A woman who received an award at the Western Canadian Music Awards in Regina last month the same time that former resident Craig Aikman was honoured with the award for the Best Roots Duo or Group of the Year presented an informal concert at the New Beginnings outreach centre in Kamsack last week.
Yvonne St. Germaine-Pelly of Saskatoon, who is the wife of Lawrence Pelly, a member of the Cote First Nation, performed at a half-hour concert of gospel music at noon on October 25.
St. Germaine and her husband were returning home to Saskatoon from Thunder Bay, Ont., where they had attended services of the Faith City Church and appeared in a televised talk show called Spirit Alive TV, which is available on the Internet.
A country and gospel entertainer for about 10 years, St. Germaine received the award in Regina on October 15 for Spiritual Artist of the Year. She has also received the Aboriginal People’s Choice Awardin gospel for the past eight years, has received the Native American Music Award in gospel, is a three-time winner of the Gospel Music Association of Canada, has twice won the Saskatchewan Country Music Award in gospel and has been named the Aboriginal Artist of the Year.
The daughter of a Metis mother, the late Sharon Brown, and Cree father, Clarence St. Germaine of Sweetgrass First Nation near North Battleford, Yvonne said that she always had music in her upbringing. Her mother had played organ, her father, the guitar.
Speaking to the Times following her Kamsack concert, St. Germaine said that along with the gospel music she delivers a “powerful testimony.
“That’s why I do outreaches,” she said, admitting to being a former addict who in 2006 experienced a “supernatural healing when I was touched by the hand of Jesus.”
She said she conducts various workshops and is a motivational speaker who has conducted sessions at schools and detention centres.
Tomorrow she plans to be in Sandy Lake, Ont., where she will be attending a gospel jamboree and will talk at a detox centre and school. She will then be going to Fishing Lake in Alberta and then will be attending a women’s conference at Onion Lake. At each place she “shares testimony on addictions.”
Regarding her short concert in Kamsack, St. Germaine said that she had a great time.
“It was comfortable,” she said. “We laughed and joked and I just about had them singing.
“My heart is to embrace First Nation country and explain that there is a way out of bondage,” she said.
The mother of three sons, St. Germaine and her husband are the parents of a three-year-old son. Lawrence Pelly, the son of the late Joe and Pauline Pelly, is a full time Penticostal minister.
