Fiddler.
Born at Selkirk on 8 February 1929 to Elizabeth Bird (1898-1983) and Joseph Odilon Bedard (1887-1956), his mother came from Little Black River Indian Reservation, now Black River First Nation, and his father from Quebec, just north of Montreal. The couple migrated to Selkirk in 1899. When he was five, the family moved to the Central Manitoba Gold Mine near Bissett for a few years while his father worked. Because his father wanted to try his hand at homesteading, they then moved back to Little Black River. However, with no school there for the children to attend, the family moved back to Selkirk in 1941.
Music was always in the background of the Bedard family. Mel’s uncle had passed on a fiddle, which his father played a few times. He grew up hearing fiddle music at dances and events as well, and later, when the community received a radio, he would often hear the well-known fiddler, and later good friend, Andy de Jarlis, play on air. At school, music was a requirement, which turned out to be Mel’s best subject. He started playing guitar at age 14, but always loved the sound of the fiddle.
At age 15, with his father’s health declining, he entered the work force, first in road construction, and then as a lumberjack in the Thunder Bay area and later in coastal British Columbia. He returned to Selkirk in 1950 and found work as a dredge master in the Public Works Department for the federal government. The job was intended to be temporary, but it turned into a 37-year career.
Meanwhile, he picked up his father’s old fiddle to see if he could learn to play it. With his experience playing guitar, he understood the chord structure, and with three Don Messer records to study from, he learned to play a tune in every key in just six weeks. At a jam session one evening, where he had been playing his guitar, he picked up a fiddle when he thought no one was paying attention and began to play a tune in the key of B-flat. Everyone immediately asked him to play the tune again. Realizing that the other fiddlers present did not know how to play in that key or that scale on the fiddle, he was encouraged and inspired to make the fiddle his primary instrument.
At first he focused on perfecting Canadian musician Don Messer’s style from listening to his recordings, but when he met Andy de Jarlis, he became a master of the Red River Jig style. Don Messer would come to Mel’s house on occasion to play fiddle with him. By the 1980s he had recorded two albums, the first of which came out in 1984. Two thousand copies sold in the next five years. He was the first Métis man to use the term Métis on a record sleeve.
He attended fiddling competitions all through the 1970s and 1980s. Competitions often took place in small communities and would last the entire weekend. When the competition portion was over, the jamming would begin. Jams would carry on until dawn and he was often the last one standing. He won over 80 awards, one of which was the Andy de Jarlis Trophy at the Festival du Voyageur at Winnipeg.
After his retirement from work in 1988, he began performing across Canada and the United States, starting with an invitation in 1989 to the Dakota Centennial Folklife Festival at Bismarck, North Dakota. At the time he was the only Canadian to cross the border for the festival. In 2001, he went on tour in Ireland with the Gabriel Dumont Institute, and a year later brought home the first-place prize in the Over 71 category at the 21st Annual Minnesota State Old Time Fiddle Championship. He performed at a Canada Day celebration in Ottawa, on air in Belcourt, North Dakota, and on CBC Radio. He also became an adjudicator as well as a mentor to up-and-coming performers, such as Patti Lamoureux, whom he would often coach and teach tunes to over the phone. He was inducted to the Manitoba Fiddle Association Wall of Fame (2006) and the International Music Camp’s Fiddlers Hall of Fame in the Métis Fiddler category (2013).
His music spread through the communities he travelled to and played for. He restored tunes that had been lost, such as Lower Fort Garry Jig and Lost Child, thereby preserving Métis culture for future generations. He raised his family together with his wife Beatrice Scott, and his legacy continued, as many of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren became singers and guitar players. Despite the accolades and prize money associated with his awards, he always said, “It’s the fellowship that’s most satisfying.”
He died at Selkirk on 19 May 2014. He was inducted posthumously into the Canadian Fiddle Hall of Honour (2022).
“Mel Bedard,” City of Selkirk Museum.
“Melvin Joseph Clifford Bedard,” FamilySearch.
This page was prepared by Lois Braun.
Page revised: 10 December 2025
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