OCSM President Emerita Francine Schutzman looks back at past Unity Conferences and ahead to this summer’s in Toronto.
OCSM has been around long enough that I assume that most of the readers of Una Voce are unaware of how it got started. Once upon a time, some Canadian union officers who were especially interested in orchestral matters instituted something called the Symphony Symposium — a one-day meeting devoted to symphonic matters. We have Ruth Budd, Sam Levine and Eddy Bayens to thank for this initiative. Bass players Ruth and Sam, stand partners in the Toronto Symphony, were the original motivators of OCSM. Sam was the Vice President of the Toronto Local, and Ruth was the first Chairman of OCSM (that is what the post of President used to be called). Eddy, President of the Edmonton Local, was involved from the beginning. If you’re at this year’s gathering, you can thank Eddy in person, because he still attends the OCSM conference, lo these many years later.
Current OCSM President Robert Fraser was more specific about the birth of the organization. He wrote, “(T)he first executive was formed 50 years ago in October 1975 at the second Symphony Symposium at the AFM Canadian Conference in Edmonton. The inaugural OCSM Conference was then held in August 1976 in Toronto. OCSM itself became incorporated in August 1981.”
(A word of explanation about the Canadian Conference, or CanCon: this is the yearly gathering of Canadian Local officers, collectively called a conference according to the AFM bylaws. So the CanCon conference is really a conference of a conference).
By the time I came on the scene (the first OCSM conference I attended was in 1981), there was a fair amount of enthusiasm for this yearly gathering of OCSM delegates and their union officers. I believe that there were equal numbers of representatives from each group. In those days, it was rare for an orchestral musician to serve as a Local officer or even to be on its executive board, so it was truly a good opportunity for each group (I hesitate to use the word “side”) to learn about the doings and the aspirations of the other.
I’m sorry to report that there was also a prevalent attitude that these upstart orchestral players, who knew nothing, dare not interfere in Local matters. My unhappiest memory of an OCSM conference was one day in Ottawa, in 1982, when voices were raised, and one Local officer said “YOU DON’T QUESTION US! WE’RE THE UNION!” One of the OCSM delegates started crying. I think that it was at that same session when one of the OCSM officers lost his lunch in the meeting room, so we had to take a break while the room was aired out. It was a case of fortunate timing.
By 2004, things had calmed down quite a bit — enough so that we planned a conference in Edmonton to overlap with that of the Canadian Conference. By this time I was the OCSM President, chafing at the bit to get some real work done at our joint meeting on the Friday night that is traditionally set aside for the first meeting of the CanCon. Imagine my dismay, as I walked up to the dais with the CanCon President, when he said, “Oh, by the way, we can’t enact any business this evening because we’re not officially in session.” Since it would have taken perhaps one minute to make that an official CanCon session, I felt blindsided and quite put out. Obviously there was still a fair distance to come before the orchestral musicians were not considered unwelcome intruders in the business of their Locals. This is one reason that there were periodic rumblings that OCSM should leave the AFM and form its own union.
Things went a lot more smoothly in 2012, when we had another joint conference, this time in Toronto. I don’t remember any of the drama of previous attempts to meet on an equal footing; rather, there was a real spirit of working together. A joint letter of welcome from Paul LeClair (then and now President of the CanCon) and Matt Heller (then OCSM President and now OCSM Secretary) said, “We look forward to the opportunity in solidifying the bond between the Canadian Conference and OCSM. It is an opportunity to discuss our goals and also our common struggles with this ever-changing business of ours, the world of music.” OCSM’s first Chairman, Ruth Budd, was present at the conference.The Toronto Local went all out in preparing a most successful joint event.
And what do we have now? One current OCSM officer, Bob Fraser, is the Secretary-Treasurer of the Victoria Local (for the second time, too!). Another, Matt Heller, is the president of the Calgary Local. I was a board member of the Ottawa Local while serving as OCSM President, before becoming President of the Local, a post I’ve held for many years. I have been honoured to serve on the Law Committee at the last three AFM Conventions, the first two of those under the leadership of Eddy Bayens. There are a good number of symphony musicians not only on that committee but serving as delegates to the convention as a whole. So it seems that our two sides (there; I’ve said it) are coming together to at least try to act in unison in matters that affect all of us.
When I was a relatively new member of NACO, in the mid-seventies, I sent a work dues cheque to my Local with a note on it saying, “What do you do with these dues, anyway?”. The cheque was returned to me with a note from the then-Local President, Jimmy Lytle, asking me to send a clean cheque without the editorial comments. Jimmy wrote that if I wanted to know what the dues money were for, I should attend the Local’s general meetings. So I did, and I was usually the only woman there. I remember Jimmy saying, in a well-carrying voice, “Welcome, brothers!… and sister.”
I have great hopes for this summer’s joint conference in Toronto, and I urge all who can to attend as observers. If you can’t do that, get involved with your Locals. Go to membership meetings. Pay attention to the business of the Locals, and join in to help whenever you can. Let there never again be the kind of schism that we used to have.
