A Coffee with Broddy Olson from the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra

Join us for a coffee and chat with Broddy Olson from the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. Broddy is the longest serving member of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra!

Born in Edmonton Alberta, Broddy had music in his blood, his father had opened the Olson Music School. At 17 he auditioned for the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and he hasn't looked back since. Broddy met the love of his life, Patty, in University, they soon got married in 1967. Patty suffered a tragic accident in 1983 that left her as a quadriplegic. Broddy stayed by her side through it all and helped get medical advancements into Canada for her. They spent 47 wonderful years together before her passing in 2014. Today you can still find Broddy playing with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. 

Transcript

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Well, hello, everybody. Cam Milliken here with another edition of our ABA Coffee In The Park. And I am here with my co-host extraordinaire, Jennifer Herrick, the Executive Director of the Acheson Business Association. Hi, Jennifer. Hi, Cam, how are you today? Oh, I'm fantastic. It's a great day. We're doing this podcast on a Monday. We usually do it on a Tuesdays. So we got a little bit of the Monday blues, but things are good. Things are really good. Yep, anything new and exciting you want to tell us about? Well, Sunday was the first day of fall. I know people have heard us talk that it's fall, but technically it wasn't fall until yesterday. And so it's officially fall. It's officially fall. And it feels like fall. It does. Yeah, fantastic. But that means winter is coming. But it's okay. We won't talk about winter. So fantastic. Hey, tell us a little bit about our sponsors. So we would like to thank our gold corporate sponsors, which include the MyShak Group of Companies, Genics, and of course, Parkland County. We want to thank these individual businesses for all they do and their continued support of the Acheson Business Association. Yes, and without them, we could not do what we do. So thank you, everybody. And you know what, Jennifer, thank you everybody for listening. We are over... Over 2,000. 2,000 downloads. Cam, did you ever think we'd get to over 2,000 downloads? I did not, Jennifer. And when I look at where they're all listening to, all around the world, they're listening to us. That's incredible. It is incredible. So wherever you're listening, thank you. Yes, thank you very much. And for those who are listening to us now, we want you to know that we are coming from The Wall Coffee Roasters in beautiful downtown Acheson. That's right, everybody. So if you hear some noise in the background, maybe some coffee being made, some people talking, some kids, my phone going off, that kind of stuff, that's because we are live at The Wall Coffee Roasters. So sorry about that. Normally, I shut my phone off. But yeah, I just did now. So anyway, that's great. And today, I'm so excited. We have an incredible guest today. And Jennifer, I'm going to let you introduce them. So go ahead. So for those listening, today's guest is a bit unique and different from the guests you might have heard us have on the show before. That's right. But we are thrilled to have Broddy Olson, who is the longest serving member of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. That's right. And we're going to get to that in just a moment or two. Broddy, welcome. Welcome, Broddy. Thank you. Thank you. On a Monday. On a Monday. Afternoon. Afternoon. It's good to have you. And the oiler season started yesterday. The oiler, that's right. I was at the game. Yeah, it was good. Did they win? Yeah, they won. In overtime. Yeah, it was really good. Anyway, you're right. We get back into it. But hey, Broddy, you and I have known each other. We figured it out for 46 years. 46 years. It was 47 earlier, so we've dropped the years. So that's good. 46 years, you and I have known each other. And when I moved away, we didn't talk much. And then I moved back and we reconnected. And I'm really excited about that. And I thought, man, you would be a great guest to have on our Coffee In The Park podcast and was telling Jennifer and she agreed. So thank you for doing this today. My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. So yeah. So let's kick it off. Broddy, tell us a little bit about yourself and where you grew up. Well, I was born in Edmonton. The first of five kids. My mom was Ukrainian. My dad was Norwegian. And they met in 1931. because in 1929 and 1930, it didn't rain in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. And there was a problem because the farmers couldn't plant their crops. And so in 1931, they planted their crops and were ready to go. But the bank kicked them all off their farms. 