Winnipeg Free Press
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Thursday, December 8th, 2005
By Nick Martin

MORDEN -- John Buhler used to listen to the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and dream of building a state-of-the-art concert hall for his home town of Morden.

His brother Jake called him a dreamer even back when they were students at Morden Collegiate Institute, John Buhler recalled yesterday.

Dreams can come true when you can write a cheque for $5 million..

The millionaire farm implements industrialist and his wife Bonnie Buhler yesterday donated $5 million to build a performing arts theatre at his hometown Morden Collegiate Institute -- the first of its kind at a Manitoba public high school. It's thought to be the biggest private gift to a high school anywere in Canada.

Buhler was sometimes whimsical, sometimes sentimental in his speech in the collegiate gym.

He told the students he attended school in Morden for 12 years, but only made it to Grade 9.

Younger brother Jake got all the scholarships and awards, Buhler said. "He said, 'Johnny, you're a dreamer.' I accepted that. I was not a scholar -- I knew it, everybody in the school knew it.

"I told my brother I would have 100 employees some day. I had an idea and a goal, and I stuck to that goal," Buhler said.

He said Morden Collegiate's teachers had taught him to respect others and to believe in himself. He did excel in science and mechanics, Buhler said.

"It is now my pleasure to give back," he said, adding, "I want to thank my children for allowing us to give away their inheritance."

The 500 students gave the Buhlers a standing ovation.

"We want everyone in the province, in the city of Winnipeg, to be jealous. Why shouldn't Morden be the centre of the arts for Manitoba?" Buhler demanded..

The Buhler Performing Arts Centre would have 650 to 750 fixed seats, as well as four classrooms for fine arts courses, and should be open in about three years, Western School Division board chairman Dave McAndrew said.

The project could cost about $7 million, and will require some government money and additional local fundraising, McAndrew said.

Buhler said he and his wife love music and theatre. He first approached the division less than two years ago, but the idea started to take shape much earlier: "I came here to a grad 10 years ago, and I had to sit in a hot arena," said Buhler.

"I used to sit in the concert hall in Winnipeg and dream of a concert hall in Morden," he said.

Buhler said the stage will be big enough to hold the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra -- which he expects to perform regularly in Morden -- and "a lighting system second to none."

Buhler said he'd like to see season tickets go on sale as early as next year for performances by professional musicians and touring theatre groups, and he'd like to see the performing arts centre in use by community groups year-round.

Buhler named both the WSO and the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra as potential regular visitors to the new concert hall -- two groups to which he has given generously over the years.

McAndrew said that the final cost would depend on design plans and the architect's plans, and on bids received when the job goes out for tenders. He expected those plans to go before Western school trustees sometime in early 2007.

Similar theatre plans by city public high schools that have failed for lack of fundraising had budgets of $6 to $7 million. "Those ballparks are what we're expecting," McAndrew said.
"This gift will enable the school and the community to have a state-of-the-art facility second to none," McAndrew said.

He said the division would ask the provincial public schools finance board for four classrooms as part of the new complex -- for drama, music, band, choir, and new vocational courses to be introduced such as stage lighting, lighting design, staging, and theatre sound.

The fine arts courses would be limited to MCI students, but will likely draw schools-of-choice students from other parts of southern Manitoba, he said.
The vocational programs are open to students in the technical-vocation consortium to which Western belongs, including Garden Valley, Border Land, and Red River Valley school divisions, and the Division Scolaire Franco-Manitobaine.

Buhler and Morden Mayor John Wiens said that the theatre will have wide community use year-round.

"The mandate was to make it available to anybody at a reasonable price," Buhler said.

He had already donated $500,000 to a $5.5 million theatre at the private Mennonite Collegiate Institute in Gretna: "It will be bigger, and nicer, and more grand than the one in Gretna," Buhler said.

"It is an act of faith in a community -- in the transformative potential of arts and education," said Joe Halas, the provincial education department's arts curriculum consultant.

An ecstatic Cam Friesen, MCI's band instructor, told the students a story about the time local MLA Peter George Dyck (PC--Pembina) taught band in the basement of the high school. A pillar holding up the gym prevented Dyck's seeing the clarinetists, Friesen said while Dyck laughed, and, "There was young Loreena McKennitt in pigtails in the front row."

Western S.D. superintendent Linda Sullivan said, "In the world of public education, this is as good as it gets. This is awesome."

Sullivan said that too many people see fine arts as frills in the school system: "When times get tough, arts are the first to get cut. We need our artists to speak passionately to our souls," Sullivan said.

John and Bonnie Buhler hear performance
by Morden High School.

 

 

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