Latest news with #MountAllison
CBC
15-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
From one stage to another, this Labrador Straits singer is pursuing her operatic ambition
Michaela Cabot, 23, is in her last year studying music at Mount Allison A singer from the Labrador Straits has set her sights on a career in opera, and it's something she's approaching with determination. Michaela Cabot, 23, is currently completing her last year of a bachelor of music program at Mount Allison University in Sackville, N.B. Cabot, a mezzo soprano, said it took her three tries to get accepted into the voice performance and opera program, and she's glad didn't give up. "If you are certain about something, if you want to pursue something, if it's something that you're passionate about, do not stop until you are there," Cabot told CBC Radio. "Do not let anything come between you and what you want to do." A self-described "theatre kid," she said music has been a major part of her life since she was a child. "I remember singing karaoke when I was three. I remember listening to country music and folk music in my parents' house. I remember my dad always used to play guitar in our living room," she said. "Singing for me has always been just a way of expressing myself, a way of re-contextualizing the world around me." She also threw herself into the Labrador Creative Arts Festival while she was growing up, as well as drama and musical theatre. "I've always loved being on stage." Cabot was raised in L'Anse au Loup, but it was only when her family moved to Happy Valley-Goose Bay that she started singing in a choir and learned to find her own voice. At Memorial University she started taking formal voice lessons from a graduate student. "I'd been playing saxophone until that point. I vastly preferred playing instruments but I took one voice lesson with him and I was like, 'Wow, I really just want to do this for the rest of my life.'" From there, Cabot said she found herself focusing on opera, adding that the more she learned about operatic performances and the stories they tell, the deeper in love she fell with the art form. "I would say the biggest thing that influences my passion about opera is the fact that it's so dramatic, theatrical," she said. "There's so much you can do with it." Her studies also brought her to Italy for a two-week summer program Her next goal is to get accepted into a master's program, and she recently auditioned for the University of Toronto's. Dream role Cabot already has picked out the ultimate role she wants to perform on stage. "It's gonna sound insane, but Julius Caesar. I want to play Julius Caesar in Handel's Julius Caesar in Egypt so bad," she said, adding she likes seeing positions of power played by women and non-binary performers. "There are so many ... people who continue to create such a wonderful space to explore these stories and create such wonderful lenses to perceive them through," she said.
CBC
08-03-2025
- General
- CBC
Mount A celebrates 150 years since N.B. woman first to graduate in Canada — and beyond
Tucked away in the archives at Mount Allison University in Sackville is a picture of Grace Annie Lockhart on her graduation day. It's dated May 1875, and she's surrounded by her male classmates. All of the men are proudly posing in their convocation gowns, with their caps in hand. Lockhart is in a striped dress, her hands neatly folded on her lap and her hair is pinned up in a modest bun. Despite being the first woman in Canada — and the British Commonwealth — to graduate from university, Lockhart was not permitted to wear the cap and gown. She was still just a woman, after all. Now, 150 years later, that picture represents a significant turning point for women's right to the kind of education traditionally reserved for men. "I think she'd be astounded by the beautiful diversity of post-secondary education and by how many women are on campus," said Krista Johnston, associate professor in the feminist and gender studies program at Mount A. Lockhart is an important figure for students in the program. Every year at convocation, graduates pose for a picture with the campus plaque that honours her. It's also not lost on Johnston just how significant her accomplishment was at a time when women were not even allowed to vote. After only four years at Mount Allison, Lockhart graduated with not one, but two designations — a mistress in English literature and a bachelor of science. "She's one of the women who broke through that bar on women entering education in the post-secondary sector." Johnston said. This fall, Mount Allison's Owens Art Gallery will have an exhibit of women artists from the Ladies' College to celebrate Lockhart, as well as the gallery's 130th anniversary.. The Ladies' College In the mid to late 1800s, upper middle-class women began attending university. They enrolled in special colleges that taught sewing, art and music. The curriculum was designed to complement their eventual roles as wives and mothers. Mount A's Ladies' College was no different, except that its first instructor, known as preceptress back then, was Mary Electa Adams. She pushed for a more rigorous academic program for women. Lockhart enrolled in the Ladies' College in 1871. According to David Mawhinney, an archivist at Mount Allison, there would not be a Grace Lockhart without a Mary Electa Adams. Adams had been denied a degree and made it her mission to ensure other women who followed were given the opportunity. "She felt she was being discriminated against," said Mawhinney. "And the wonderful thing is, she lived long enough to know she had established an institution that led to that first woman." Sackville was also a remote rural community at that time and Mawhinney believes its location also played a role in allowing the school to experiment with letting women enrol in academic courses. "Sackville was this very interesting environment in which to have that test case happen because it's not a fish bowl, so there wouldn't have been press pressure and that sort of thing," he said. As a result, Mount A became the first Canadian institution of higher education to accept female students for true academic studies. Saint John roots Lockhart was born into an upper middle-class family in Saint John. Although finances were not a concern, her childhood was not easy. Her mother died when she was nine months old. The family housekeeper, Rosanna Wilson, became her surrogate mother, but she passed away when Lockhart was just eight. Lockhart was the youngest of four sisters who all attended Mount Allison, thanks to an inheritance left by their maternal grandfather. Lockhart, however, was the only one to complete her studies. After graduating at the age of 20, she spent six years teaching in Saint John and also at Mount A's Ladies College. During that time, she made speeches encouraging women's equality and the right to the same education offered to men. Carolle de St. Croix, director of alumni engagement at Mount Allison, said while Lockhart went on to live a conventional life, she remained very progressive in her ideas. "She was well ahead of her time. Pay equity, voting rights, you name it," she said. "But she was also a woman of her time. She married a Methodist minister, had children and took care of the home." A Wife and mother Lockhart married John Laird Dawson when she was 26. They had three sons — all Mount A graduates. The family moved every three years and lived in a number of communities in the Maritimes and Newfoundland. After she married, there are few historical records of her life. Mawhinney believes that, despite this, she wielded influence at home and suspects she may have even been a ghost writer for her husband. "I really think she was the power behind the throne," he said, after researching a book written by Lockhart's husband in 1912. "It's extremely progressive. It's pretty obvious to me that some of what John Laird Dawson is writing about in this book, it sounds like her voice." Grace Annie Lockhart died in 1916, at the age of 61. She's buried at the People's Cemetery in Tryon, Prince Edward Island. There is nothing at the site that recognizes Lockhart's accomplishments and that's something Mawhinney is determined to change this year. "She has a modest gravestone," he said. "It would be really nice to put a plaque for her so people would know where they would be able to find her. We have one here [Mount A]. It would really be great to have one there."
