Newfoundland singer Ron Hynes, shown in the 2010 documentary Man of a Thousand Songs.Kent Nason
Folk singer, musician and composer Ron Hynes created culturally defining songs that retuned a post-Confederation Newfoundland's relationship with music, popular culture and identity.
The award-winning singer was arguably best known for his song Sonny's Dream, and as co-founder of the Wonderful Grand Band. WGB, which formed in 1978, also recorded 40 eponymous episodes for CBC-Television (1980-1983) and their combination of Celtic-rock music and Codco skits was wildly popular. The musicians and actors were big stars – and they were Newfoundlanders.
"My generation – of Alan Doyle and Mark Critch – we all talk about how big WGB was, how incredibly influential," said comedian and CBC broadcaster Rick Mercer, also a St. John's native.
Mr. Hynes died of cancer at the age of 64 on Nov. 19 in St. John's. His death that evening coincided with a power outage and the city's downtown area went dark for a while. He leaves four daughters, Lily, Rebecca, Elena and Lori.
It is no exaggeration to say nearly every person in Newfoundland can belt out at least a verse of Sonny's Dream, a lament about a mother worried about losing her son to the sea. Two days after his death, about 500 people gathered in St. John's Bannerman Park to sing it in his honour. His funeral at St. John's basilica on Nov. 23 drew hundreds of mourners, including Premier Paul Davis, and was broadcast live by radio station VOCM. Mr. Hynes's four daughters sang two of his songs at the service.
When Mr. Hynes wrote Sonny's Dream in 1976, he knew it was special. In the documentary Man of a Thousand Songs, which made its debut at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, he said the melody was so present, he was convinced he might be stealing it from somewhere. His artistic instinct was spot on: Sonny's Dream became an anthem recorded and performed and loved in countries and languages all around the world.
The song's success sometimes bemused Mr. Hynes. Many musicians recorded it, including Stan Rogers and Emmylou Harris, and other artists were occasionally credited with it. There were unexpected interpretations: a Portuguese version referred to Sonny not as a man but as the sun in the sky. Irish folk singer Christy Moore, of Planxty and Moving Hearts, added his own closing verse, without consultation. Many Irish consider it one of their own classic ballads.
Filmmaker Rosemary House recalled her first trip to Dublin: "I told the cabbie I was from Newfoundland, which he'd barely heard of, and then I mentioned Ron, whom he'd never heard of. I said Ron wrote Sonny's Dream and the cabbie just started singing, he had all the words. Sonny was sung at every wake and wedding in the country, he said. Everyone in Ireland knew it, everyone thought it was a traditional Irish lyric!" To help remedy this misconception, Ms. House teamed with producer Mary Sexton to film Ron Hynes: The Irish Tour (1999).
Mr. Hynes could not be defined by a single song, however, because he was a man of a thousand of them. He said the moniker came when he was booked from an appearance in Dartmouth, N.S., where the venue operator asked his agent if the musician knew this song or that song. Mr. Hynes told his agent to say that he knew a thousand.
Notably beloved in his repertoire were songs such as Atlantic Blue, written for those who lost loved ones when the offshore drilling rig Ocean Ranger went down in 1982; and St. John's Waltz (1997). Many of these, too, were recorded by other artists, such as Mary Black, Murray McLauchlan and Valdy.
Mr. Hynes was diagnosed with throat cancer three years ago and was cleared of that, but recently announced that cancer had returned, to his hip and lung. Response to the news was overwhelming for the singer. In an Oct. 28 Facebook posting, he responded to hundreds of phone calls, e-mails and messages of support: "I want to thank each and every one of you from the deepest core of my heart and soul … because of all of you and your words of pure compassion and kindness, you've made a night destined toward misery and doubt change to one of sheer delight. [Samuel Beckett said] 'Perhaps my best years are gone … but I would not want them back. Not with the fire in me now.' I go now to lie in darkness and I am not afraid."
Mr. Hynes understood darkness. He battled drug addiction, which he said almost killed him. He could disappear for days and resurface minutes before a gig. In Man of a Thousand Songs, he spoke of this persona as "the third Ron," after the real person and the stage presence.
