As tributes to Mike Taveroff continue to flood social media, his daughter Jesse remembers her father much the same as countless others — a man who eagerly and unselfishly shared his unbridled love of music and, in doing so, exposed most all he met to new experiences.

A native of Montreal, Taveroff operated the iconic Moondance record store in downtown Peterborough for 46 years before closing it in April 2018.

He died Sunday (October 13) at age 70 following a brief battle with cancer.

“He wanted to do what was exciting and interesting and different … he walked to the beat of his own drum,” says Jesse.

“You could be a weirdo, you could be a nerd; it didn’t matter who you were. He treated you the same. He loved people and he loved talking to people. That truly made him happy.”

Jesse, together with her younger sister Leigh — both are Vancouver residents — was with her father when he passed while under hospice care. Also present was his close friend and former employee Sue Logan, who says after he was given six to nine months to live this past July, Taveroff “decided he was going to do all the living he could do, so he did what he wanted to do. I like to think he had as good a time as he could.”

It was back in early March 2019 that Taveroff, less than one year removed from his retirement, was diagnosed with a brain tumour, which was removed in mid March followed by radiation.

His doctor initially suspected glioblastoma, the same form of brain cancer that resulted in Gord Downie’s death. However, a subsequent biopsy determined that melanoma was present. After one round of immunotherapy treatment made him sick, Taveroff opted to stop all treatment.

“We’re not doing great,” says Jesse who, with Leigh, lost her mother Cheryl, also to cancer, in February 2017.

“The last five years have been extremely hard for us but we didn’t want to see either of our parents suffer. We understand that this is life, but it’s not easy. Our dad was looking forward to travelling (in his retirement). Unfortunately life came along and gave him a shitty card.”

That same life, however, brought Taveroff riches he never could have imagined when, in 1972, he placed a bin containing some 250 records for sale in Cheryl’s downtown Peterborough clothing store in 1972.

Over the next five decades, Moondance was a must-visit staple for music fans in search of the latest releases. However, along the way, the opportunity to chat music with the owner became the main attraction for many patrons.

“He really took it upon himself to know the music industry and know all aspects of it … it wasn’t just about what he liked,” says Jesse, who worked at Moondance during her high school years.

When Taveroff announced in early 2018 that he was closing Moondance come April, there was a huge outpouring of support and good wishes.

“It was very emotional for him to see all the people that cared … he didn’t think anybody would care,” recalls Logan, with Jesse adding her mother’s passing played a big part in his decision to call it a day.

“A part of his heart was gone and wasn’t coming back. He was still himself but there was a light that he had that was no longer there. He held onto Moondance because it was his other baby, but he was getting closer to 70 (years old) and he was a bit tired. The problem was he didn’t want to sell it to somebody who didn’t love it the way he did. That was hard for him.”

Moondance, Jesse adds, was more than a business for her father — it was an all-consuming passion.

“He did (product) searches for customers all day, every day. He never took a day off. That was exciting for him. He was so proud to be able to bring that to people. He spent a lot of his free time doing that. It was because he loved it, not because he felt he had to for the money or the business. It was for the person.”

Logan, alongside longtime employee Rob Franke, saw that passion firsthand; an experience anchoring her firm belief that Taveroff was, and remains, “an iconic character in the music culture of Peterborough.”

“He was always so excited to work with someone who was open to listening to new music. He’d run back and forth from the customer to pulling out different things from here and there. He would play music for them until they found exactly what they wanted. He did that for a lot of people.”

Saying her father “had an absolute rock ‘n’ roll heart,” Jesse says he would talk music virtually non-stop. Many times the conversation focused on any one of the numerous live music events he attended — Woodstock and The Rolling Stones’ storied 1977 appearance at Toronto’s El Mocambo among them.

“Having a dad in the industry was a wonderful way to get exposed to new music … things I would have never listened to had I not had him in my life. That’s fair to say about a lot of people in Peterborough. They wouldn’t have had an outlet to hear new music if it wasn’t for him bringing it into the store and suggesting it or playing it in the store where they could hear it.”

Social media sentiments posted since kawarthaNOW first reported Taveroff’s passing have spoken to one indisputable fact for many: one typically visited Moondance the first time for music, but returned for the chance to talk music with Taveroff.

“We were lucky to have such a cool dad that brought such interesting things into our lives,” says Jesse, no doubt expressing the view of thousands of others.

