VIKTOR PIVOVAROV/TIMES & TRANSCRIPT
Raymond LeBlanc wheels his guitar down Highfield Street last year. Raymond was well known for playing his guitar on Main Street to passersby.
Main Street busker dies at 81
Yodelling cowboy was part of Moncton's downtown streetscape for decades
By Brent Mazerolle
Times & Transcript Staff Published Tuesday March 11th, 2008
We have lost one of the sights and sounds of downtown Moncton. Street troubador Raymond LeBlanc has died.
The 81-year-old singing, yodelling, strumming cowboy, who had been busking on Moncton's Main Street for just about as long as anyone can remember, died at The Moncton Hospital on Friday.
Raymond had been at the hospital for most of the winter, struggling with diabetes, overall declining health, and complications from burns he sustained last summer. In February, he suffered a heart attack and then a stroke.
Everyone, it seems, knew Raymond, even if they knew little about him.
He had been a fixture outside Moncton's Brunswick Block for at least 20 years, according to Gerry Hebert at the Brunswick Barber Shop. Raymond's lifelong friend Len Myers (who is well-known in the area as one of the Bunkhouse Boys) estimates Raymond may have performed on the sidewalk there for closer to 30 years.
The story of Raymond LeBlanc is bittersweet. He was the last surviving member of his family, but leaves behind some wonderful friends. There would be surely be a string medical terms to describe his mental abilities today, but when he was a child three-quarters of a century ago, he would have worn the uncharitable and all-encompassing badge of "slow."
Throughout his long life, the somehwat child-like Ray often struggled with the basics of looking after himself, but survive he did, often with the help of those who had sort of adopted him.
Besides Len Myers, a few of those who have looked after him over the years included Janet LeBlanc, John De Vona, and John's staff at Read's News Stand.
Janet LeBlanc, no relation, was busy this week making arrangements for a funeral Raymond's meagre estate can't really afford. She and Len are selling his musical instruments -- a guitar, a mandolin, and a couple accordions -- in hope of raising some of the money needed. A hat was passed at Elmwood Drive's Villa Heritage Sunday night and despite the stormy weather, Len reports collecting $189 for the funeral fund. When Raymond was well, he had a standing Sunday night gig at the seniors residence, and if he couldn't catch a ride, it was not unusual to see him pushing his guitar in his walker, hiking all the way out to the northeastern edge of the city from his various living quarters in the Highfield and Weldon Street areas.
With the fundraising, some final pension money and some cost absorbing from Frenette's Funeral Home, Ray will have a simple memorial service at Frenette's on Wednesday at 11 a.m., and his ashes will be buried alongside his parents come spring.
"He never lived larged, so he's not going to die large," Janet said.
Raymond apparently burned his right hand and one of his legs while cooking last summer -- badly enough that one of his fingertips would have to be amputated in the aftermath -- but evaded questions from even his closest friends about the cause of his injuries. He feared what would happen if people thought he could no longer take care of himself.
"He knew he would have to go to a home," Len said, adding Ray didn't want to see the government get his pension. Ray spent some time in the Dr. Georges-L. Dumont Hospital last summer, was back home for several months, but then was admitted to The Moncton Hospital in November.
He never left.
His last months were not all bleak. In hospital there came regular meals and nurses he could entertain with his yodelling. Janet said just as Ray liked all the pretty women he would see from his Main Street perches, he liked the attention of the nurses he met in the city's two hospitals in the past year.
When he was well, Raymond LeBlanc and his cowboy hats -- many of them ones Len's brother and fellow Bunkhouse Boy Gerry Myers would get for him whenever he visited his daughter Shirley Myers in Nashville -- were a harbinger of spring in downtown.
Janet said John De Vona was particularly supportive of the man camped out most days just outside the door of his business, keeping the musician in sandwiches and coffee. John modestly allowed yesterday that he and his staff had helped him out over the years, and even been an unofficial taxi service at times.
It was appreciated. John still has a tape of a song called "My Frend (sic) John" which Ray wrote and recorded for him.
John's mother Loretta recalled Ray inviting her to his 75th birthday party concert at Victoria Park. She and a friend bought him a cake and joined two other people for Ray's performance in the old bandstand at the park.
John said part of Ray's appeal was that he was not panhandling or using any of the money people gave him on drink or drugs. Smoking was about his only vice, and Len Myers said even that wasn't a big part of his life. "He never even swore," Len said. A bigger vice though, might have been buying musical instruments.
For all those who looked out for Ray, there were others who took advantage of him. His friends could only cringe at how he never seemed to grasp the value of money or manage it to last from month to month. His pension checks disappeared as fast as they appeared and it wasn't unusual for him to "buy a guitar for $500 and sell it a week later for $250," as Len put it. Besides getting taken in many a business transaction, he also suffered a lot of out-and-out theft, not so hard to imagine when he would leave a brand new guitar or mandolin on the sidewalk while he went for a coffee break. The Nashville souvenirs tended to disappear too, traded for food or stolen away.
On a good day, his take from busking might be $30 or $40, an estimate of John De Vona's based on what change Ray would bring into Read's to trade for bills.
"But he did it for the love," John said. "Ray would be out there and forget the cup. I'd have to bring one out and say, 'you never know, someone might throw a dollar in.'"
While Ray had one claim to a musical pedigree -- the internationally renowned violinist Arthur LeBlanc was a great uncle -- it must be admitted his musical genius was much more about passion than talent.
It's that passion, and that smile, that will be missed when spring finally comes this year. Without Ray's yodelling, the usually crowded sidewalk on Moncton's Main Street is sure to seem empty.
Main Street busker dies at 81 !
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