Peter Chipman

Peter Chipman was born in Ottawa in 1945 and grew up in Saint John, New Brunswick, where he taught himself to accompany his singing on guitar. At the University of New Brunswick, where he joined the University Naval Training Division as a first-year cadet in 1964, he formed the folk quartet The Henchmen with Alf Brien, Jerry Gadd and Dave Sansom. Chipman led the group, played guitar and sang tenor. The Henchmen performed wherever they could, including CBC Television's Don Messer's Jubilee, and recorded the album One Up! for Dominion Records, a set of Maritime folk that included the traditional 'River Saint John'.

Travelling with the naval reserve, he fell for the West Coast, and he moved there for good in 1969. Once his Royal Canadian Naval Reserve obligations were fulfilled he settled in Victoria and went to work as a stockbroker with Pemberton Securities. His evenings belonged to the Victoria Operatic Society, where he sang in several musicals, and to the hotel lounges where he was building a following as a solo singer with a guitar.

In 1977 he decided, as he later put it, to "reach for the brass ring" and turned professional. His records came through Capcan Music Ltd., a Victoria company whose vice-president, songwriter Tom Loney, supplied much of his early material. The first album, You Girl, was produced by Bob Brooks at Little Mountain Sound in Vancouver with a full orchestral session, strings and brass wrapped around Chipman's baritone and backing vocals from Nancy Nash, Jane Mortifee and Corlynn Ramsay. It was made in cooperation with Victoria's C-FAX radio, whose Barry Bowman wrote the liner notes and co-wrote 'Everybody's Writin' Songs' with Chipman and Wilf Leduc. RPM gave You Girl an A-plus in July 1978 and pointed country programmers to Loney's 'At the Start', along with his 'My Lady' and the title song. Capcan released three singles from it that year, 'You Light Up My Life', 'I Didn't Ever Really Love You' and 'Everybody's Writin' Songs', and Chipman introduced the last of them to a national audience on CBC Television's The Raes.

During the 1979 Calgary Stampede he played the Town & Country Inn and sold a stack of You Girl from the stage, then went back to Harrison Hot Springs, the resort where he was a lounge fixture through the 1970s and 1980s. That summer he flew to Toronto to cut four sides at Manta Sound with Eric Robertson, Roger Whittaker's long-time producer, including a disco version of 'Ghost Riders in the Sky', and taped an appearance on Jack Jones's television series at Hamilton Place.

'Rodeo Road Show Man', backed with 'Ghost Riders in the Sky', came out on Capcan early in 1980 and broke on country and adult-oriented radio at the same time. By May it stood at No. 29 on RPM's country chart and No. 25 on its adult-oriented playlist.

Bruce Innes produced the Victoria half of the next album at his own studio, with Valdy among the backing singers, and the Robertson recordings from Toronto brought in Moe Koffman, Arnie Chycoski, Russ Little and a full string section. Capcan shipped 'Four High Cards' in June 1981, just as Chipman came off a month-long engagement at the Town House Motor Inn in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and began working his way west from Winnipeg to promote it. I Love the Country in You followed later that year, with 'Hey Daisy' and 'Dubonnet', Chipman's song with Barry Bowman, paired on a further single. Capcan released Romantically Yours in 1983.

By his own count he spent twelve years as a full-time entertainer, working bars, lounges, cabarets and main-stage shows and appearing on television, with engagements that took him well beyond Canada. Among the invitations that came with his records was one to sing on the Variety Club of BC telethon. Taken to see the projects the telethon paid for, at a time when the province badly needed a new children's hospital, he became a volunteer and made a habit of stopping at children's hospitals to sing whenever he was on the road. By 1998 he had worked 65 or 70 Variety telethons in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

The Variety Show of Hearts kept him on British Columbia television for decades. He became a regular performer and then co-host, staying with the telethon until 2018, and the charity became his last career. As Variety's Director of Planned Giving he built relationships with donors and stewarded legacy gifts for children with special needs. He earned professional fundraising credentials, mentored others in the field and taught planned giving at BCIT. His association with Variety lasted more than 40 years.

In the 1980s he became a partner in Cooper Boating Centre on Vancouver's Granville Island, and in 1989 he married Patricia on the bow of a boat in Princess Louisa Inlet. He served for many years on the boards of the Naval Officers Association of BC and the Princess Louisa Inlet Society.

He still called himself a folk singer and balladeer. He was a featured vocalist, alongside Lynne McNeil, on Dal Richards and His Orchestra's Beautiful Canada. In 1997 he hosted Stepping Out With Variety Club, a run of 18 song-and-dance shows in Vancouver with 25 young dancers, and that September The Henchmen reunited for a performance at UNB in Fredericton, still able to fall into four-part harmony. Capcan issued For All Those Years, a collection of his best-known songs, and in the late 1990s the company was also distributing records by other independent Canadian artists.

Peter Chipman died at Delta Hospital in Ladner, British Columbia, on September 26, 2021. He was 76.

-Robert Williston