Redwater singalong group provides relief to care residents

By Irene van der Kloet

Some six or seven years ago, Jeannie Hare in Redwater started a singalong group to sing to the residents at the Redwater Diamond Springs Lodge, Radway Continuing Care and Dr. Turner lodge in Fort Saskatchewan.

“Songs like, we try to do their era of songs, for February we do Valentine’s and love songs, November we do Remembrance Day, Christmas songs for Christmas, St Patrick’s Day for March so the theme songs for the months”. They also did singalongs at Kris Kringle events  for several years, pre-Covid.

The group sings and residents can sing along if they wish.

Jeannie brings her own keyboard for the singing, even if there is a piano on the premises. “With the keyboard you can transpose to lower octaves”, she explains. “If a singer is more comfortable singing lower, which many are, you can transpose. Residents have a choice to sing along, the facility gets all the residents lined up and they enjoy the singing anyway, it’s very calming and especially with the dementia, as studies show, it’s very calming.”

They sing for about 45 minutes to an hour, once a month. At Christmas and Remembrance Day the members do some poems, poetry and reading in between the songs, to sort of make a program out of it.

“Of course with Covid, things have been slow. And the thing is, in the lodges, nobody is coming in so they really appreciate anybody coming in. You know like, the rules have been so up and down and it’s been really restricted, left them quite isolated actually at all the facilities. They need this.”

The pandemic interrupted the Fort Saskatchewan singalongs, but they continued in Redwater and Radway until those sessions got cancelled in December 2021.

Jeannie would like to see more males join the group to have more bass voices. “We have one guy so we like more male members for the bass voice, he joined recently and we have five ladies. Anybody that likes to sing is welcome to join”. They have teamed up on several occasions – at Kris Kringle events for example – with Larry Bucholz with his guitar, he plays locally.

Jeannie chooses the songs that the group sings, and finds songs that the residents relate to, from their era.

“One of the points I want to bring across is music therapy and art, they’re finding such strides in it, in aiding dementia. Of everything dementia, art and music, that area of the brain is stimulated and they really, really relate to that therapy”.

Anybody interested in joining Jeannie’s singalong group can contact her at 780-942-2963.