Violet Moore: Sharing her Love for Irish Dancing for Over 50 Years

By MAURA McCAY

VANCOUVER - For the past 50 years, legions of young people across western Canada have spent time learning Irish dance from a feisty Dubliner whose approach to life was forged in a childhood spent in a pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland where stamina and resilience were the keys to survival.

VIOLET is shown above cutting the cake at her 60th birthday party

Violet Moore was only 16 years old when she arrived in Canada. Her mother handed her an airline ticket a week prior to her departure and informed her she was leaving to help care for her sister's child. It was all news to Violet and a shock as she had not been part of any discussions regarding her future.

Her sister, who had emigrated earlier to Canada along with her husband, was in need of help and Violet had been drafted to fit the bill. At that time, when new immigrants arrived in Canada they had no choice where they would settle, instead the Government informed them where they were needed.

Violet arrived in Winnipeg in October 1956 where her sister had settled and was immensely homesick. She found herself in the heart of the Ukrainian community in a foreign country and while she loved the people she encountered, she hated the weather. It was like shock therapy she said.

Her saving grace was her love for Irish dance and she promptly found a home with the Sons of Ireland where she started teaching and doing exhibitions. While teaching classes, Violet also worked two jobs to repay the cost of her airline ticket and to help her sister and brother-in-law with their mortgage and expenses, along with her child minding duties.

It was during this time that she met her future husband who had also recently emigrated from England. Violet was married in Winnipeg in 1962 and was desperate to leave the city with its extreme climate conditions behind and move to Vancouver.

VIOLET MOORE is shown here in the Genockey School of Irish Dance in Dublin (second child from the left, circa 1949.

Shortly afterwards, the young couple piled all their worldly possessions on the top of a 1954 Ford and headed west for the coast. She was seven-and-a-half months pregnant, and for a month upon their arrival in British Columbia, they lived in a tent at Allouette Lake in Golden Ears Provincial Park near Maple Ridge.

Each day they would drive into Vancouver in search of accommodation and they were becoming increasingly discouraged as they watched their meagre savings dwindle. Violet said, "I was getting very nervous as I was due to have a baby very soon.

"Finally, one day it was almost serendipitous. We pulled over to check a map on Main Street between Sixteenth and Seventeenth Avenue and I happened to look across the street to see a sign in the window of Hillcrest Plumbing which read 'suite for rent'.

"I said to my husband 'I'll be back in a minute' and went running across the middle of the street. I just had a good feeling about it." She rushed in and asked about the suite and the man handed her a key and said 'take a look'. It was directly over a plumbing shop and it would become their first home in Vancouver.

The location could not have been more perfect. Violet said, "On the first Sunday after we moved in, I heard church bells. I went to the living room window and looked across and saw St. Patrick's Church. Not only was it a Catholic church, it was an Irish parish.

"This was during the days when the front door was always open and you could walk in to the church at any hour of the day or night. So I walked in to St. Patrick's Church and picked up a bulletin and in there they were advertising the Irish Society.

"A woman by the name of Monica Dunn was teaching Irish dancing and looking for anybody who would be interested in learning. There were two telephone numbers, the number of John Grant, the president of the Irish Society, and the vice-president Patrick Dunn, Monica's husband."

Violet phoned both numbers and in no time at all she was connected to the Irish community in Vancouver. Monica Dunn had 10 students and while she had danced in Ireland, her knowledge was limited and she told Violet that she was happy to finish if Violet was interested in taking over the class.

"It was all so ridiculously convenient," said Violet. "There was another woman teaching right on Main Street. Erin O'Daly taught all day Saturday at the Dance Place, a beautiful old building which burned down about 10 year ago at Sixth Avenue and Main Street. I was also hired by Erin to assist teaching her classes."

On St. Patrick's Day in March of 1963, there was a major event where Violet danced and afterwards she was inundated with requests to start teaching and this led her to establish the Moore School of Irish Dance.

IN VANCOUVER'S DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE, Violet Moore's classes represent the United Nations but the passion and enthusiasm remains the same.

Violet recalls the event was hosted by Dr. Hanna (he established the Hanna Medical Clinic on Boundary Road), who staged a massive Irish recital. She said, "the whole Stage Eireann membership was out for the event, including Babs McConville and Pat and Brenda Warren, and they staged a play called Pound on Demand. It inadvertently became a total comedy when the whole backdrop fell on the actors.

"I approached Father Carrigan afterwards and asked if there was a possibility I could teach in the basement. He said 'of course you can'. So, that's how I got started in Vancouver.

"There were about 12 students, Maureen Grant, John Grant's daughter, was one of them, along with Marjorie Pollock, Kathy Davies, and many of the local kids. I'm still in touch with many of those students now and it's amazing that when I started they were all around 12 or 13 years old, and now they're all getting close to 50."

Over the years, Violet has probably introduced thousands of young people to Irish dance and in that time she has seen enormous changes in a tradition which had once remained relatively constant from one generation to the next.

