Canadian Grand Masters

The Canadian Grand Masters is an annual event celebrating traditional fiddling in Canada. Considered "the pinnacle of Canadian fiddling," the core of the event is a concert/dance on Friday evening, followed by the competition the following day. Upwards of thirty contestants are selected to compete from across Canada, considered to be the top exceptional fiddlers from each province/territory. The winner of the contest earns the title of Canadian Grand Masters Fiddling Champion.

Founding
The Canadian Grand Masters is hosted by the Canadian Grand Masters Fiddling Association (CGMFA), founded in 1989. Their mission is to support the preservation of traditional fiddle styles and recognize astounding Canadian fiddlers. In this effort, they elected to hold the first national championship the following year, originally known as the "Canadian Grand Masters Championship." For the first six years, the contest was held on Labour Day weekend before being changed in 1996 to the last weekend of August. The contest’s purpose is to draw attention to and provide space for the traditional Canadian fiddling styles from across the country, while providing a space to showcase the country's top fiddlers. Aurora Fiddle Society member Teresa Watson noted that "it's also a chance to meet people who are significant in the fiddling world," adding that besides the space to perform, the contest is a major social networking event for Canadian fiddlers. According to the CGMFA rules, the recognized styles include: country, old time, Cape Breton, Swing, Métis, Bluegrass, and French-Canadian. Classical, jazz, blues, and similar non-traditional styles are not accepted.

The Event
The Canadian Grand Masters competition weekend in recent years consists of a dance/concert on Friday night, and the preliminaries, finals, a junior showcase, and Hall of Honour Inductees ceremony on Saturday. The preliminaries feature each contestant performing their set in a randomly selected order. At the end of this section, the top ten will be chosen to play again that evening in the finals before the winners are chosen from them. Up until 2020, a top eleven performed at the finals, but this has been changed to a top ten in recent years. Their first ever contestant was Keith Ross of New Minas, Nova Scotia.

Besides the finals, the Saturday evening’s entertainment also includes a showcase performance from the judges and the Junior Showcase. The latter features a small selection of young fiddlers from across Canada, chosen by the CGMFA, who play their own tunes of choice in a non-competitive environment. Many of these performers go on to compete in the main contest in later years.

Saturday’s events also include the introduction of new honourees to the Canadian Fiddle Hall of Honour. Started in 2022, CGMFA board members voted to combine their previous awards of recognition (Lifetime Achievement, Award of Merit, and Canadian Fiddle Legends Award) into a Hall of Honour. Five to seven recipients are chosen each year to be inducted into the Hall at the Canadian Grand Masters competition.

Impact of the event and CGMFA
By 2008, CGMFA became a national arts organization, showcasing its importance at a national level. Two years later, they achieved their charitable tax status. Canadian Fiddler Matthew Johnson also recognized the difference in atmosphere between the Canadian Grand Masters and other fiddle contests, noting the Grand Masters is more professional, with former president of CGMFA Bruce Cummings saying that the atmosphere is different largely due to its invitational nature, theatre venue, and structure. In its over thirty years, the Canadian Grand Masters established itself as the top tier competition in the country. Journalist Frank Peebles noted that "it's one of the hardest climbs in the Canadian fiddle world. Getting called to compete at the Grand Masters is a career watermark for any fiddler who gets their name on that coveted list." The Grand North American Old Time Fiddle Championship even sponsors the top three Albertan contestants to go to the Grand Masters.



Besides the competition, the CGMFA also organizes workshops throughout the year, promotes National Fiddling Day events, and also launched The Canadian Fiddler newsletter in 1993. The newsletters feature events, news on fiddlers and fiddling in the country, interviews, results, tunes, and upcoming events.

Since its incorporation in 1990, over 900 contestants have competed at the Canadian Grand Masters (including those who have competed multiple times). As of 2023, the vast majority (176) are from Ontario. While no contestants have yet entered from Nunavut, the contest has seen more contestants from the Northwest Territories than Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland.

Format
The championship consists of upwards of thirty contestants. This number depends on the amount of representatives chosen from each province/territory who are able to attend. Each contestant must be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident and be a member in good standing of the association. It is a closed championship, meaning that contestants must qualify according to the contest's eligibility criteria to compete. The contestants are considered to be fiddling experts.

Contestants can be eligible for the annual competition by the following methods:
 * 1) Invited by the CGMFA to be a provincial/territorial representative.
 * 2) Finished in the Top 10 the previous year.
 * 3) Past champion of any year since 1990.
 * 4) At the decision of the board of directors.

