Seventeen-year-old Paul Noble comes from a large musical family that is well versed in oratory and song.
At the Cariboo Festival in April Paul participated in both the musical instrumentation category for violin, and in the speech arts category.
The speech arts adjudicator, Catherine McCarthy, recommended Paul as a competitor in the Intermediate Speech Arts category after hearing four of his speeches.
In Grade 11 and home schooled, Paul has been reciting poetry and stories since he was just four years old for family, at church functions, special events and dinners.
He has been participating in the Cariboo Festival for 12 years and finds the experience very enriching.
“I just want to thank the Cariboo Festival Society for doing the festival as I have been involved in it since I was four years old and I have learned so much through it,” Paul says.
This will be his first time as a competitor at the provincial festival which takes place in Fort St. John May 31 to June 4.
He is looking forward to learning from the other competitors and adjudicators who will be there to build on what he is learning with his speech coach here at home.
“Ginny Alexander is my speech arts teacher,” Paul says. “I love learning to communicate with groups of people.”
He delivered four speeches for his Cariboo Festival entries: an excerpt from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables; the prologue for Shakespeare’s King Henry the VIII; At the Theatre by A.P. Herbert; and The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot.
He will perform the first three speeches for the provincial festival competition.
He performed At the Theatre by A.P. Herbert during the Cariboo Festival’s Honours Concert.
Paul has also been playing violin for eight years with instruction by Ingrid Johnston. He can often be seen playing with his musical family at various church and community functions.
For the Cariboo Festival Paul performed the violin songs Courante by Bach and the Orange Blossom Special.
His father John Noble is a pastor with Cariboo Christian Life Fellowship.