Penny at 80: A note for all occasions

David Sherman

Penny turned 80. She’s having a party. From a distance it could seem that her whole life was a party, but, of course, no one’s is. Penny Rose and her homes have been making people happy here for more than 50 years. It started way back in 1970-something when she drove into Morin Heights with friends in tow and rented a quaint home in the centre of town.

Wasn’t much of a town back then. Not a traffic light to ignore. A couple of stop signs, a small grocer/snack bar/with cheque cashing and credit, a few banks and a post office. She was around the corner from the bus station, now an abandoned lot. The banks are gone and they took their ATMs with ‘em.

The dry good store morphed into a café and there are probably more churches and gravestones off the main street than breathing souls.

What there is and has been since a few years before I came to town is a hell of a lot of music. Call it mortar. And a good part of the great vibe has to do with Penny’s first home. On weekends it became Rose’s Cantina.

The Cantina closed years ago after hosting just about anyone that was anyone on the club circuit from the late Jesse Winchester to the Stephen Barry Band, a motley crew that’ve been playing blues just a few years less than Penny’s been alive.

Her porch was the hippy hang out during the day, jeans with elaborate patches the fashion of the day. On weekends, her living room became an auditorium. And her kitchen turned out dinners and breakfasts for a coterie of musicians, housemates and privileged invitees. Maybe a muffin or a cookie thrown in.

But Friday and Saturday nights were about music. And mingling with the townsfolk you might only see at Penny’s.

Didn’t matter the weather. No booze and drugs were soft and out of sight. In the 70s, smoking dope was a crime though the town had a sheriff with a reputation for occasional blindness.

I came about 50 years ago by happenstance. A guy asked if I wanted to share a small house in Morin Heights. Four bedrooms, a mountain and cross-country ski trails for $150 a month.

It was before the days when everyone was playing cover tunes. Many prided themselves on writing their own tunes and we wanted to hear them. Maybe a little Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan in the stew.

Unlike most, I played typewriter and journalism was my ambition. Walking around town day and night, looking for something to write about, something to sell, something to get a foot in the door, the obvious story was Penny and the Cantina. I wrote it and sold it and began a career on the Titanic that was the newspaper business that forced me to the big city. And Morin Heights was a place to visit from time to time for decades.

Back then, there were no drum machines, computerized rhythm sections or pre-recorded harmonies. It was real music and Penny spent much of her life dishing it out, along with food and an eager audience.

Penny sold the tickets, took the reservations, called you 20 minutes before showtime demanding why you were not in her living room.

Her message was brief, “if you’re breathing, get your ass down here.” Or a variation thereof. Snow storm be damned.

Penny didn’t want anyone playing to empty seats, even if the seat had been paid for. She’s always been the musicians’ friend.

It didn’t end with weekends. The Cantina eventually closed. The storied home, as fits the newcomers and a new generation, is now a daycare.

But Penny continues to bring the town together over extravagant new year’s feasts, outdoor burger barbecues, her porch railing blanketed with salads. And Christmas in February. More food, with guitars and a piano getting a workout along with elbows.

Her mission of bringing the hamlet together has her as town cryer, in English and French. The percentage of Anglos has dropped and Penny started sending out advisories in both our languages. She has mailing lists for all occasions, for people near and far. Might be news of the medical clinic, news from city hall, from a musician passing through or releasing a new CD, an author with a new book. A house concert here, a show at the Legion or at the park. If Penny doesn’t know it’s happening, it ain’t happening.

Super Folk is a relatively new summer music festival she helps organize with vedette Ian Kelly. It also produces a bunch of shows through the year in a variety of venues.

Penny, with her husband, Dave, still breathing life into the town. The demographics have changed. The young newcomers were raised on cover tunes. The hippies are arthritic or walking on titanium. Some aren’t walking.

We were in our 20s then. In our 70s, early 80s now. If we’re lucky.

Penny put on the shows, helped found the theatre that’s thriving, and, along with André Perry and his now-defunct Le Studio, was responsible for putting the little town of Morin Heights on the map of big music.

Like the rest of us, Penny’s aged. She’s a little smaller, but she’s not slower or less determined.

The sound track, the heartbeat of this burg of ski trals and hills, is music, like her heartbeat -- part upright bass, soaring guitar, an aggrieved sax mourning times gone by.

Town is no longer a hippie haven. Young mothers are the most visible, others staring at screens at home or stuck on the 15 south to Montreal.

Penny’s still doing what she always does. She gets your toe tapping, your face smiling, brings neighbours together, brings the town together. There is often music from one end of town to the other. Some she has nothing to do with. But it all has something to do with her.

Happy birthday Penny. Every note has been memorable.