Fiddle-playing MacMaster's devotion runs deep

Faith 'is the driving force for everything' says Grammy-nominated artist

- photo supplied Natalie MacMaster's musical fame has done nothing to dampen her Catholic faith.

By LASHA MORNINGSTAR
WCR Staff Writer
WCR News Editor

The minute before she went onstage at the Shell Theatre in Fort Saskatchewan last week Natalie MacMaster stopped.

Taking her thumb, she blessed herself before each performance, making the sign of the cross on her forehead.

"My husband taught me this," says Natalie. " It makes me feel I am offering my show up to God."

She pauses and that lilting, accented voice says, "Oftentimes I say a little prayer that for anyone who needs to receive something from the music God would work through me to help them - for me to be open to transmit whatever it is that he wants them to receive."

The ease with which this renowned fiddler talks about living her faith takes a listener's breath away. It's especially moving given the circumstances of the conversation.

Natalie's tucked in the back of a car winding through southern Ontario roads on her way to yet another concert in Kitchener. Baby Michael Joseph Alexander Leahy - five months old now - is shoving a plastic hand in his mouth, telling his mother all about the pain of teething. And Natalie is doing the interview with a borrowed cell phone clamped to her ear.

Revered by fiddle aficionados at home and abroad, Natalie has been performing publicly "since I was 10 and I started fiddling when I was nine and one-half."

Fiddle-playing heritage

Grandparents, great grandparents, uncles and aunts and cousins - all are fiddlers, drawing from their Scottish roots right back to the mid-1700s.

"Even though our lifestyle complements being Catholic, it also makes it very challenging at times because it's so busy, especially when you are on the road," says Natalie as Michael protests in the background.

"You might start a rosary and then," and with a hint of mischief in her voice, she continues, "someone calls for an interview."

She has many rosaries, but her favourite is a wooden set of rosary beads from Medjugorje.

"We had them blessed there. And they travel great because there's no metal on them - just wood and string. So you can wear them around your neck and they don't make noise and you can go through the metal detectors on the plane."

Natalie and her husband Donnell Leahy - also a fiddler of note - have been to Medjugorje several times.

Asked why, Natalie's response comes quick and simple.

"I have a love for Mary. And our first-born is named Mary Frances Rose, Mary for Mary, Frances because she was born on the Feast of St. Francis Xavier."

The Rose honours St. Thérèse, Natalie's favourite saint.

There's also the family connection too - Natalie's mother's name is Mary and Donnell's father's name in Francis.

A devout family? Yes. But also full of Celtic fun.

And Natalie continues, after explaining her daughter's faith-filled name, saying, "So for Halloween we dressed her up as a nun. We thought she has the perfect name for it. Oh my gosh, she was so cute."

Which is not to say this family takes its faith lightly.

"I am a practising Catholic and we are very, very devoted to our faith," says Natalie. "It is the driving force for everything for us.

"This means living a Catholic lifestyle, constantly trying to make revisions on your personality type. Try harder. Try to be better, Be devoted in the sense as a Catholic it means going to Mass, going to Confession, receiving the sacraments, trying to love Christ daily in our lives."

St. Thérèse

But given their hectic lifestyle of touring, farming, producing CDs and a myriad of other ventures, being this devout must be daunting at times.

A gentle sigh comes from the other end of the line.

"It gets hard," agrees Natalie. "The big thing I am always lacking is prayer. I do pray every day, but not nearly what I would like."

Yet when she prays to St. Thérèse, she knows answers are on the way.

"St. Thérèse always gives you proof," says Natalie with a smile-warmed voice. "She's great. She gives proof. Happy are those who haven't seen but believe.

"But I pray to St. Thérèse, say a novena to her and she will oftentimes answer with a rose. And I have received so many roses over the years about really critical things in my life, so really important things.

"Her devotion to Christ has been proven to me so many times. She really helps me have a deeper faith in God because of her working to save my life."

Given her deepening belief, Natalie finds her music connects with her faith more now than in her younger years.

"I always knew God gave me this gift and my parents nurtured it. And I always felt I was doing what God wanted me to do. But I think in my older years I am trying to intertwine my everyday happenings more with the spiritual side and think in a deeper way so that I can maybe get more out of it."

Given her profound belief and the fact Donnell walks the same faith path, would she ever consider her sons or daughters going into religious life?

"Well, they will be brought up in a Catholic home and I hope that if God calls them, they would contemplate it," replies Natalie. "But who knows? The best thing I could ever do in my life right now is to lead them to wherever God wants them to be, to be their guide on earth - like God would work through me, help them do what God wants them to fulfill."

Place for silence

Meanwhile, there's work, lots of work. One of Canada's youngest Order of Canada recipients and with 10 CDs to her credit plus countless tours, MacMaster is no stranger to work. She tours till Dec. 19, home for Christmas, back to Cape Breton in January for a week "and then we start a three-month tour at the end of January."

A PBS special with Natalie Live In Cape Breton airs in March and the DVD Natalie MacMaster: Live In Cape Breton, released in November, is available on her website.

And then there's her book. It's a 10,000-word pictorial about Cape Breton "from my perspective."

Tentatively titled My Cape Breton and published by Halifax -based Nimbus Publishing, the manuscript is illustrated by photographer Eric Roth.

"I'm so pleased with the pictures," says Natalie. "I think he has captured the feel of Cape Breton."

Roth approached the singer four years ago and said if she ever wrote a book to call him to do the photography.

When Natalie opened Roth's book on Irish pubs, The Parting Glass, she saw "it wasn't just about the pubs, it was about the people in the pubs, the faces of these old men. That's what speaks."

So Roth won the right to illustrate Natalie's love story to her Cape Breton homeland.

Michael's aching gums are too much for him and his whimpers are becoming wails, so it's time for a final question.

Asked about her sacred place - the place where she physically goes to be silent, alone with God - Natalie tells of plans to find land where they can build a home and studio.

(Right now they live in a small bungalow in Lakefield, Ont.)

"I've always wanted to have a little chapel in our home - a pew, an altar, something just little, somewhere you can go to be silent."

She has land on her beloved Cape Breton Island and plans are to build a summer home there some day.

"I've always wanted to have Stations of the Cross in the woods," says Natalie. "A monastery in Cape Breton has stations in the woods. It is just beautiful and very motivating to pray. The forest - the trees - you are living right in God's creation."

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