2800 farmers. Wow. And that's how mom and dad met because mom came to Edmonton to go to the McTavish Business College to learn how to be a secretary. And dad came and he didn't do anything other than work for a grocer. Who said, You don't want to be doing this for the rest of your life. And dad at the age of 18 said, Yeah, I'd like to study the violin. And so the grocer said, Okay, I'll line it all up. And so at the age of 18, dad started the violin and he had his lessons at one and two o'clock in the morning. because back then you didn't have your lessons at four or five and six. You were too busy making ten cents a day. Wow. So, he worked all day. Worked all day. And lessons at night. And he had a lesson at one in the morning. And so on the day of the lesson, Mr. McDonald would say, Okay, look, go home and have a little nap and, warm up your hands and, but make sure you're here tomorrow at 7 a.m. So dad back then, when he was 23, he decided to open up a music school. And so he decided to open his first music school here in Edmonton. And we taught in group. And we brought instruments in by the train load from Czechoslovakia and Western Germany. And we had hundreds and hundreds of students. And it wasn't our aim to develop people that were going to go into the music business. But we wanted to have people realize that music, here's our motto, music calms the savage heart of man. Wow. And that was our motto. Yeah. And so to get students, to get students, we went from door to door. And if we came to your house and your mom and dad said, yeah, we'd like to have our boys study the violin, we would look around. And if you had new furniture and a new car, we would teach you for half price. If you had old furniture and an old car, we taught you for free. Really? That's how you figured it? That's yeah. And we did hundreds of hundreds of people. And so even today, it's quite the thing because I have people coming up to me that say they studied with me back in 1963. And I say, well, you haven't you haven't changed a bit. Yeah, that's amazing. I had no idea. Yeah. So how big was the music school? Well, we had like a thousand students. And what was the name of the music school? Olson Music School. And where where was it located in Edmonton? 103rd Street, south of Jasper. Really? Yeah. I didn't know that. That's incredible. Yeah. And how long how long was it open for? Well, dad started it in 19. Let's see now. It was 1936. He started it and and he passed away in 73. Okay. And so he got me going when I was 12 years old. He said, Okay, you're going to start repairing instruments. And when you're 14, you're going to start teaching. And so so consequently, we taught it. We taught in group. And it was a fantastic thing for for the parents because the mothers would come down. And this was during those days in the 30s. I mean, we're talking about the Great Depression. Yes. Yes. We're talking then we're into a war. Yeah. And we're talking into all kinds of things. And so this was a tremendous break for the mothers to come down to the lessons and come with their kids. And it was a great social event for the mothers and the fathers and we had concerts that we put on at the Jubilee Auditorium. And it was starting in 1955 and hundreds and hundreds of students. And so you would come to us and after you completed your first year, we would give you that first violin as a graduation gift. And then we would give you another violin. Really? We supplied everything, the violin, the bow, the rosin, the chin rest, the case. We supplied everything to you. That's incredible. And so it was it was quite a thing because to have someone study the violin and start at the age of 18 is miraculous in itself. And the teacher that taught him was a guy by the name of Roderick Cook. That's how I got my name Brodrick. Roderick, Brodrick. And so Brodrick was too much of a handle so they changed it to Broddy to make it easier to speak. And so did you only teach violin, just violin? No, we taught Hawaiian guitar too. Really? Yeah. And dad went to Hawaii in 1955 and came back and said, Oh, this is awesome. And so we started teaching the Hawaiian guitar. You mean the ukulele? No, not the ukulele. It was the Hawaiian guitar that you lay across your lap. Oh, yeah, yeah. And so people took to that like anything. And then what happened is that Elvis Presley came in. They didn't want to study Hawaiian guitar anymore. They wanted rock and, you know. They wanted to do rock and roll. I don't know. I bet there was a time when Elvis used one of those anyways. Yeah, it could have been. That's incredible. So what happened is that dad wanted me to think about going into music. And so in 1960, April 1 of 1960, we had a violinist come to town, Isaac Stern. And what happened is that Isaac Stern came to town and our family was given the responsibility to host them after a concert. Right. So what happened is that he came over and dad said, would you come downstairs and listen to my son Broddy play? So Isaac Stern came downstairs to listen to me play. And afterwards I played and Isaac