Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page.
For the past 28 years, folk trio Tiller’s Folly has told significant tales of B.C. history via its nine albums of singalong songs.
With the release of their latest tune, Apple Box Belles, the band honours a proud moment in the past and life in the present day.
Apple Box Belles recounts the story of Okanagan fruit orchards during the period from 1914-1918. With many of the region’s service-aged men shipped off to fight in the First World War, their jobs were taken up by local women. One of the prime crops was apples, which needed manual sorting and packing.
The women who did this work were dubbed Apple Box Belles, which inspired the song’s title.
Apple packing competitions were regularly held across the colonies to showcase packers’ skills. In 1937, Kelowna’s Isobel Stillingfleet was sent to the world apple packing event in Birmingham, England, and won.
She was named the Apple Queen of the British Empire.
“When we started the band, part of what I wanted to do was follow the Celtic tradition of preserving history through song, as is done in all of those centuries-old Irish and Scottish folk classics,” said guitarist Bruce Coughlan, who performs on Tiller’s Folly with bassist Laurence Knight and mandolinist Nolan Murray.
“When I left home with my guitar on my back at age 14, I started busking and stopping at all the historic sites and spots along the way. In 1997, we began the Stirring Up Ghosts project around preserving a portion of that fascinating history in songs and stories of Pacific Canadian history, such as the Apple Box Belles.”
The first Stirring Up Ghosts album was released in 2008, compiling history specific tracks from the group’s previous two albums. The 12-tune release came with an accompanying 32-page booklet containing background information, archival photos and song lyrics. There have been a total of three Stirring Up Ghosts releases, with the most recent being 2024’s Way Out West EP.
“Stirring Up Ghosts started when we began playing elementary schools across the province and was the name that I gave to the study guide I developed to intrigue young minds,” he said. “I’m pleased to say that I think there is an entire generation of students all over B.C. who have possibly experienced the initiative. I launched the StirringUpGhosts.ca website to that end.”
Gathering items collected over the decades, from rare footage of things like old 16-mm film of the Kettle Valley and B.C. Electric Railway, to the Apple Box Belles, the project presents it all under one banner. With around a dozen accompanying songs, Stirring Up Ghosts dives into categories ranging from the Age of Discovery and the Quest for Gold to Everyday Heroes and more. Coughlan feels that the initiative is his ultimate creative legacy.
Apple Box Belles is the first Tiller’s Folly track to be given a multimedia treatment, with virtual walk-throughs and archival image montages that the band refers to as “Songumentary.” Coughlan says it is a solution to getting a digital generation interested in the past.
“How do you tell these stories to kids glued to their phone screens is a challenge,” he said. “So I came up with a new format that is part-documentary/part-song video that translates well to the realities of today’s media-driven society. It’s an exciting creation.”
Coughlan is quick to add that he doesn’t spend all of his non-performing time exploring dusty archives across B.C.’s vastness to come up with material for Tiller’s Folly songs. A lot of ideas come from fans and friends pointing the songwriter in the right direction.
Last year, while visiting a longtime friend’s museum in Princeton, a volunteer piped up and told Coughlan about her aunt, Aurelia.
“She was born in the 1890s in the Similkameen and wrote a memoir, which was kindly forwarded to me in a digital copy,” he said. “Reading it, I was taken by her observations of going to community dances, being shy and never dancing until a kindly older Southern gent named George Edwards taught her to waltz. That man is better known in history as American robber Billy Miner.”
So Coughlan wrote a waltz about Aurelia coming of age and learning to dance with one of Canada’s most notorious bandits. He says what comes around goes around, too, as he recently was contacted by a team of local historians working on a book about a regional gold rush who wanted to borrow some lines from a Tiller’s Folly song for the text.
The process of documenting provincial history in song is an endless one. But Coughlan’s mantra for making music is “move it or lose it.”
“I turn 65 this year and have my legacy of what I want to leave behind — and that is to have other people enjoy the history of British Columbia as much as I do,” he said. “So much of it is being swallowed up by ever-expanding global metropolitan urbanization and it needs to be preserved.”
Coughlan, says he knew music was going to be his career when his father took him to see the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in 1966, marks his 50th year as a performing musician this year. In 2024, he was honoured with the International Male Vocalist of the Year award from the International Singer-Songwriter Association. This led to Tiller’s Folly being picked up by Lunar Productions, a boutique Canadian agency that handles such heavy-hitters as Susan Aglukark, the Barra MacNeils, Lennie Gallant and others.
“We’re looking forward to what this will bring in 2026 in festivals, theatres, pubs and wherever else will have us,” he said. “I also have a solo show called Confessions of a Serial Songsmith about how music has been an adventure for me and all the fun it has provided.”
Relive some of the biggest concerts to hit local stages over the decades with our Vancouver Rocks! Concert photo album. REGISTER HERE to get the free PDF emailed to your inbox.
Related
Love concerts, but can’t make it to the venue? Stream live shows and events from your couch with VEEPS, a music-first streaming service now operating in Canada. Click here for an introductory offer of 30% off. Explore upcoming concerts and the extensive archive of past performances.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com ’