Each province/territory is allowed to send up to five contestants each year, although the host province/territory can send seven.

During the preliminary round, contestants play a waltz, jig, reel/breakdown/hornpipe, and a tune of choice (that is not a waltz, jig, or reel) in any order in under 5 minutes. The Grand Masters judges sit behind the contestants on stage, listening to the contestants as they play with no additional audio equipment for aid. These three judges will then judge the contestants on intonation, technical ability, danceability, overall accuracy, emotion/feeling, and variety. The top ten from their marks will then proceed to the finals.

Those chosen for the finals must play a new set of a waltz, jig, reel, and tune of choice. In the event of a tie in the top three, those tied will play another set of three tunes in 4 minutes and be judged again.

Gender
Although issues with diversity amongst the fiddle circuit go beyond the Canadian Grand Masters, research on the event highlights issues it faced with gender, especially in the 1990s.

Examining the culture of fiddling contests in Ontario in the early 2000s (which includes the Canadian Grand Masters, as it was held in Ottawa annually until 2013), Sherry Ann Johnson interviewed women fiddlers to understand if gender impacted competitions. Although Johnson notes that most did not experience any limitations based on gender, fiddler and judge Karen Reid said that there was a "definite old boy's school attitude" when it came to contests, with several comments made to her about being "good for a girl."

Johnson notes that since the 1970s, women fiddlers are often discouraged from competition in championships and open groups due to perceptions of gendered skill differences and a lack of role models. Women winning champion titles were often treated as unordinary and unexpected. In terms of the Canadian Grand Masters, Johnson also highlights instances where perceptions also influenced the judging. In 1997, one judge's top eleven were all women, and he was asked to change his marks. In the end, the top eleven that year were made up of ten men and one woman, April Verch. Verch won the championship, and also won the Canadian Open the following year. Verch noted several comments were made to discredit her wins because of her gender, such as "it's time for a woman to win, so that's why [you won] it." Johnson concludes with the belief that the stereotype of women being weaker fiddlers no longer exists.

The results of the Canadian Grand Masters show some changes in the statistics and gender divide that support Johnson’s statement. As of 2023, out of the 360 contestants who have placed in the top eleven/ten, about 68 per cent (245) are men, while 32 per cent (114) are women. There are four years out of 33 where women made up the majority in the top eleven/ten (2001, 2002, 2006, and 2017), although there are six years that only one or two women made the top eleven/ten (1997, 1998, 2008, and 2023 all had one woman in the finals, 2010 and 2022 had two). Looking at the top three contestants each year, out of the 99 contestants who placed in the top three, only 13 were women. Of the 33 winners, only six champion titles were won by women, with two women having won more than once.

In her 2013 dissertation, Monique Giroux wrote that Patti Kusturok's wins, in particular, along with Crystal Plohman's second place finish "gave girls and women public role models that early generations did not have: not only were they competing, they were winning big." Kusturok won the Canadian Grand Masters three times, the first Western Canadian to win, along with champion titles from the Grand North Americans and Pembroke. While women have won the Canadian Grand Masters championship more often than at the Canadian Open, they are also statistically less likely to make the finals.

Diversity and access
Besides gender, the Canadian Grand Masters has made steps to ensure cultural diversity and support a variety of fiddlers and styles from across Canada. Their contests recognize and accept a range of traditional fiddling, including Indigenous/Métis styles, and several top fiddlers and judges are Métis/Indigenous. The movement of the event each year across Canada between different cities also enables and attracts a wider range of fiddlers, and provides better access to the competition for those that would otherwise be unable to travel cross-country. In 2024, the Canadian Grand Masters will be held for the first time in Whitehorse, Yukon, again providing access to the contest for those that might not be able to travel, while also providing space for Northern fiddlers and fiddle styles to shine.

Past winners
Winners of the Canadian Grand Masters contest become the Canadian Grand Master Champion. The contest also recognizes the first and second runner ups separately from the rest of the top 10/11 finalists. In 2019, Ethan Harty became the youngest fiddler to win the contest at the age of 17. Louis Schryer holds the record for most wins (4), with Patti Kustruok, Shane Cook, and Mark Sullivan tied for second with 3 wins. Louis Schryer and Patti Kustruok are also the only fiddlers to win three years in a row. Scott Woods holds the record for most times in the finals, with 11 appearances, followed by Mark Sullivan and Kyle Charron with six.