December 13, 2022

ADVENT CHOIR RAISES $606 FOR ‘SPIRITUAL COUNSELLOR’ AT LOCAL HOSPITALS

GRAVENHURST — It was a Joyeux Noel! for concert-goers Sunday as the Muskoka Advent Choir made its fifth stop of the carolling season at St. Paul’s Catholic Church.

Those who came out on a snowy eve were treated to another joyful rendition of the traditional region-wide cantata.

For 28 years — less the past two due to COVID — the singers who gather once a week starting the week before Thanksgiving pulled it all together.

With less than half the usual number of singers — and in that six weeks — choral director Linda Ellsworth shaped the men, women and one young girl into the semblance of a decent ensemble worth of the praise they shared with about 80 people who welcomed them back after their health hiatus.

**The Muskoka Advent choir was half its size this year, but what they lacked in numbers they made up for in vocal joy.**

And together they raised $606 in a free-will collection for a “spiritual counsellor” to attend the two Muskoka hospitals one day a week and offer support for patients, staff and their families as they wish.

Volunteers are also welcome to help them, too, said St. James Anglican minister Heather Manuel, of the Muskoka chaplaincy association.

**Choir director Linda Ellsworth chats with cheerful former long-time choir member, organizer and always cheerul Jack Cline, who looked and was dressed ready to sing** — **but who did so as one of 80 audience members.**

Ellsworth has led the choir the past six years, taking up in the footsteps of Rev. George Johnston who started it and ran it out of the Calvary Baptist Church in Gravenhurst.

It’s now based out of Pinegrove Fellowship Church in Bracebridge, where on Dec. 18 — after one more stop in Burk’s Falls at Legacy Life Centre in Burk’s Fall Dec. 18 — they will end their seven-concert tour this year.

This year’s concert message ‘Joy! Unspeakable Joy!’ lived up to its billing as the choir sang out and told the story of Advent leading up to Christmas.

“The birth was just the beginning …,” said Ellsworth, “like Easter.”