Stern said, you know, Mr. Olson, that chair can play better than your son. So dad said, well, where should I send him so that he can start to play better than the chair? And he said, Ivan Glomian in Juilliard School of Music in New York. So that was April. And in September, I ended up at Juilliard. I was only 16, only. So you went, did you graduate high school? Yeah. Yeah. What high school did you go to? Strathcona. Strathcona Composite. Okay. Strathcona Composite. So you went to New York at the age of 16. Yeah. And you know what? I was green as grass. You know, I was a big fish here in Edmonton, but I was a small little minnow there in New York, because you have people from all over the world coming there, right? And so my very first lesson with this great impresario, it was eight o'clock in the morning on a Saturday, and he had, he had, he had chairs all lined up, and every six, every six feet he had, he had a cigarette tray, and so he, as soon as he would use up one cigarette, he would go to another cigarette, but I couldn't understand what he was saying. He threw me out. I was the first one that got thrown out. But you know, I went there for only one year. I made the best decision of my life is to come back to Edmonton. Yeah. because if I would have stayed there in New York, I would have, I wouldn't have been good enough to get into New York, Philharmonic or the Boston Symphony or something like that. I would have been probably married to some gal from Connecticut or something and never coming back here and all this sort of stuff and having nine kids in Connecticut. Can you imagine that? Nine Broddies. In Connecticut. In Connecticut, yeah, of all places. No offense if anyone listens to us in Connecticut. If we have any Connecticut listeners, good place. Broddy just decided not to go there. I came back to Edmonton and I auditioned for the symphony at the age of 17 and I got into the symphony. Really? Yeah. The Edmonton Symphony? Yeah. Wow. So you left New York. Yeah. You came back to Edmonton. Came back to Edmonton, got into the symphony. Got into the symphony. And enrolled at the university here. And it was a community orchestra. It was a community orchestra where we rehearsed at night. So that meant that all the doctors and the dentists and the lawyers and everybody that were making real money during the day, they played in the symphony at night. We did that until I decided in 1969 to write a master agreement to make it into a daytime full time orchestra. So I wrote the first draft agreement of the Edmonton Symphony and I took the contracts of Montreal and Toronto and Chicago and Cleveland and I cherry picked them all and came up with a draft copy of a master agreement. And so we became a full time daytime orchestra in September of 1971. It was during that year also where we did some innovative things in the symphony. We were the first orchestra in the world for instance to do a live recording with a rock band and that was with Procol Harum live with the Edmonton Symphony. Come on! Yeah, so that was in 1971. Our conductor was Lawrence Leonard and he was so embarrassed to be associated with a rock band that he didn't allow his name to be put on the jacket. So here's the question, if we go to iTunes, can we download any of this? Yeah. Okay folks, so you need to go check this out. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Procol Harum live with the Edmonton Symphony. They were big, they were big. So that's wow, that's really incredible. Okay, so now you're in the symphony. Yeah, now we're in the symphony and we're in the early 70s. And we're a very innovative orchestra. We were doing stuff because back then, Dr. Allard owned ITV. Right. And he also won, in 1974, he owned the Oilers. He was in the World Hockey League. That's right. And so he, Tommy Banks, which was a big name. Tommy Banks and Wendell Wilkes, who worked at ITV. They talked him into doing what is called the ITV In Concert Series. So the very first thing that we were doing would we make live one-hour programs in Edmonton at the Jubilee Auditorium. The first one we did was Tom Jones. The second one a week later was Engelbert Humperdinck. And so after that, people from LA and Vegas were coming here because they say, hey, this orchestra can do this. And so we did 48 of them. How many? 48. 