Ethan Harty of Lougheed travelled to Whitehorse this past week to compete in the Canadian Grand Masters Fiddling Championship.
Prior to the weekend, Harty was a two-time winner, looking for and winning his third Grand Master Championship title on Saturday, Aug. 24.
Harty was one of the 10 finalists named out of a field of 35 top Canadian fiddlers.
This year’s competition and ceremony was also live streamed on Facebook.
This was the first time that the competition was held in the North, and along with the Grand Masters event this year, youth fiddlers from across the territories and northern BC performed as part of a Pan-Northern Youth Fiddle Summit.
The organizing group was the Yukon-based ‘Fiddleheads.’
Harty first picked up a fiddle at six years of age, and in the intervening years, has won the Alberta Open Champion, in 2006; Grand North American Old-Time Fiddle Champion in 2019; was a finalist in 2017 and 2018 in the Canadian Grand Masters, and was named 2019 and 2022, and now 2024 Canadian Grand Master Champion Fiddler.
Ethan is now 22, a father of two, and an accomplished blacksmith, running his own shop called Harty Locomotive Works Ltd., where he does custom and commercial forging, and also runs classes.
Leslie Cholowsky
Editor