley children are enjoying now. And, as for dedicating a festival for young musicians to Lewis?
“I wasn’t always a musician.”
Vic and Frances (Riva) Lewis
In Canmore Seniors at the Summit, ed. Canmore Seniors Association, 2000, p.242-243.
