S. Roy Maley

Maley, S. Roy

S. (Stephen) Roy Maley. Critic, b Brockville, Ont, 10 Mar 1897, d Winnipeg, 17 Oct 1987. He studied piano with his mother, the organist at the Methodist Church in Brockville, then voice with Cyril J. Rickwood, H. Bramwell Bailey, and Eugène LeDuc in Ottawa, where he was baritone soloist at St James United Church. In 1929 he went to Winnipeg for a thyroid operation which, though successful, affected his singing. He began writing for the Winnipeg Tribune in 1930, becoming music critic in 1938 and contributing a weekly column after his retirement in 1967 until the paper was closed in 1980. His criticisms were encouraging more often than judgmental, but their tolerance was valuable in a musical society making the transition from high-level amateurism to the steadily increasing professionalism of the 1950s and 1960s. He was a contributor to EMC. Over the years he collected some 5000 autographs and 500 photographs of famous musicians; the collection was donated to the University of Manitoba School of Music after his death.