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music I b y AI Price Long & M c Q u a d e Helping Music G r o w on the North Shore Things just keep getting better for musicians on the North Shore. North and West Vancouver have long been home to some of the best musicians in the province, from school bands to international rock stars. Though the two extremes have little in common other than a love of music, the one aspect of the music business that ties them together is the need for materials, from instruments to sheet music and recording equipment. Well served for many years by Troy Music and Ward music, the service is getting even better with Long and McQuade (L&M) Musical Instruments on the scene. Last February, Ward Music declared bankruptcy. A stalwart on the music scene in the Lower Mainland for some 80 years, Ward had established itself as one of the largest sheet-music operations in North America, with stores in North Vancouver, Langley, Vancouver, and Victoria. L&M entered the scene as the successful bidder in the bankruptcy process. A short time later, the owner of Troy Music approached L&M to see if it wanted to buy his business, which had been a going concern for over 30 years. "Long and McQuade hesitated about buying Troy," says Michael Cronin, manager of the Ward store that has been a fixture on Lonsdale Avenue for more than 10 years. "We didn't want to come into North Vancouver and be the heavies and buy up all the stores. But the owner of Troy came up with a price, and from there Long and McQuade took over." L&M began in 1956 when trumpeter Jack Long became a dealer for King Band Instruments. He set up a small store on Carlton Street in Toronto, on the second floor of an old house that had been divided into small music studios. Long taught trumpet lessons on the side. Six months later, he teamed up partner Jack McQuade, who was teaching drum lessons in one of the young company's two tiny studios. A year later, they opened a store on Yonge Street and created Yorkville Sound--when Peter Traynor began building speaker cabinets and then amplifiers on the second floor of the store to meet the demand for amplifiers and PA systems of a budding rock-and-roll industry in Toronto. Many of the company's customer service policies developed in those early days. Several of the partners' friends asked to borrow instruments because they couldn't afford their own, so in-house financing was developed to make purchases easier, along with a generous rental program, both of which are offered by the company to this day. Because of its worldwide reputation for sheet music, L&M is keeping the Ward Music name for its sheet music division, with the Hastings Street store in Vancouver being the mothership. It has over MANAGER MICHAEL CRONIN, LEFT, DISCUSSES GUITAR SALES WITH ANOTHER STAFF MEMBER AT WARD MUSIC ON LONSDALE. PHOTO: AL PRICE 800,000 titles, a list that grows daily. "To this day we get e-mails from Europe and all over the world looking for some obscure piece of music," notes Cronin. "Ward was so well respected." From its humble beginnings, L&M has grown to more than 19 locations across Canada, with at least 500 employees. In North Vancouver, the Ward and Troy staff members became part of the L&M family, and Cronin says the working environment with the new company is "superb." "Everyone in this company is family. Most of us have kids, so we know how expensive it is to get your kids into music. That has influenced how we approach our rental rates and financing. A n d there is some social value in having your kids in music and not hanging around the 7-Eleven. You know they are at someone's home playing music with their buddies." In the future, Cronin would like to see the recording side of the business grow on the North Shore, and plans are in the works to merge the two stores in the Lonsdale Avenue location. "We have a basement we might be able to use, and they can always use my office," he says, tongue-in-cheek, looking around his desk, which sits in a space the size of a modest closet. "I can be out on the floor. That's where the fun is."