George Stewart

Stewart, George

George (Watson) Stewart. Conductor, teacher, organist, french hornist, b Glasgow 1870, d near Woodbridge, Ont, 24 Nov 1961. He studied with George Bloine in Berlin, taught singing at the Academy in Edinburgh, and toured for two seasons with the Berlin Meister Orchestra. In 1912 he emigrated with his family to Canada and settled first in Medicine Hat, Alta, where he conducted a band, an orchestra, and an operatic society. He moved to Toronto in 1917, began teaching at the Hamburg Conservatory in 1918, and later was principal of that conservatory's Deer Park Branch. He was organist at St Columbia's United Church and played the french horn with local orchestras. He produced operettas for the Eaton Operatic Society and for the Savoyards, which he formed with his son ReginaldStewart in 1919. During the 1930s he was a producer for Canadian Industries Ltd's 'Opera House of the Air,' which originated in the Toronto studios of the broadcasting system which existed in Canada prior to the establishment of the CRBC (CBC).