Season 1

After fate steals Arthur Delamont a Hereford born, Salvation Army trumpet player’s triumphal return to England as a member of the Territorial Staff Band of the Salavation Army in 1914, he travels to Vancouver where season 1 follows him and his new musical family up to the outbreak of the Second World War. He always tempts fate doing the impossible. He gathers together a bunch of neighbourhood boys who have never even seen a musical instrument let alone play one and declares his boy’s band will be better than any other youth band, even better than most adult bands. He has a lot to prove.

His first group of boys all come from the neighbourhood of Kitsilano. There is Gordy McCullough the quintessential man about town, the caustic and formidable Stu Ross and the likeable Ardie Steeves. Jack Read is kind and tolerant and Norrie Pearson is a champion cricket player. The funny and unpredictable is there in the likes of Mickey Crawford and Doug Cooper is another. Doug has an offbeat sense of humor. Jim Findlay’s father is a magistrate and Phoebe Findlay, Jim’s sister also wants to play flute. Mae Scott is the daughter of the head gardener at the McRae estate, Hycroft. Jim McCullock is smitten. Sisters Joan Agnew who has designs on the son of our hero and Lois are two more. Lois later becomes a singer in Irving Lozier’s dance orchestra. Pete Watt turns out to be a very good softball pitcher. Teddy Reiser, Pete Humphreys and Harold Atkinson become the new stars and personalities later in the decade as do many others.

The season follows their adventures as Arthur Delamont prepares his band to win the provincial, national and world junior band championships before truiumphantly returning to England with his band billed as The Most Famous Boys Band in the World, twenty years after the ill-fated voyage of the Empress of Ireland. He now has a date with destiny and returns three times with his boys that decade to England. They are always breaking new ground and doing the impossible, travelling in two Pullman cars across Canada and then by ocean liner to England in a depression when no one has any money. The trips are three and four months in duration and they are hired out to play like professionals on the vaudeville circuit even though their ages are between twelve and eighteen. Our hero, becomes a legend in Vancouver and in England beating the best, always tempting fate by going one step further than anyone else.

The end of season one finds Arthur Delamont and his boys in England on a bus at night speeding down a country road under the cover of barrage balloons, search lights and flack guns, as they have been told by the war department: GET OUT OF ENGLAND NOW! He makes some quick calculations and decides if they are chased back across the Atlantic by a U-boat, they will be safer on the Empress of Britain than on the Athenia which is the ship they came over on so they head for Southampton. After a few days at sea, news arrives that the Athenia was sunk by a U-boat. Arthur confesses to his wife that he should not have risked it all and come on this trip, both his band and his family. He vows to never risk it all again but he is a driven man. His boys have done it all but there is lots more to do as he is determined to never to let fate get the upper hand again. Always taking chances with a singleness of purpose, will he be able to outrun fate and if so, for how long? We don’t find out for a while.

Season 1 Episode 1

Season 1 Episode 2

Season 1 Episode 3

Season 1 Episode 4

Season 1 Episode 5

Season 1 Episode 6

Season 2

Season two the war years, introduces a new cast of boys to replace the first who go off to fly Lancasters, Spitfires and Mozzies in the skies above Britain and Europe, many pay the supreme sacrifice and become known as the greatest generation. Some notable boys join the band in Season 2 such as Ray Smith who goes on to become the CEO of Macmillan Bloedel Western Canada’s largest forest  company. Another is Jimmy Pattison who is today Western Canada’s most-famous entrepreneur and billionaire. Al Colette also joins. His parents have a farm in the Fraser Valley. He is very good and plays first trumpet in the Vancouver Junior Symphony. He could become a professional musician but he prefers life on the farm. Bruce Ailsbury also joins. Then there is poor Bill Harvey who is the recipient of an ink well full of ink poured over his head. Boys will be boys but wait, the boys didn’t do it!

Arthur Delamont and his musical family keep busy playing concerts for the troops throughout B.C. until the end of the decade. Jimmy starts building his empire. Ray sets his sights on a pro career in NY and they make one short trip down to California.

Season 2 Episode 1

Season 2 Episode 2

Season 2 Episode 3

Season 2 Episode 4

Season 2 Episode 5

Season 2 Episode 6

Season 3

Season 3 starts with Arthur Delamont and his present musical family eager to depart on more adventures across the sea to the old country. In episode 1 they have saved so much money not being able to travel during the war years that they go for a whopping five months.  They make four trips to England in Season 3, one they play entirely in vaudeville theatres. Vaudeville doesn’t end in Britain until 1955 unlike in North America. Still eager to prove his boys are the best they enter new festivals and always take double gold something unheard of in European music festivals. They are breaking new ground. The decade winds up with them playing at the Brussels World Fair.

