Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - Michael Keith was ‘blown away’ when he visited Hornby Island twenty years ago.
“I was like, ‘Wow, imagine living in a place like that.’ I remember going back to Toronto and telling my friends, ‘they don't even lock their doors there. It's incredible!’”
He was enamoured by the spectacular seascapes at Tofino, when he played there a few years later.
Keith went through a divorce, sold his house, and then hooked up with a professor at the University of Toronto.
“My new partner who I've been with for 10 years, introduced me to Cortes because she would come here for getaways from Toronto. I was gigging two or three times a week, and teaching in Toronto. She wanted to move here. I came, checked it out and just fell in love with the land. We were fortunate enough to get a tiny little place.”
“I felt kind of quasi-retired when I came here because of a few health problems. Part of the reason coming here was it would just be good for me, physically and mentally. Same with my partner. I feel blessed that I was able to do that.”
“It's a big change, as you can imagine, but I’ve done quite well. In the six years I've been here, I have really felt welcomed by the community. I'm sure it's added years to my life being here and I feel reinvigorated.”
“Some of the summers in the past six years, I've made more money than I did in Toronto for some entire years. I was playing six or seven times every summer at the Gorge and it was a really good paying thing. I miss that.”
He both teaches and sells music online.
“I also will go play for people that hire me. There's not a lot of people like myself that have done it professionally. There's a few like Rick Bockner. There's some of what I call the weekend warrior types here that get together and play the Eagles. I'll play a wedding doing Van Morrison or some stuff that really isn't me, but I can do that. I don't say no too much.”
“Just before the pandemic, I was set to relaunch my career. Then the pandemic happened. Both my parents passed away. I had a cancer diagnosis and it was one thing after another, but I'm doing well now, with a pretty good bill of health, just monitoring stuff. I had a kidney removed last year, probably not the stuff that people want to read about, but these are just things of life.”
“I’m just starting to get reestablished again.”
