A “hidden treasure” was uncovered at Williamson Road Junior Public School in the Beaches area of Toronto. Housed in a room full of keepsakes, the elementary school found an early piece written by piano legend Glenn Gould while preparing for the school’s 100th anniversary in 2014.
The piece titled “Our Gifts,” is dated March 25, 1943 and written when Gould would have been just ten years old. Originally penned in support of the Junior Red Cross, it is scored for piano and two voices (boys and girls) in D major, and would have been sold to raise funds for the charity for 10 cents each. With so few surviving copies, the find represents an important historical discovery.
We are the boys, we are the girls of all the public schools
We have a Red Cross Job to do, to furnish all the tools;
So many fathers, brothers too, may have a chance to live
When wounded on the battlefield, they’ll live because we give
Noble the deed is, though small, the gift of aught we bring,
Whether of time or talents too, or any loving thing
For love for fellow man gives hope, where hope before had fled
And many men will live again, that little gifts have fed
In a nice full-circle moment, the grade 5 and 6 class school choir of Gould’s former elementary school will perform the piece this coming Saturday at the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards Gala. The event will honour Toronto actor R.H. Thomson with a lifetime achievement award.
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