A Biographical Sketch
Notes of A Poetic Path
and a Musical Journey
Quite a distance from the coal mines of Cape Breton Island, I spent over 25 years of my life in Windsor, Ontario as a university professor in the School of Social Work. I was born in New Waterford, Nova Scotia on July 20, 1943, the son of a coal miner, Daniel Henry Gallant and his wife Lucy (nee Chiasson), the middle of eight brothers and sisters. My roots are steeped within the traditions of a colourful French Acadian family with a "spiritually rich and strong” Catholic upbringing. I inherited a tinge of Irish ancestry being a descendant of the Ryan clan. Anyone who has had the good grace to bask in the beauty of Cape Breton, knows what it is like to be enchanted by the beauty of music. My early schooling was predominantly in French from primary to grade six. I always had an affinity for music. I was fond of singing and I seemed to come alive whenever music played. It was in this environment that I was nourished and this was the spring board of all the good things that have happened to me. The natural ebb and flow of music allowed me to be open to the vicititudes of life and to respond to its unfolding drama and magic.
Many people have contributed to my musical journey. My early, formative childhood was consumed with the elegance of the universe and grandeur of nature. In the early morning, I would gaily jaunt to church for early Mass as the sun was casting itself anew above the horizon and I would sing to myself with such glee to the song “Oh What Beautiful Morning”. Music has - and still is - a key aspect of the Gallant family get-to-gethers. The unyielding support of my brothers and sisters has always been a very powerful incentive for my musical achievements. My family always believed “110%” in my music. There was never a Gallant party where I wasn’t singing and playing the guitar and they relied heavily on me to choose the numbers which we all knew how to sing. As a result, we compiled about five Gallant Song books so that we would always have the words to the songs we all knew so well.
All my songs, for the most part, though they reflect a certain religious dimension, are geared to awaken the universally spiritual aspect of people’s lives. At an early age I was a choir boy at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church where I was somewhat initiated, as it were, in the rudiments of music. A very strong force for me at this early age was Sr. Margaret Gertrude who directed the boy’s choir. Her love of music and the discipline she brought to it provided me some of the tools which would later lay the foundation of my understanding and grasp of music as I perceive it today. Neither do I forget the other Sisters of Charity, particularly Sister Maria Amabalis and Sister Florence Patrice, Sister Mary Theresa, Sister Mary Lydia, and Sr. Dorathea, I pay a special tribute to Sister Therese de Lesieux (Sister Cecil D'Entremont) who played such an important role in moulding my character and providing me with fundamental tools for living life to its fullest within a Judeo-Christian context. My fondest memory in school was when Sr. Cecile d'Entremont, an outstanding teacher who simply revelled in her love of music, would ask us to sing. I recall such songs such as Molly Malone, Evangeline, Partons la Mer est Belle, Ave Marie Stella, L’Acadie, etc. Under her capable direction I played a leading part in a three act play “The Cathedral Clock” and in numerous other musical productions.
It seemed that I had a very fertile imagination and this would prove in someways a downfall since in school it made my attention span practically zilch. During class time, my mind would constantly wonder to creative places making it extremely difficult for me to focus and concentrate on what needed to be learned. I always loved just “singing my heart out” and I could never get enough music in school. In fact my mother would often reprimand me: “Don’t sing so loud in church,” (and on my more vein side being an altar server): “Don’t show off on the altar.” In later years, I discovered that there was a deficiency in my hearing which may well have been precipitated in my early years. Nonetheless, my mother as well as my father loved to hear us singing in the “Gallant Sing Alongs” and at our gatherings, my mother was always the last one to go to bed.
I was in the choir both at St. Francis Xavier Junior College in Sydney and at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish. I was in the choir at St. Mary's Church in Truro, N.S. from 1967 - 1969 and at Assumption University Chapel from 1975 - 1984. I have always had a keen interest in French and Irish folk songs as well as in liturgical music, especially Gregorian Chant. I have been choir director at Blessed Sacrament Church in Windsor. I have been the official organist for the liturgy at the Villa Maria Chapel (Home of the Aged) for over twenty-five years. I just need to hear a few bars of Christmas music and my heart wells with delight and my soul just leaps for joy. I believe there’s a rhythmic chord and movement embodied in all of us. The brilliance of music can flow with its rhythm in the majestic truth and beauty of our lives. The richness of song can nurture us through life in the very process of our fulfillment. If we honor and respect the music in our soul, we will be able to dance in spirit with the cosmic tune of nature and keep time in harmony with its striking pulse.
Having been born a twin, I have often pondered: “What would my life be like if my twin, Wilfredine, Genevieve, had lived?” At 6 months of age, I suffered an almost fatal bout of double pneumonia, an infection which took my twin sister’s life (Dec. 8th, 1943) and devastated my parents. With her demise, I always felt that God had destined me to perform a special task or accomplish a particular goal. Though I had always dreamst of becoming a priest and receiving a doctorate in theology, this was not meant to be. Nonetheless, my meagre accomplishments up to now have brought me closer and closer to the goals I have wanted to attain. Achieving what I have done so far with music is very much like walking into a “dream-fulfilled” world and examining in reality what I have envisioned before in a different light and from a different perspective (my dream keeps getting richer and richer). Needless to say, this has brought me much joy and delight, a happiness and pleasure which in my work I generously extend to others.