THIS GROUP PHOTO was taken circa 1970 when the Moore School took the Senior Girls Choreography prize at the Edmonton Feis.

While stage productions such as the Riverdance phenomenon have elevated Irish dance to a world stage in a very short time, they have also contributed to radical changes within the community.

Where once upon a time young dancers were attired in costumes adorned with ancient Celtic designs, often embroidered lovingly by mothers, grandmothers and aunties, the look has become much more slick and glamourous and a lot less traditional.

Huge wigs of ringlets and fake tans to highlight legs are now worn by competitors ranging from the youngest to the oldest. It has become an extremely expensive exercise for parents to outfit their children for competition, to say nothing of the travel and accommodation costs.

In fact, when the casual observer looks upon some of the young dancers now they could be forgiven for thinking they had stepped into the wrong venue and were mistakenly in a children's beauty pageant with heavily made-up young girls dressed in elaborate costumes.

The stakes have risen enormously and in order to compete at a national or world level, dancers have had to adapt to even place. The heavily embroidered stiff black dresses of old have been replaced with more eye-catching pink and green sequined numbers which cost somewhere in the staggering range of upwards to $8,000 a costume.

Regardless of the level of talent, it now requires a great deal of money for dancers to participate, which eliminates a whole segment of the community. Talent alone is no longer the key to winning, one must also have tremendous financial backing to be a contender.

Violet Moore said it is her love for the tradition which has led her back to her roots in the inner city of Vancouver. She is now opening the door for less privileged children in one of Canada's poorest neighbourhoods.

IRIS PEAKE, who is now 53 years old, is shown above receiving the first place trophy at the first qualifying rounds held in San Francisco for the first World Championships to be held in Dublin in 1970. She was 17 when she was presented with the award and an airline ticket to Dublin. Since Violet could not be with Iris in Dublin, her family took Iris under their wing and got her to the Mansion House where the event was held. Iris was awarded a medal at that competition.

She said, "I was drawn there. It was a throwback from the way I started dancing. I had to wait my turn because the older members of my family were involved in something that cost sixpence a week and until that sixpence became available and someone dropped out of their activity, I had to wait.

"My mother was absolutely passionate to have an Irish dancer in the family. There were 12 kids in our family and I was in the second six. This was an average size family on our street, in fact one family had 22 kids.

"I had to patiently wait for my turn as it was my burning desire to become the Irish dancer that my mother wanted. I would watch for the older girls on the street coming back from their lessons and I would ask them to teach me what they had learned. By the time I eventually got there at eight-and-a-half years old, I was in seventh heaven. I already knew all the basics and about six dances.

"Because of the time I had to wait to begin dancing as a child in Dublin, I could identify that many children today wouldn't have access, even bus fare would be too much money. So, I started teaching at Kiwassa Neighbourhood Centre on Cambridge Street in the Vancouver Downtown Eastside. There was no cost and people came.

"I feel that in many respects the way Irish dancing has changed so much over the years, we've closed the door to those people who don't have the money that it now takes to dance competitively. I really feel that if people are talented enough, and they really want to go that route, it should be made available to them."

The response to Violet's Irish dance classes in the downtown eastside has been absolutely outstanding. She now teaches at the Strathcona Community Centre on Keefer Street and her dancers represent the United Nations with only one child in the class with an Irish background.

Violet's dancers still wear the traditional green dress with lace trim, adorned with Celtic designs. "Nobody wears Celtic designs on their costumes anymore," she said, "they are all elaborately decorated, some are actually magnificent looking, but with artwork and symbols completely unrelated to Irish culture."

In a changing globalized world characterized by money and fierce competition, Violet Moore is among a small group of Irish dance teachers who are struggling to hold the line and maintain the traditions they remember that were passed down to them from earlier generations.

Among Violet's accomplishments in Vancouver, she founded the first Vancouver branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Eireann in 1978. Her work was recognized in 1999 when she was nominated for the Vancouver YWCA Women of Distinction Award for Arts and Culture and this year she was presented with The Celtic Connection Person of the Year award.

Classes for the Moore School of Irish Dance are offered throughout the Lower Mainland. Strathcona is a noon class on Tuesdays at Strathcona Community Centre at 601 Keefer Street. There are also classes on Monday at the Vancouver Japanese Church on 4010 Victoria Drive at 23rd Avenue which begin September 11. Beginners from 4 PM to 5:30 PM and advanced classes from 6 PM to 9 PM. In Richmond, classes are on Thursday evenings at St. Albans Anglican Church on St. Albans and Granville and begin on September 7 at 6 PM. The location of the venues for New Westminster and Burnaby have yet to be confirmed. For more information, call (604) 522-0445, or e-mail: vimoore@hotmail.com.

YOUNG DANCERS with the Moore School of Irish Dancing are shown above marching in a North Vancouver Centennial celebration parade held in Deep Cove, North Vancouver, circa 1966.

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