Our hero keeps a tighter rein on his fifties musical family because the depression has ended and these boys have more money. He doesn’t want them to get into trouble but they do anyway. In this group are some wonderful players and of course the stars who go on to musical careers later. There is Ron Wood who intrigued by the life of a pro- musician until he experiences life on the road, opts for a career as a banker. Michael Hadley helps our hero organize his last trip this season while he is working in the Canadian Embassy in Brussels. There is Brian Bolam who does become a pro-musician but by day is a firefighter. He later contracts the bands to play circus gigs when a circus is in town. Kenny Douglas carries bags of music on and off the old Bonnie Bell Ferry from West Vancouver for our hero and looks after copyrights in episode 2. Norm Mullins is recruited from UBC Law to help out with the tour in episode 1. Ron Pajala is the star accordion player in episode 2.

Later, Arnie Chycoski is recruited in episode 3. He is brought to Fred Turner by a policeman so he doesn’t get into trouble and plays in Fred’s New Westminster Boys & Girls Band. Fred hears of an opening on DElamont’s 1955 tour and sends him down. Another boy is recruited from Oak Bay High School in Victoria Donny Clark. Arnie and Donny become great pals and have a shared interest in playing in dance bands. Then there is Art Tusvik who develops a Ted Heath connection which involves convalescing at Ted’s bass trombone player’s house Jimmy Coombes outside of London and being nursed back to health buy his daughter Kay. Ted Lazenby is so good he can play the Flight of the Bumble Bee on his trombone and Bing Thom is so impressed by the pavilions at the Brussel’s World Fair he decides to become an architect.

Season 3 Episode 1

Season 3 Episode 2

Season 3 Episode 3

Season 3 Episode 4

Season 3 Episode 5

Season 3 Episode 6

Season 4

The fourth season begins with the passing of Lillie from complications with Alzheimer’s. Arthur turns around and marries his housekeeper Tracy and takes her with him and the band on their next trip to Europe for their honeymoon. Then, fate plays its hand once again and disaster strikes more than once. One boy dies after a fight in the shower. Three boys get hit by a car in Paris. And five boys are hospitalized with mononucleosis in Germany. He may need to withdraw from the Kerkrade Music Festival.

In an about face, episode 2 focuses on the birth of the British Columbia Beefeater Band, the official marching band of the B.C. Lion’s Football Club. It too is a traveling band and a lot of young people pass through this band in keeping with our main theme.

Band gets onto the curriculum of B.C.s public schools in episode 3. UBC music has its hands full churning out band directors. At first, it’s the old learn by the seat of your pants routine with a trumpet in one hand a la Delamont. Eventually a degree is required. This episode tells the story of the early days of the wild west with music supervisors and all.

Delamont yields to fate momentarily and refuses to take another band to Europe after the disaster of the previous trip in episode 4. He feels he broke his promise to Lillie and to himself. However, he is having difficulty finding boys but he is determined to not let fate be his master. Guitars are the big thing in the sixties thanks to the British Invasion. His boys eventually talk him into going. Coincidentally there is another Kerkrade Music Festival and a chance to show everyone he still has what it takes to turn out award winning bands and off they go.

Episode 5 finds our hero and his boys again on a train ride across Canada bound for Montreal and Expo 67. We stop in and see how Gordon is doing in Toronto. He is now a GOD in the professional music world and everyone wants to take arranging lessons from him. He has just been commissioned to write a Suite for Expo and is busy collaborating with two of his students and Duke Ellington to promote Canadian jazz composers. In Montreal, we revisit Arnie Chycoski who is playing in the Expo house band. He now resides in Toronto and is the lead trumpet in the Boss Brass and the Spitfire Band. The leader of the Expo Band is Ron Collier aka Ron Colograsso when he played in Delamont’s band. He too lives in Toronto and is the director of the Humber College Jazz program, a student of Gordon Delamont’s and is one of the three working with Duke Ellington.

The final episode sees our hero and his boys off to Europe again. This is a wonderful trip however he tells a reporter at the airport it may be his last. The City of Vancouver only gave him one thousand dollars towards expenses. Vancouver doesn’t support the arts. He will let the reporter know his decision when he returns.