Nonetheless, my journey has not been without its more heartbreaking elements. I have chosen the medium of music as an avenue to give back to others in recovery what was given to me. Because of my own personal tragedies, (i.e., the loss of my twin sister, [failing] staying back in grade 2, a broken marriage after eleven years, going into a recovery home for the abuse of prescription drugs and over-the-counter-drugs for sleep). I feel that I have been able to be a banner-carrier for the alcoholic, the downtrodden, the oppressed, the lonely, the frail and a voice for other professionals to acknowledge their own frailty and imperfection. Suffering is where my journey has taken me and it is this very element of having experienced an immeasurable degree of suffering in my own life that gives me the “credentials” to “be there” for others in their hurt and sorrow. I am able to instill the theme of anguish and pain into my music and this makes listeners acknowledge that “they’ve been there also”. My work entails an involvement with soul-anguished people who are seeking a truth which goes beyond themselves. One of my salient therapeutic skills is an uncanning ability to zero in on the affliction and hardship of others and to recapture in song their stirring and heart-rending odyssey. The beauty of my music lies in the simple fact that I have been able to take the message of the gospel to describe it in a language that everyone - even the non-religious - can connect with. My songs are at their best when they portray the aspirations, the fears, and difficulties that beset people in their everyday lives and when, at the same time, they offer hope and reassurance during an unsettling journey.
For me, life’s growing pains were often buffered by a very caring relative, Maryann AuCoin who would comfort me when my mother was sick or when my mother on two occasions was pregnant and ready to go to the hospital to have a baby. She would play chess with me and allow me to win so as to take things off my mind and to lessen the strain and burden I was experiencing. I always left her home feeling better. More importantly, she knew how to play the organ and often provided me with the odd instruction on how to play ‘by ear’. I managed to play on this old ‘beat up’ organ predominantly on the black keys since, at the time, they seemed easier to get at. I later discovered that this was the more difficult key to play in with five flats ().
I graduated from grade eleven at Mt. Carmel High School and from grade twelve at Central High School in the sparsely populated coal mining town of New Waterford. I spent one year at St. Francis Xavier Junior College in Sydney in 1963 and two years at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish where I graduated in 1965 with an Honours Degree in Philosophy (Magna Cum Laude) and in 1969 with a Master’s Degree in Social Work. In July 1965, I worked with the Ministry of Welfare at the Nova Scotia Youth Training Centre in Truro, NS, a school for the mentally challenged and became the director of the social services department. From 1973 - to the present I have been a professor at the School of Social, University of Windsor. I received a Doctorate in Education (Major: Curriculum and Instruction, Minor: Administration) from Wayne State University in Detroit, MI in 1983.
As one friend kindly said to me: “If there was one way best-suited to describe you, I would say that it is your caring and sensitive attitude toward other people. You have an inexhaustible smile, an enduring sense of compassion for the human condition, an exuberant style and a personal touch. You have a way of being natural and of being yourself, a quality which you tend to draw forth in others.” I feel I am able to motivate people in the same way as I am able to animate and inspire my students with a bubbly wit and cosmic sense of humour. To me laughter is nature’s best medicine. The humour that greets two of my songs was written to provide comic relief, the first one was written for social workers who sometimes take life too seriously and the other was for people in addiction who might want to look at their life from a lighter perspective and perhaps “laugh at themselves” and their foibles and idocyncracies. I am hoping through the timely exposure of my work that social workers and other helping professionals will be motivated to bring out the best of their own musical talent which may still be there lying dormant. I am hoping that counsellors and therapists will benefit from my insights to the extent that they will create their own song.
My innovative work is a simple tribute on how music can inform and indeed, transform the intervention process. In a professional social work context, I am a “first” when it comes to developing music for practice in the distinct manner in which I have conceived and formulated this unique artistic approach to intervention with its concomittant assessment and intervention tools. I feel that within a short space of time I have been able to create an important place in the chronicle of social work education and the history of social work practice for the integral use of music as a valid form of intervention with clients. In my professional work with clients I have been able to embody the artistic communication of musical expression by translating the drama of peoples’ lives - their words into lyrics, their feelings into song and their actions into music. My songs are passionate and heartfelt. My music contains a universal truth that blends reality and sentiment within the time-old story of the human condition with its myriad aspects of tragedy, excitement, comedy and drama. My songs reflect the “client-journey-blues” and sit at the soulfelt edge of their jaunting quest. They are an invitation for clients to bring out the best in themselves and provides them with an opportunity to rise above the ashes of their own demise. I continue to have a notebook full of songs and creative ideas.
The scholarly aspect of my academic endeavour has not been without promise. My prime venture into this novel territory was financed principally by the Brentwood Foundation who awarded me a $65,000.00 research grant to pursue my sabbatical research work in this field with alcoholic couples in 1996-97. My work has received international exposure and has been documented in such publications as The American Journal of Alcohol Addiction, The Canadian Journal of Music Therapy, Christians in Social Work, and Social Work The press entitled the substance of my work as “Making A Difference: Opening Doors For Wounded Hearts”. The local CHWI-TV station referred to me as “Doctor Music” and CBC Television Windsor alluded to me as being “...on a crusade” I have done numerous presentations of my work with music to the Addictions Intervention Association, the Canadian Association for Music Therapy, the National Association of Christians in Social Work, Alcohol and Addiction Counsellors, The National Association for Social Work with Groups, and the Board of Directors of the Ontario Association of Social Workers. I have worked extensively with two gifted music therapists with national and international affiliations who have been very supportive of my efforts in this field and have been instrumental in promoting my work within the professional therapeutic community. To have worked alongside a prized friend and professional giant such as Dr. Michael Holosko (a gifted musician in his own right) is at the top of all life’s achievements and embraces the pinnacle of collegiality.