Friday the 13th turned out to be a very lucky day for Horsefly, B.C. cowboy singer/songwriter Bernadette Ducharme.
That’s the day she learned an anonymous fan from the U.S. gifted her a $4,000 Gibson Songbird acoustic guitar.
Brian Sawyer, who owns The Guitar Sellar in Williams Lake, was contacted about two weeks ago by the fan asking if his was the closest music store to Horsefly.
When Sawyer replied it was, the man told him he wanted to buy a gift for someone in Horsefly and it had to be anonymous.
“He told me he’d been a fan of Bernadette’s for quite a while and that her song, Western Spirit, really spoke to him,” Sawyer said.
After the guitar arrived at his store, Sawyer called Ducharme and told her he had a gift for her from someone.
She arrived at about 4 p.m. Friday, Aug. 13, and was very surprised.
Once Sawyer opened up the guitar case for Ducharme to see what was inside, her face broke out into a huge smile, interrupted by her hand going to her mouth to gesture amazement.
“Oh my gosh,” she said as she took the guitar into her hands.
“It’s beautiful. Holy Crap. And I can’t know who it is?”
Store manager Rick Blackwood even encouraged her to smell the guitar.
“That is real mahogany right there,” he told her. “You’ve got to take it before we drool over it anymore.”
As she tried it out she just kept saying, ‘wow’, and then decided to share a new song, Melancholy Trail, one of 33 songs she has co-created with cowboy poet Mag Mawhinney.
Ducharme said she has been told she could sing before she talked.
She was born in Merritt but moved to Horsefly when she was 13 because her parents bought a ranch there. Over the years she has moved away from Horsefly, yet always returned and plans now to stay put.
As for the anonymous donor, she said she might have an inkling who he is, but will have to try and connect with him to see if she’s right.
Sawyer said nothing like the gifting has ever happened in his store before.
“This is a great Friday the 13th,” Ducharme said.
Ducharme was the first place winner of the Northern Star singing competition in Barkerville in 2014, a finalist in the Spirit of the West Rising Star Show Case at the Kamloops Cowboy Festival in 2015, and the runner up in the same competition in 2016
To learn more about her music check out her website.
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