Merv Bales (1937 – 2012)

Merv Bales was born in Winnipeg and raised on a farm east of town. His family was musical and into jazz. Merv started playing with a serious dance band when he was thirteen.¹⁾ The family was featured in Owen Clark’s book called The Musical Ghosts of Manitoba. At age fifteen he played with Lenny Breau who became a life-long influence. Bales also played in a jazz band, the Len Cariou Quartet. The members were all underage, but they were among the more popular groups in the region. He was never a career musician and started his working career with the Canadian National Railway as a chief clerk on a switchboard.²⁾

Bales came north in 1978 and enjoyed the people and the fishing enough that he stayed.³⁾ Merv married childhood sweetheart, Dorothy Walsh, and they moved to Whitehorse in 1985. He worked at the Whitehorse Correctional Centre and took a break from playing after his two children were born. When he returned, he started playing country music.⁴⁾ He played full-time with Hank Karr and the Canucks for ten months before he got a job with a pension, but he never stopped playing and learning.⁵⁾ He played with Joe Loutchan at the ’98 Hotel in the later 1980s.⁶⁾ Before he died, Bales wrote about some memorable performances including performing at the 2003 Beluga Days in Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., when Loutchan played the Red River jig for 65 minutes straight, and his first show with Karr and the Canucks at the Yukon Arts Centre. Merv Bales is remembered as a skilled musician and a fantastic guy.⁷⁾