Although he wasn’t born on Vancouver Island, multi-instrumentalist Shane Philip is an Island boy through and through. So much so, that when he returns to Ontario, where he was born and raised, everyone assumes he hails from the west coast.

Philip made the move out west 20 years ago in search of a place where the mountains met the ocean. 

When Stephen Fearing and Andy White met at the Winnipeg Folk Festival in 1998, Fearing intended to just say “Hi.”

“Often at those festivals, that’s about all you say, ‘Hey man. I really like your music,’ and that’s as far as it goes, but because we both grew up in Ireland – he grew up in Belfast and I grew up in Dublin – we had a lot in common and there was lots to chat about, so we just became fast friends,” said Fearing, a Canadian folk singer-songwriter who grew up in Dublin and now lives in Halifax, N.S.

Money may be tight at the Jasper-Yellowhead Museum and Archives but a series of recent donations has come as a big help.

“We’ve had a lot of quiet, individual donations ... and those ones are the most valuable to us,” said museum manager Karen Byers.