48 from 1973 until about 1978, something like that. Unbelievable. I didn't know any of this. And I grew up in Edmonton. I didn't know this. Yeah. Well, it was an incredible thing. Back when we were auditioning people to come into the symphony, when you wanted to get into the symphony, we knew everything about you. We knew your name, your age, everything, who you studied with. Right. But we found it to be very, very dishonest, because let's say, for instance, if you were on the audition committee and you would say, well, I don't want to hire any more women, or I don't want to hire any more men, or whatever, whatever. So we had a problem with that. So I was a chairman of the players committee back then, and I said to the conductor, I said, our next master agreement, we're going to take away half of your power, and also we're going to set up a screen. We were the first orchestra in the world to set up a screen, so that when you come to audition with us, we have no idea who you are now. So they're behind the screen, you don't see them. And not only that, we have a rug, so you can't walk on floor to give away whether you're a male or a female. So you're wearing heels or what you're wearing. So every orchestra in the world pretty much does that now, except Berlin and Chicago. My goodness, that's unbelievable. Broddy, this is unbelievable. You're blowing my mind because I didn't know any of this. This is really incredible. We talked earlier, we could probably do part two, three and four of all of this, but it's sort of to keep us moving today. So you're in the symphony. I believe you became assistant concertmaster. Yeah, I was very, very fortunate. After I'd been in the orchestra for a few years, I became assistant concertmaster in 1965. So I was the assistant concertmaster for 45 years. But what happened in 2016, I found out I had a tumor in my ear, my right ear, an acoustic neuroma. And so I stepped back and so now I still play in the symphony. And I jokingly tell everybody that I'm a model. And you know, when people see me, they believe me, of course, that I'm an international model. We'll put pictures all over social media, folks, and you can make your own. I'm not saying nothing. You make your own judgment. Okay, so I want to just go to another sort of... So you met Patty. Tell us about Patty. Yeah, the love of my life was Patty. We met in university, and we met in a sociology class together. And I decided to take her out, and we played tennis. And that's one of the things I learned very early on. Never with your significant other, play a racket sport. Never play tennis or badminton or because, or anything like that. because if you hit it back and you look at your watch and wonder if it's going to come back in a half an hour later, you've got a problem on your hands needlessly. So I said, okay. The day after, after we did tennis, when she was cheesed off with me, we went go-karting. Well, she was slamming in to me and I this crazy woman, what's the matter with her anyway? She's slamming into me. But two weeks later, I said to her, you know, dear, we're going to get married. And she said, well, aren't you even going to ask me? And I said, I'm not that dumb. I said, if I ask you, you might say no. So I said, I'm just going to tell you. So that's what happened. So I said, but you've got to make sure you graduate so that if times aren't going so well in the music world, you can support me as a school teacher. Right. So she, yeah, she was in education. So in 1983, in 1983, she took a bunch of kids on this skiing trip to Kelowna. And on the way back, the bus hit some black ice outside of Lake Louise and went into a spin. And she was thrown over the driver's shoulder through the windshield where she landed on the highway and she broke her neck and she severed her spinal column. And so she was a quadriplegic. And this was in February of 1983. So, you weren't with her? No. When the accident happened? You were here in Edmonton? I was here in Edmonton. Yeah. And they phoned me. It happened early on at 2 o'clock in the morning on a Sunday morning and they called me. And so Laurie Bertig, actually our music pastor at Central, he drove me down to Calgary to see with Patty. And so I got to the hospital there and the first words that came out of her mouth was, I know I'm only a neck and a head, but please don't leave me. And I'm almost going to cry right now. Can I just, excuse me, I just want to interject a little here. And this is how you and I, I know you a little bit is we went to the same church and I will never forget that Sunday morning, we noticed so Laurie Bertig was the music pastor of our church. And that Sunday, Laurie wasn't there. And I remember the pastor, Jim McKnight, I believe. Jim got up that Sunday, I think it was Jim. Bob Johnson. Bob Johnson got up and said that Laurie was not here because he had been with you and had gone with Patty and he told us what happened. And I remember we sat there that Sunday morning in just awe, just in shock, just in shock of what had happened. You were both, and Patty was so alive in the church, we all knew her, she loved on us kids and us teenagers, and we knew you, and it was unbelievable. Well, you know, it was an incredible thing because it gave me a chance to do a lot of things where most couples don't get that chance. You know, we grow up, we get educated, we get married, and then we're so busy, each of us, that we don't spend that much time with one another. And it's a silly thing to say really, but this gave us an opportunity to spend so much time together. And we decided that the glass is always going to be half full, it's never going to be half empty. And we always look at it