“I loved having a dad who was different from the cookie cutter 9 to 5 dad. I was always very proud of that.”

Mike Taverhoff’s service will be held on Wednesday, October 16th in the chapel at Comstock-Kaye Life Celebration Centre (356 Rubidge St., Peterborough). Visitation with the family is from 10 to 10:45 a.m. with the service from 11 to 11:45 a.m. Family and close friends will attend the interment; other friends are invited to remain at Comstock-Kaye for a coffee until the family return for a reception at around 12:30 p.m.

Mike Taveroff, who operated the iconic Moondance store in downtown Peterborough for 46 years before closing it last year, has passed away at the age of 70 from cancer.

Former long-time Moondance employee Sue Logan shared the news with kawarthaNOW on Sunday afternoon (October 13).

Taveroff opened Moondance, Canada’s oldest independent record store, in 1972.

Named after the Van Morrison song, the store was originally a clothing store owned and operated by Taveroff’s wife Cheryl.

Cheryl passed away from cancer in February 2017 at the age of 69 and, in January 2018, Taveroff announced he was retiring and closed the store in April of that year.

Taveroff, who turned 70 on September 7th, was diagnosed with stage four cancer in March 2019, less than a year into his retirement. He was receiving palliative care before his death.

Mike Taverhoff’s service will be held on Wednesday, October 16th in the chapel at Comstock-Kaye Life Celebration Centre (356 Rubidge St., Peterborough). Visitation with the family is from 10 to 10:45 a.m. with the service from 11 to 11:45 a.m. Family and close friends will attend the interment; other friends are invited to remain at Comstock-Kaye for a coffee until the family return for a reception at around 12:30 p.m.

On Friday (October 11), BMO Financial Group announced it would be investing $650,000 in the new Canadian Canoe Museum, to be built alongside the Peterborough Lift Lock on the Trent-Severn Waterway.

In recognition of the gift to the museum’s capital campaign, which is the first from a financial institution, the museum announced the new facility’s archives and archives workroom will be named the BMO Financial Group Research and Knowledge Centre.

“As Canada’s oldest bank, serving communities for more than 200 years, BMO is proud to support The Canadian Canoe Museum,” says Sheri Griffiths, BMO’s regional president of business banking for Ontario. “The new BMO Financial Group Research and Knowledge Centre will offer a unique opportunity for visitors to connect with and gain a deeper understanding of our country’s history.”

The archives and archives workroom, which doesn’t exist at the museum’s current facility at 910 Monaghan Road, will be a dedicated space housing the museum’s growing collection of rare books, maps, and archival materials, as well as film, video, and recorded oral histories.

It will include a reference library with access to individual study spaces and large work surfaces, and will be built to a Class A controlled environment standard designed for the materials it will house.

“The research and knowledge centre is an integral space in the new museum, one that will offer opportunities to learn and collaborate that right now we can only imagine,” says the museum’s executive director Carolyn Hyslop. “The centre will be an inclusive and safe space for First Peoples, Métis and Inuit, indigenous knowledge holders, and academics to share, encourage understanding, and conduct cultural and ceremonial practices.”

Stephen Fry, BMO’s head of indigenous banking for North America, notes the $650,000 gift to the museum reflects the relationships the bank nurtures with indigenous communities across Canada.

“We’re proud to pay tribute to the indigenous communities and their intergenerational knowledge of the canoe that has been shared for many generations,” Fry says.

The new 85,000-square-foot museum has been designed by the award-winning team of Heneghan Peng Architects of Dublin, Ireland and Kearns Mancini Architects of Toronto. The facility, which has been designed specifically to house the world’s largest collection of canoes, kayaks, and paddled watercraft, will blend almost seamlessly into the surrounding landscape.

BMO Financial Group’s $650,000 gift is another private contribution to the museum’s $65-million capital campaign, which has already received foundational financial support from municipal, provincial, and federal governments. The largest private donation to date has been a $7.5 million investment from the W. Garfield Weston Foundation.

Peterborough Pop Ensemble founder and artistic director and long-time teacher Barbara Monahan has passed away after a brief battle with cancer. She was 59 years old.

The Peterborough Pop Ensemble announced her passing on their Facebook page on Thursday night (October 10):

Born and raised in Peterborough’s south end, Monahan attended Kenner Collegiate in Peterborough from 1974 to 1979 and graduated with honours as both valedictorian and an Ontario scholar.

