St. Laurent School is expanding its fiddle program to include jigging.
Though the school has been offering fiddling classes for 28 years now, it has never offered the other half of the tradition: jigging—that is, until now.
Bobby Ellis, teacher at St. Laurent School, said they were revamping the fiddle program this year, and found it the perfect time to add jigging and gauge student interest. Jigging instructor Brittany Appleyard grew up going to St. Laurent School, but when her hands didn’t work like her feet, she didn’t have another option from her culture.
“With this being a Metis school in a Metis community, I personally found it was really important to introduce that part of our heritage,” she said. “There was nothing Metis-based for me growing up, except fiddling, and that’s important.”
According to the Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada, Metis jigging originated in the Red River area, the first reference to Red River Jig being in 1860 when fiddle player Mr. Macdallas played the tune at a Metis wedding.
Appleyard started taking jigging classes after school and has been doing it for 17 years. She’s excited to bring the art back to her community and the school she went to herself.
“It’s exercise, it gets me out to see new places and meet new people,” she said, adding the art has taken her to Ottawa to perform for thousands at a time. “[The students] get to learn something I never did, and I get to learn something I never did too.”
Also new to the school’s program this year is a new fiddle instructor for the first time in the program’s 28 years. Jason Appleyard has been fiddling for 26 years, first picking up the instrument when he went to St. Laurent School and learning to play it in the program he’s now teaching.
The fiddling/jigging program is an elective course, meaning students choose to take it and aren’t forced to. Brittany said that when students don’t want to participate, it can lead to unhealthy communication, so the course being an elective was important to her.
“It’s supposed to be a happy, joyous experience,” she said.
The jigging program groups the students by skill level rather than grade level. The fiddle program is still organized by grade level, but Ellis said they’re looking at changing that, too. Both programs run every Thursday afternoon. There will be three sessions in total, each lasting 12 weeks. Right now, there are 50 students in jigging and 44 in fiddling. St. Laurent School has 185 students in total.
“It’s all kind of slowly dying out as time goes by,” said Jason, who performed on Normandy Beach for Remembrance Day in 2009 to honour Metis veterans. “You don’t see as many fiddle players and jiggers anymore. It’s good to keep it alive.”
Ellis said the school is trying to improve student engagement by adding the jigging classes.
“Connecting with them culturally is important,” he said. “We’re seeing that excitement more and more, seeing more interest as they go on.”
He said students have requested to join the jigging program but will have to wait for the next session now that too many instructional classes have passed.
“They’re taking it simply to enrich their own educational programming,” he said. “Which is what we were hoping for.”