"It took a year to convince him to make the film," said director William MacGillivray. "We said, 'This is not a puff piece. There's no point in doing this if we don't go all the way.' To his credit, he went all the way. He addressed everything.
"It's important to see what an artist is really like. Not all of his songs were created from happiness and joy. This is not a happy man all the time," Mr. MacGillivray added.
"Great art requires great sacrifices," said Bob Hallett of the band Great Big Sea. "Ron Hynes was a great artist, in every sense of the word, but his work often seemed to require him to dwell in a dark place. There's a loneliness in his work that can only come from the real thing.
"Ron pursued his art with a confidence and devotion and an indifference to the outside world like no one else I have ever met. He was also extremely intelligent, complicated, articulate, charming, difficult, and when it came to his music, utterly incapable of compromise," Mr. Hallett said. "With his death, an age has past. I doubt we are capable of producing another like him."
Ronald Joseph Hynes was born Dec. 7, 1950, in St. John's, and grew up in Ferryland on the southern shore where he grew up with three brothers and a sister. In the late 1960s, he moved to St. John's to attend university, but music quickly became his focus. He eventually released seven solo albums, including one for children, and two with WGB.
WGB's mix of music and comedy was an indication of the cross-pollinating artistic scene in which Mr. Hynes was quickly immersed. In the early 1970s, he was the in-house composer for the Mummers Troupe and wrote music for the Resource Centre for the Arts' High Steel (1984).
Mr. Hynes wrote his lyrics first, his music second (a fellow musician noted that most of his songs included the word "heart"). He sculpted idiosyncratic chord arrangements. "He wasn't trying to be Nashville," said CBC radio host and music commentator Russell Bowers. "He was trying to sound like the Grand Ole Opry opened a branch in Torbay."
He was also an actor, including roles on stage in The Bard of Prescott Street, and Hank Williams: The Show He Never Gave; in the 1992 feature film Secret Nation (for which he wrote a Genie Award-winning song, "Final Breath"), and the CBC-TV series Dooley Gardens. He also recorded an audiobook of Michael Crummey's 1998 work, Hard Light.
When performing, he often wore jeans, a jean shirt, thin black leather tie and leather jacket. He was well known for sporting a fedora. (St. John's O'Brien's Music Store, billed as the oldest store on the oldest street in North America, where Mr. Hynes bought his first guitar and continued to patronize it weekly for strings, stocked "the Ron Hynes hat.")
Man of a Thousand Songs screened at the Toronto film festival to a standing ovation, a reception replicated at the Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax and the St. John's International Women's Film Festival. A big reason for that was Mr. Hynes' presence, said Mr. MacGillivray. He created an energy and took over and bonded with an audience "in a way that was extremely different and special."
At the St. John's screening, Mr. Hynes sat where he could observe the audience instead of watching the film. At the part in the film where Sonny's Dream plays, the audience began singing along. "He turned to us with a big smile and said, 'These are my people,'" Mr. MacGillivray recalled.
Mr. Hynes always encouraged young musicians. If they opened for him in concert, he would clap louder than anyone else. If he liked their albums he told them so, orally and in writing. If he thought they had talent, he invited them to be musical guests.
He was nominated many times for Juno and Canadian country music awards, and received seven East Coast Music Awards, including Male Artist of the Year twice (1994 and 2007). In 1992 he was named Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council's Artist of the Year. He also received an honorary doctorate from Memorial University in 2002.
In 40 years of solo and group tours across Canada and the United States, he attuned ears and audiences around the world to music of his home. His album Stealing Genius was released in 2010, and until very recently he was playing, touring and writing music.
"The love people of Newfoundland and Labrador have for Ron Hynes truly is an unconditional love," Mr. Mercer said. "As Ron himself would admit, he could be a difficult character. But people have a huge capacity to love Ron because they love the songs so much. Long after every Newfoundlander and Labradorian alive today has gone, people will still be singing Ron Hynes's songs."