Lois McDonall is a Canadian and international music icon and inspiration — and as of August, the 85-year-old newly-decorated Order of Canada recipient is one of NOTL’s newest residents.

McDonall received the nation’s second-highest civilian honour Oct. 3 at a ceremony at Ottawa’s Rideau Hall in recognition of her career as an international opera singer.

She was given the honour, “for her celebrated career as one of Canada’s leading sopranos and for her mentorship of the next generation of performers,” reads her introduction on the Governor General of Canada’s website.

It was a ceremony almost a year in waiting. 

The Virgil resident was named a member of the Order in December of last year, but due to lingering delays caused by the pandemic, she wasn’t presented with her insignia until this fall.

“I didn’t expect it,” she said about the day she first heard she was to be a recipient.

“My career was not really here in Canada. Although I thought about it and said, ‘gosh, you know, just think what could happen,’ and then I got that phone call.”

Born in a one-room farmhouse in Northern Alberta in the community Larkspur, McDonall’s life and career took her from the Canadian prairies to Vancouver, Toronto, New York City, Germany and eventually London’s iconic West End.

Music, said McDonall, has been a part of her life for as long as she can remember.

When the Canadian government opened the west to newcomers in the early 1900s, McDonall’s family was amongst the first in the Larkspur area.

Alberta farming communities in those days were full of people from around the world including Irish, Scottish, French and Ukrainian settlers, all of whom have well noted affinities with music, farming and family.

“My family was music mad,” said McDonall.

“My father, you gave him an instrument and he could play something in half an hour.”

It has always been about family and music for McDonall, who was — and still is — as a single mom to her adult daughter and son.

Her first music memory of wanting to be a singer is from when she was just four years old.

“I must have been put down for a nap or something, but I remember crawling over my crib side and walking out into the kitchen,” she recalls.

“My mother was over by the north window of her kitchen, and she was stirring something … her back was to me. I remember standing there and announcing to her, ‘when I grow up I’m going to sing on the stage and I’m going to wear diamonds and sparklings and you’ll be there and granny will be there, it is all going to be wonderful.’”

At that, her mother turned around and told her, “hitch your wagon to a star honey and you never know where it’ll take you.”

From that day forward, she knew she was going to sing.

When she was about 10, her family decided a moved to the Alberta capital of Edmonton was in order so she could get a better education.

This, the family thought, would put her on a better path in life to pursue her dreams. And indeed it did. After studying under a teacher who encouraged her artistic side, she enrolled into the Alberta College of Music.

However, while music still rang loud in her desires, she ended up in a career as a lab technician in Edmonton and then Vancouver, where she got married and had her first child.

She never gave up on her singing dreams though.

“In all those years, I entered singing competitions because that was the only outlet that seemed to be available,” she said.

One of those competitions was held by Vancouver’s Metropolitan Opera. 

She won.

Another competition, not long after, was held in Seattle. 

She won that, too.

That performance earned her a ticket to New York City to compete at the famed Metropolitan Opera House — the MET.

She didn’t win that. But she didn’t lose either.

“At the MET, they told me that they thought I could make a career, but that I had a lot of hard work to do, to learn everything,” she said.

The powers that be at the MET were so impressed with McDonall that they wrote a letter to the head of the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto. 

But as McDonall puts it, “life happened again” and her second child was born.

The family then officially moved to Toronto from Vancouver, but she put off her singing career for a year to allow herself to bond with her new child.

During that time she never ventured far from her dreams, enrolling in the University of Toronto’s Opera School which was run by the Canadian Opera Company, the same company that she had been referred to just months earlier.

“I was happy as a clam. I was singing. It was really hard work, there’s no doubt about that,” she said, noting she was still working as a lab tech while going to school.

“I was very responsible for my children and I tried really hard to make sure that worked, but their dad was there at that time, and he took care of them at night, and I did the rest.”

The rest is an incredible journey.

After the University of Toronto she was selected to go on an audition tour in Germany and Austria where she earned herself a one-season contract with an opera company in Flensburg in 1969.

This was the big-time. She had made it.

From small town Alberta to the big leagues of opera in Germany.

“All of that was fantastic. I was like someone in a candy shop,” she remembers fondly.

“That’s when I started to get paid for singing.”

From there, the good and the not-so-good of life continued. 

She and her husband divorced, but then London came calling —  Sadler’s Wells Theatre, to be exact.

The famed theatre company has roots dating back to 1683.

“They, on the spot, offered me a two year contract. And I, on the spot, said, ‘yes, thank you very much.’”

Throughout her time in Europe, her children were back in Canada living with their grandmother.

The life of an up-and-coming opera star was a demanding one, but she never lost sight of her children.

But once she had succeeded in becoming an opera star, she wanted to be with her children again.

“I do recall asking them if I could afford to bring my children on the salary that they offered me. And they said, ‘oh, of course you can.’”

For the next 14 years, McDonall and her children remained in London, ingratiating themselves in the diversity and talents of London’s West End and building a community of friends and loved ones.

McDonall’s star continued to rise through those years and she became one of the most recognizable names on the London opera scene.

But in the early 1980s it was time to come home. 

She retired from opera singing, returned to Canada with her children and resigned to a year of relaxation and reflection.

Her professional life as a musician and singer ended as a music teacher, giving back to youngsters the way people had given to her on her way to the top.

She taught music for a semester in the Canadian Rockies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

She did the same for a short while at University of Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music and eventually opened a private music studio where she taught voice and piano until COVID changed the world.

“I love teaching. I taught at the faculty (Banff) and I taught at the conservatory, but it was more rewarding to teach at home,” she said.

“I discovered that I could teach little kids how to play the piano. I didn’t know I could do it, but I just loved seeing the light go on.”

Now, her career and accomplishments are written in the Canadian history books.