Kathleen (Kay) May Denison 1925 – 2023

Kathleen (“Kay”) May Denison was born on June 14, 1925, daughter of Frederick Heney Goold and Dorthy Alexander Goold. Kay passed away quietly at home on March 23, 2023.

She was born into a music loving family (with her brothers Cecil, Billy, John, Gary, and Eddy) and started playing the piano as a toddler. In her teenage years she mastered the classics through the Royal Conservatory of Music but blossomed into a pianist in the popular genres of stride piano and swing bands, playing everywhere from the Standish Hall, the Chateau Laurier Grill, to churches and synagogues, to the Banff Springs Hotel. She was in demand as an accompanist because not only was she a prodigious chart reader but she could “play by ear” and any key on the fly.

It was the age of live music, and Kay was busy entertaining on as many nights of the week as she wanted to be. Besides the piano, she became an organist. She made the horses in the RCMP Musical Ride appear to keep time. Kay played “Three Blind Mice” on the organ to introduce the umpires at the Ottawa Athletics Baseball games at Lansdowne Park. She played at the old Ottawa Auditorium for the Ottawa Senators (in the Quebec Senior League predecessor of the NHL), Kay played for every team of the NHL’s Original Six era and many of the new expansion teams and performed the national anthem for every foreign national team that came to challenge our Team Canada. She was a regular at Rideau Hall, entertaining every Governor General from Roland Michener to Adrienne Clarkson.

Her talent circled the globe when her rendition of O Canada was sent to Canadian embassies around the world on a 45 rpm vinyl as the “official version.” Kay was quiet and modest and preferred to express her talent through her fingertips. She was too shy to speak into the mic when asked to read the plate number of a car that had left its lights on. From the horse shows at the Ottawa Winter Fair, to wrestling matches in the old Coliseum, at the same time that Kay’s talent was permeating the Ottawa music scene, she was a very supportive mother to her three sons and a loving wife to Bill.

Kay continued her musical career through the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, …and right up to the present. Kay regularly entertained at seniors’ residences and nursing homes. In 2013 Kay was awarded the Glenn Robb Lifetime Achievement Award by the Ottawa Local 180 of the American Federation of Musicians of which she was a lifetime member. She was an original member of Grey Jazz and Silver Swing Bands for a quarter of a century.

During the isolation of COVID she did a weekly recital on Facebook which had a huge following. Even during her last days while confined to a hospital bed, set up at home, Kay played on a keyboard across her bed.

She is survived by her brothers Cecil, Billy, John, and Gary, Aunt Jean, who was like a sister to her, her three sons Terry (Michelle), Ken, and Tom (Bev), her grandchildren Stephanie (Wade), Patrick (Joelle), Emily (Anthony), and Lucas (Maritza), and great-grandchildren Allie, Olivia, Caroline, and Hannah and many nieces and nephews in Canada and the USA. The family is eternally grateful for the care of the medical and palliative care team that provided Kay with dignity and comfort in her final weeks, especially Rose, Heather, and Marivic.

Source: eNews Harp, June 2023

 

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