Playing it by ear

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This article was published 22/05/2021 (1780 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Andrew St. Hilaire travelled far and wide to perform at major musical-theatre productions for over two decades.

It’s all he really knew how to do, playing his keyboard or piano and writing beautiful symphonies intended for packed audiences at lively concert halls — that is, until the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything for the 44-year-old.

Now, the man Broadway shows would have on speed-dial when they toured across Canada is a real estate agent and salesperson working in Winnipeg.

“This isn’t entirely the journey I envisioned for my career,” St. Hilaire told the Free Press. “But it’s the journey that made the most sense, all things considered. And I’d say it’s a pretty happy story, because in my first year doing this, I’ve been doing really quite well, financially speaking.”

While things are looking much better now for St. Hilaire, it was a different picture altogether back in early spring last year. Bit by bit, as coronavirus cases piled up, any kind of revenue from performing or writing live music dried up for him.

It’s a circumstance that isn’t unique to him, either. After all, the arts sector was the first to be shut down across the board by COVID-19; and as any economist or public-health expert will tell you, it’ll also likely be the last industry to recover around the world, post-pandemic.

Fourteen months later, performers, technical workers and support staff remain unemployed. Art galleries and museums are still shuttered to in-person viewings. Live theatre, ballet, opera companies and philharmonics keep cancelling their seasons in Canada.

“I remember last year having no idea what direction I was supposed to go in when things just kept shutting down,” said St. Hilaire. “I tried not to panic, but I was growing more concerned by the day because I just didn’t know when we would ever get back to normal. I still don’t.”

But while the arts sector continues to take unprecedented hits, there’s one industry that barely felt a bruise from the public-health crisis: real estate. In fact, Canada’s real estate market is seeing its biggest boom in decades.

Around the country, from one month to the next, residential sales continue to break records upon records. Such intense demand is driving home prices higher than ever before and resulting in historic inventory shortages. In Manitoba, sales were up in 2020 by more than a quarter compared to the same periods in 2019, which was already a record year.

St. Hilaire didn’t exactly look at these kind of numbers before joining the real estate sector. He was aware of them, he says, but what happened for him was a mix of past experience and a whole lot of much-needed serendipity.

As a bit of a side hustle, “if you could even call it that,” he did buy a house every couple years and do something that “flippers” in the real-estate industry often do full time: he’d fix it up and then sell the property to another buyer. Except unlike most flippers, he lived in the house and did the fixing because he actually liked doing it.

“That’s why I always had the idea at the back of my mind that real estate was something I could do. But I just thought this was probably more of a retirement and very later-years type of thing,” he said.

“Simply put, rather than sitting around waiting for the arts sector to get back to normal, I decided to get my real estate licence since I thought my home renovation, buying and selling experiences in the past would serve me and my clients well in this official capacity.”

Getting that licence didn’t take too long at all — just two months. “The real problem was in between and after I got it — you’re completely starting a new business,” he said.

At the time when his last gig dried up, St. Hilaire had been living in Edmonton for four years and was working with MacEwan University as a music director for their theatre productions. He was born in Thompson and had lived in Winnipeg since he was two years old.

“So when things came crashing down, it was only natural that I moved back home and did this big pivot in a city I knew best,” he said.

St. Hilaire lived with his mom for his self-isolation period of 14 days, then rented a place and accessed the Canada Emergency Response Benefit. “It wasn’t the easiest time, I’ll tell you that. I thought I could be out of work for years,” he said.

“Now, things just look so much better. It’s kind of crazy.”

The Winnipegger isn’t sure when he’ll play for a live audience again. He suspects it could be until the end of 2022 before that’s even allowed, but he’s still got an upright piano kicking around his new realtor’s office.

“A musician will always be a musician at heart,” St. Hilaire said. “It’s a risky business for anyone to get into, but a pandemic can’t take away your passion for that kind of thing. For me though, for now, I’m really just happy to have landed where I have.”

temur.durrani@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @temurdur