Plea for violin for refugee strikes a chord

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This article was published 03/05/2022 (1252 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A violin bought for a Winnipegger when he was a teen will soon be in the hands of a refugee who had to leave her instrument behind when she fled from Ukraine.

The almost 70-year-old violin owned by Jim Rogers was selected by a local luthier as the best to refurbish. It was among several donated to a Winnipegger who had taken a detour during her vacation in France last month to help Ukrainian refugees in Poland.

In a Free Press story on Saturday, Susanne Martin said she wanted to help a mother of two children whom she had met — and had driven her to family in Vienna, Austria — get a replacement violin.

“I played it when I was just a young child,” the 78-year-old Rogers said on Tuesday. “I started to play the violin when I was 10 years old or so when I had a smaller version. Then my parents bought me the one that I gave to Susanne.

“I haven’t played it in years and years.”

In fact, Rogers has been trying to find a home for it for more than 30 years.

“The last time I played it was prior to 1986. I was in my basement office and I took it out and the cat reached up and grabbed the bow,” he said.

Rogers said he’s just glad the violin his parents bought him will no longer gather dust.

“I’m very pleased that somebody who really will appreciate it is getting it.”

The luthier is giving her a discount so it will cost about $200 to refurbish the instrument and the bow, Martin said. She hopes to mail it to the woman once it is ready.

“She will be able to open it and play it right then,” she said. “I didn’t want her to get an instrument that she had to fix it. She can’t afford that.”

Martin, who detoured to Poland with her partner Peter Palaschuk to deliver donated clothes, bedding and medical supplies, met the woman and her two young children, aged eight and five, when she offered a lift to anyone who needed one to any place they were driving through between Poland and France.

During the drive, when the woman hummed to classical music on the radio, she told the couple she had played classical violin in Ukraine but had to leave her instrument behind. That’s when Martin decided to see if someone wanted to donate a violin after she returned to Winnipeg.

Rogers’ violin wasn’t the only one gifted to her by generous Winnipeggers who had read the story; she got five in total, Martin said.

A Canadian diplomat working in the Canadian Embassy in Vienna also says she is willing to donate the student violin her daughter used when she was younger.

Martin said she hopes all of the violins will get into the hands of refugees.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca