The map says Freetown, but the community about 17 kilometres east of Summerside, Prince Edward Island, looks nothing like a town. Plunked in the middle of fields, farms, and pastures is a house, barn, and outbuildings. White post-and-rail fences frame the driveway. This is both Venture Stables and Bastarache Violins.
A couple of horses watch from an adjacent paddock as I drive into the dooryard between the house and outbuildings tucked behind a wall of tall maples. Rock music blares from somewhere. A turkey struts past. Cats scatter. Goats bleat and pigs squeal. A shaggy dog with a cone over his head bark-announces my arrival.
“Welcome to the farm,” says a smiling, stocky Marc Bastarache, extending his hand. He and his wife Jasmine own Venture Stables. Marc is the violin mender or luthier. “Arthur will calm down,” he assures me of his young Pyrenees suffering the indignity of the cone necessary after yesterday’s visit to the veterinarian.
Hidden away at the centre of this chaotic scene in the corner of one of the outbuildings is Marc’s repair shop. As I follow him inside, we fall into a rhythm familiar to Maritimers, comparing our roots. Marc is from St. Bernard in Clare, on Nova Scotia’s French shore. Bastarache is an Acadian name. On the far wall, he’s written in chalk, “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” It’s a reference to the violent expulsion of Acadians from the Maritimes by the British beginning in 1755. Roots, heritage, and community are important to Marc.
In contrast to the tidy wall of aphorisms, the workshop is as chaotic as the grounds. But this mayhem, the workbench scattered with tools familiar and foreign, the general jumble of finishes and fixtures, the strong lights and lamps, is more than the sum of its strewn bits. It’s a set of clues to Marc’s identity as one of P.E.I.’s few fiddle fixers.
From medic to mender
Prompted by the sudden death of his father, Marc became a paramedic and worked 20 years in the profession.
“I had already been a volunteer firefighter and saw the value of being a helper in challenging life situations,” says Marc. His calm, confident demeanor must have comforted many in stressful circumstances. To learn the profession, in 1997 he trained at Holland College in Charlottetown. After two years working in Yarmouth, he returned to P.E.I. for further training before settling in Digby, N.S., where he worked for the next 15 years.
In 2014, he met Jasmine, a lifelong equestrian. They hatched a plan to buy a horse ranch on the island. Marc continued his paramedic career for another three years before life in the ambulance became too much. With Venture Stables up and running, Marc says, “It was time to hang up my stethoscope. So I did. And opened up a violin restoration and repair shop.”
Marc picks up a disassembled violin from his workshop and shows me a tiny label. “Richard Le Page, Prince Edward Island, 2004.” When Marc trained as a paramedic, he knew Le Page as a respected Island luthier. Since then, LePage has retired to his native New Zealand, Marc has become luthier and the two have become friends. “It’s come full circle,” says Bastarache. “I see his instruments probably six times a year, so it’s kind of cool.”
Marc’s fascination with violins began at age 12 when he discovered his great aunt’s fiddle in pieces, packed away in an old case. “I had never played music, let alone the fiddle, but I was intrigued,” says Marc. “I always had a curiosity about the workings of things. This broken fiddle was no different.”
When his father came home one day with the fiddle completely restored, Marc was hooked. “It wasn’t long before
I was in the workshop, tracing patterns and drawing diagrams.” He made a copy of the fiddle, then another, and another.
“I always had the blood of a luthier running in my veins.”
While Marc doesn’t play violin (he played guitar in the band Three Sheets to the Wind), he has enormous respect for those who do.
“I believe there are four types of people the violin needs to survive: the maker, the player, the composer, and the musical consumer. I chose one and four,” says Marc. “I do enjoy seeing the instruments and bows that I have worked on skillfully played by amazing musicians, entertaining people around the world.”
Violin as tsukumogami
Even in a digital world with tools like 3D printers, Marc’s repair style is rooted in tradition, the needs of the instrument, and the value the owner places on it. He sums up his approach: “Removing original is the last thing you want to do.”
He’s careful to retain as much of the original wood as possible. He shows me a violin with a major crack. To repair it, he begins by identifying the type of wood used to build it. Whether it’s curly maple, spruce, or some other wood, he grafts a piece into place with “hide glue,” a powder that mixes with water into a gel to create a strong bond. When it dries, he planes away the added wood until it’s the size and shape of the piece that broke or wore away.
Marc spreads a set of miniature wood planes on his workbench. He jokes that other tools scattered about wouldn’t be out of place in a dentist’s office. In all seriousness, he says he keeps those in a drawer. Then he points out a small knife.
“You’ve probably seen ones like those thousands of times in your grandmother’s pantry,” says Marc. “That’s the best knife in the world for this work. I lost that for one day once, and I couldn’t sleep.”
Other tools are unfamiliar. “Violin makers tend to make a bunch of their own stuff. The Japanese have a word: tsukumogami. It’s the word they give to tools that have acquired a soul. You can easily say a violin is a tool. Fiddlers know that an older fiddle has a life. In the same way, I’m looking for specialized tools that have a life.”
To replace a complete violin front or back, Marc cuts whole slabs of wood into twin pieces in a process called “book matching.” The completed face will look as if one half is a mirror image of the other. Marc cuts the wood into the shape of the violin, then planes it for thickness into the curved shape of the completed instrument.
Book matching makes for a beautiful instrument, but Marc says a tiny piece hidden away gives any violin its personality. In a hushed voice, peering into the violin, he says, “If you look inside at the sound post that joins the top and the back, you see it’s only pressure fitted.”
The piece goes in after the fiddle is put together. “Its position is super important for the sound. The French call it l’âme d’un violon, the soul of the violin. For the Italians, it’s l’anima, the animator.” With a smile, he adds, “and the English call it a post.”
Then there’s the bow. Marc is working on restoring several for a family. The kids all learned to play fiddle, and their mom wants Marc to repair them as keepsakes. “I’ll give them back the old hair because I know that’s where the music came from.”
Marc pays hundreds for what he calls “a hank” of quality horsehair. He shows me a hank hanging from the wall. Each hair is the same length and colour.
“Horsehair is the best,” he says. “They’ve tried synthetic and it hasn’t worked. Horsehair has the right tensile strength and holds the rosin. It’s the rosin that does the work. The bow rolls the string, and when it can’t roll more, the string has to release. It’ll roll again and release, roll and release, and that makes the sound.”
The keepsake bows will hang on the mother’s wall. “Being a violin fixer upper, you’re more than someone who’s just fixing a thing,” says Marc. “It connects to family and tradition. I feel it as a responsibility.” When he tells clients the history of a certain instrument, they come to think of their ownership as borrowing: the instrument will live on after they’re gone.
“Most of the instruments that cross my workbench have been in existence for multiple generations,” says Marc. “Many descend from musical families who, for generations, have been passing down tunes and talents. I’ve got one client who brings in an Italian instrument that’s 228 years old. Made in 1796. That’s wild.” He’s proud of helping these instruments get through another generation or two, sending them off into the future while respecting their past and present.
“I understand that my time too will come and go, but for now, I’ll help with the music from behind my workbench.”
Correction: Due to a fact-checking error, the version of this story originally published in August 2024 incorrectly described Marc Bastarache as P.E.I.'s "only" fiddle fixer. The text above has been updated. Saltscapes regrets the error.