In 1983, she earned her Honours Bachelor of Music in education, with a major in voice, from the University of Western Ontario, followed by a Bachelor of Education from the University of Toronto in 1984.

In 1984, Monahan returned to Peterborough and began a 26-year teaching career at her alma mater, Kenner Collegiate. Teaching both instrumental and choral music as well as English and French, she affected the lives of many students. She directed the Kenner Concert Band and Choir, was the musical director of five musicals, and organized music trips in Canada and the United States.

While Monahan retired from teaching in 2011, she continued her musical career as a professional soloist, arranger, composer, songwriter, and private vocal instructor. She was also organist and choir director at Grace United Church in Peterborough for 18 years.

Monahan was best known as the artistic director of the Peterborough Pop Ensemble, which she founded in 2000 as a one-time ensemble of members of Syd Birrell’s Peterborough Singers. Over the years, the choral group evolved and became the Peterborough Pop Ensemble in 2008.

Since then, the Peterborough Pop Ensemble has performed regularly, including at Peterborough Petes hockey games, the Peterborough’s Dragon Boat Festival, with the Peterborough Symphony Orchestra, and at many charity events. In 2013, the ensemble began its charity program that has supported 14 local charities with a portion of the proceeds from the group’s spring concerts.

Monahan was the driving force behind the Peterborough Pop Ensemble since its inception, by shaping the sound of the group, arranging a majority of the songs, writing songs, and participating in the group’s business operations and promotion.

In 2012, she became a member of Kenner’s Wall of Honour and was also inducted into the Peterborough Pathway of Fame.

Monahan is survived by her husband Robert (former co-owner of Bud’s Music Centre in Peterborough) and her sons Kyle and Justin.

There will be a visitation from 4 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, October 17th, at Nisbett Funeral Home (600 Monaghan Rd., Peterborough), with a celebration of life taking place at 11 a.m. on Friday, October 18th at Grace United Church (581 Howden St., Peterborough).

Donations in Monahan’s memory can be made to the Peterborough Pop Ensemble (at the funeral home or at Grace United Church) or to the Canadian Cancer Society. Online condolences to the family may be left at arbormemorial.ca.

Thanksgiving is an annual holiday to celebrate and give thanks at the close of the harvest season, which was part of the culture of Indigenous peoples for centuries before the arrival of European settlers in North America.

After the American Revolution, American refugees who remained loyal to Great Britain moved from the newly independent United States to Canada, bringing with them the customs and practices of the American Thanksgiving, including turkey, pumpkin, and squash.

Thanksgiving days were observed sporadically in Canada beginning in 1799. Today, Thanksgiving is always observed in Canada on the second Monday of October, which coincides with the U.S. observance of Columbus Day (American Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November).

Since Thanksgiving is a statutory holiday in Ontario, all government offices, banks, and liquor stores are closed (a few beer stores are open in Peterborough, Lindsay, and Cobourg). Many grocery stores, big box stores, and malls are also closed. Some tourist attractions and recreational services remain open.

For your convenience, we provide this list of holiday hours for 266 selected businesses, services, and organizations across the Kawarthas. This information comes from their websites and social media accounts, which may or may not be up to date, so please always call them first to confirm their hours, especially where indicated and if you are travelling any distance (we’ve included phone numbers). If your business or organization is listed and the hours are incorrect, please let us know by using our content feedback form. We do not include hours for restaurants, as there are far too many to list!

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The Kawartha Lakes detachment Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) is seeking the public’s help after a dirt bike struck and killed a dog earlier this week in Omemee.

On Monday (October 7) at around 8:50 p.m., the dog and his owner were walking along Mary Street in Omemee when three dirt bikes approached at a high rate of speed.

One of the dirt bikes struck the dog on the roadway, and the three dirt bikes then fled westbound on Mary Street, to the entrance of the Great Canadian Trail at Sibley Avenue.

The dog (named Zeus) died from its injuries a short time later.

Two of the dirt bikes were red in colour and the third was yellow in colour.

Anyone having information on this crime or any others is asked to contact the City of Kawartha Lakes OPP at 1-888-310-1122. Information can also be reported anonymously by calling Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS) or by visiting www.kh.crimestoppersweb.com and submitting an anonymous tip online.