and say, no matter how bad it might look, there's always people that have it worse. And we go along that way. And we thanked the Lord for the idea that she was alive. She still had her faculties, her mental faculties. And so we decided to embark on a situation to try to make it better for handicapped people with spinal cord injuries. Right after she was out of the hospital and she was in the hospital for 13 months, the engineering, rehabilitation engineering department phoned us and said, would you bring Patty down to our lab and train a robot to respond to Patty's voice? So we did that week after week after week. And the robot's name was, we named it Herman. So Patty was training Herman to act, to open the fridge and to move chairs and to do this and this, that, whatever. And one day I woke up and I said, you know, I don't think this whole program is going to work. And the reason being is I got the whole crew together and I said, look, let's say you're preparing supper and, okay kids, time for supper. The kids don't react. Well, you don't say the second time at that same level of volume, okay kids, you raise your voice. And that's the thing that's going to hamper this whole project with Herman. because if we're training Herman to operate at a certain level of a volume and a certain timbre, if she raises her voice or if she's sick or if this, that or whatever, her voice isn't quite right, Herman won't react. And let's say there's a baby on the floor, Herman could walk right over the baby or if Herman was faced towards the dining room window, could walk right through the window. So I said, no, no, we don't want this anymore. I want the state of the art. And the state of the art at that time was in Cleveland, at a little hospital, the Metropolitan General Hospital in Cleveland, operating through the Case Western University. And they had the best spinal cord injury program in North America. So I said to the rehab guy, I said, okay, get us there. So we got there, and back then, this was 1984 now, when Patty was out of the hospital. They didn't believe in leg bags at that time here in Canada. It was intermittent catheterization. And Patty was so fortunate that when she had to void, she would get some shivers. And she would say to me, oh, I have to void now. So here we are in the downstairs with seven specialists regarding spinal cord injuries. And Patty says, well, she has to void. So the doctors are so astonished, they took her right down to the emergency and got an indwelling catheter put in her. And that changed our life because what happened is with intermittent catheterization, you and I don't know that we have a spastic bladder until you have a spinal cord injury. And so it meant that if we were going to go out tomorrow, I would have to say to Patty, well, you can't drink today. And when you say that to someone, they crave water more. So it meant it was really a problem for us because we would decide to get ready to go at 9 o'clock. And we wouldn't be able to get out of the house until 1 o'clock. And it meant we had to be home at 4 o'clock. And so it just really hampered us. So we got involved with this program, was called the FES program, which is the functional electronic program. And what they do is they put wires into your wrist and they put about 20 wires in your wrist. And it goes to different widths and different lengths and different heights of your arm. And then they put a little computer here on this side, on the other side of the shoulder. And when that would go on, she'd become bionic. And so we thought we'd be there for a week. We were there for four months by the time we got this all figured out in Cleveland there. I got to be good friends with the doctors and they were very avid fishermen. And they had told me when they accepted us into the program that they had raised 2.8 million US for to take care of all the medical costs as long as we paid for the airfare, the hotels and the car rentals. So I said, oh yeah, that's awesome. So I was so indebted to the doctors for arranging this money that I said to them, you guys are interested in fishing, I'm going to take you on a real fishing trip. You come to Edmonton and we're going to go to Andrew Lake Lodge. And so we're going to fly to Hay River and we're going to take a float plane into Andrew Lake Lodge. You're going to catch like 50 fish a day there. And they were in their glory. And I said, in the boat, I said, I've just figured out a way in which we can bring what your technology is in the States into Canada. I said, in the Toronto Children's Hospital, there are a couple of grandchildren of some wealthy Canadians who have spinal cord injuries. So when you guys get back to Cleveland, you're going to go to the Toronto Children's Hospital for three weeks, then bring the Toronto Children's guys down to Cleveland, and then we're going to get the wealthy families putting heat on the Parliament. And that's what happened. So the kind of stuff that we got back, we got done in Cleveland