Obituary

Citation

Sparling, H. (2015), "Obituary", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 24 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-05-2015-0120

Obituary

Article Type: Obituary From: Disaster Prevention and Management, Volume 24, Issue 4

On Joe Scanlon, disaster songs, and new research

In July 2010, while on holiday, I received an intriguing e-mail out of the blue from a sociologist of disaster (I did not even know at that time that such a thing existed), asking if I might be interested in partnering with him to research disaster songs of Atlantic Canada. Joe Scanlon was aware of the extensive research on the representations of disasters in the news media and Hollywood films, and he was interested in exploring how accurately they were represented in other forms of popular culture, such as song. He wanted to apply for funding for his project, but had two problems. One, he needed a music scholar on the team. Two, he was already the lead investigator on a SSHRC grant and needed someone else to take the lead on a grant application for project funding. Joe and I had never met; he found me by looking for music scholars at Maritime universities.

Until that point, my own research had focused exclusively on Gaelic song in Nova Scotia. I had no background in Anglo-Canadian folksong broadly speaking, let alone disaster songs. But, at the time, I was the only ethnomusicologist at a Maritime university and I figured that it would be to my benefit to have a stronger background in Anglo-Canadian folksong. So I said yes. Historian Del Muise was also a project collaborator, as he had expertise in the coal mining history of Cape Breton, an occupation in which a large number of disasters occurred, inspiring a surprising number of songs.

What followed was a very intense period of preparing a SSHRC grant application. Joe was a wonderful mentor, tirelessly offering feedback and suggestions. Under Joe’s guidance, I became familiar with the field of disaster sociology, reading about definitions of disaster, representations of disasters in popular media, and current issues in the study of disaster and disaster culture. Amazingly, given my newness to the field and my emerging scholar status, we were modestly successful, receiving a special one-year grant. We were successful with another special one-year grant the following year as well.

With the grants we received, we were able to begin a collection of Atlantic Canadian disaster songs that has now expanded to over 500. Joe hired several undergraduate research assistants – he was always adamant that undergraduate students were just as valuable as research assistants as graduate students – over the following years. He trained these students to conduct archival research and to write disaster histories for the disasters with which we had associated songs. These disaster histories became a key part of our project web site, disastersongs.ca, which regularly receives more than 1,000 visits per month. He also co-authored several articles with his research assistants on the subject of disaster songs, at least one of which appeared in a peer reviewed journal while others appeared in more accessible publications.

Joe, the consummate scholar and learner, was keen to contribute not just to the field of disaster sociology, but to ethnomusicology and folklore as well. He presented at the International Council for Traditional Music in 2011, where I met him face-to-face for the first time, and he published an article in Canadian Folk Music (2011), a magazine published by the Canadian Society for Traditional Music (CSTM). He was scheduled to present another paper at the recent CSTM conference here in Cape Breton. I read his paper, which he had prepared well in advance with his undergraduate research assistant, Peter Knowlton, in his absence and in his honour.

I did not know Joe for very long, but he has had a profound effect on me as a scholar. He supported me as I applied for my first successful SSHRC grants. He mentored me as I entered into a new research area. And he served as a powerful role-model, continuing a very active research agenda long after retirement, applying for grants, hiring undergraduate research assistants, and travelling the world to present at conferences. Without Joe, I would never have started work on disaster songs, a research area that I now consider one of the most fascinating, enjoyable, and productive areas of my scholarly life. I am profoundly grateful that Joe, gregarious and irrepressible as he was, decided to reach out to me, a stranger, back in 2010. It is my sincerest hope that I will honour his legacy by continuing the disaster songs project that we started together.

Heather Sparling