in 1984, you can now get done in Edmonton. So tell me, tell us Broddy, I mean, obviously this changed your lives. It changed your lives. Were you still playing in the symphony at the time? Yeah, I continued to play and I, you know, most people thought, well, there's no way that you can continue if you're going to be looking after your wife and this sort of stuff. And I said, you know what? I'm tougher than you think. Yeah. I'm tougher mentally than you think. So, you know, we had caregivers with Patty and our first caregiver was 58 when she came with us and when she turned 65, she got married. I found her a boyfriend. Yeah. So, then we had many other caregivers along the way. And we did an awful lot of things together. Yeah. And so, the number of times you would have seen Patty, you never would have seen her down. No, never. She was smiling all the time and happy. And she was absolutely... She always had a smile on her face. She'd always say hi. She was wonderful. She was amazing. It was a privilege and an honor to be married to her, frankly. Patty passed away. She had a massive heart attack in the Grey Nuns Hospital on July 9th of 2014. Wow. And we didn't know that she had significant heart disease. Yeah. But she did. And, you know, from 1983 until 2014, you know, when you look at all those numbers of years, it was enough. We hated to lose her here on earth, but it was good for her. Yeah. Yeah. An incredible story. Isn't it? Unbelievable. And I will echo and say it. Anytime I saw you and Patty together, you were such an encouragement to people. It never was a downer. It always, it was you walked away feeling, feeling, you walked up to you feeling, oh man, this must be tough. And you walked away saying, these people are incredible. They just, I want to be like them. I want to be like them. And so, you have been an incredible inspiration, Broddy, to so many people. And I think only heaven will reveal how many, but you have been an incredible inspiration. We have such a high divorce rate in North America, and maybe in the world in general. And the thing is, is that I always looked at it and thought, well, if the tables were reversed, and I had been the one that had been injured, you know, how would it have felt if I would have had a wife that would have walked away? And so, you know, you look at things that way and you say, well, you know what? Married for better, for worse. I'm going to hang in here no matter what. And we're going to try to make it as happy as we can. Yeah. Fantastic. It is. What a story. Absolutely. So it's it's incredible. And and now you still continue to play for the ESO. Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm we're starting we're starting on October 2nd again with our season. And before the COVID hit, we would do approximately 115 to 120 concerts a year. And now we're probably doing, well, I don't know, maybe 95 to 100. But we start again in our in our season and we play for the opera and we play for the ballet. And we do like something that is I always tell people, well, make sure you go to the Nutcracker Ballet every December and make sure you make sure you go to the Messiah. Yeah. At the at the Winspear. Also in December. Well, this easily could have been part one, part two, part three. For sure. For sure. But we do have a final question that we do ask all of our guests. So we're going to ask you right now. We never let our guests know what this question is, because we're always amazed at the answer people come up with. So Broddy, tell us the best piece of advice you've been given, either personally or professionally, that you carry with you to this day. Make sure that you're responsible, reliable, and consistent, and live a life that you would want everybody to live. If you had that chance. Yeah. And yeah. That's good. It is. That's good. So now, we have a very first on our podcast, and we're going to ask Broddy to play us out on his violin. And he brought his violin along. So you probably need a second to get that ready. So we'll let you do that. And. That's a first, never had that. We have not, that was beautiful. Broddy, from the bottom of our hearts. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Unbelievable, thank you so much. We appreciate you sharing your story, coming, playing for us. Folks, get out to the ESO. Lots of good stuff there. You'll want to hear them. You'll want to hear Broddy. And thanks, man. Where, if people wanted to go to the ESO, where can they buy tickets? You can go online, edmontonsymphony.ca. You can go online, edmontonsymphony.ca. Or you can phone the box office, which is 780-428-1414. And tell them you want to get a copy of all the concerts that we do, and then you can pick and choose. You can call me up if you don't know what to go to, and we'll figure out concerts to go to. Right on. And we'll go for pizza after. Okay, you heard it here, folks. Violin music and pizza, I know better. So thanks again, Broddy. Love you, man. Appreciate you. Thank you so much.