OKAK

Okak was established in 1786. Clarinets were used in the community as early as 1837.¹ The earliest reference to the Okak band we have found comes from the journal Moravian Missions in 1915, which records that the Harmony was greeted with the firing of guns, singing of hymns, and the band performing on a hill.² The Okak Brass Band was vividly documented by missionary S. K. Hutton in articles such as “A Memory of Springtime,” which appeared in Moravian Missions. The image in that article is actually of the Nain band, which was first published in 1905 J.W. Davey’s The Fall of Torngak. Hutton’s biography of Walter Perrrett, A Shepherd in the Snow, also describes the Okak band performing on Easter morning. Okak was closed in 1919 after being decimated by the great influenza epidemic.

Okak band, PhotLabrador 438-459, Moravian Archives Bethlehem. Photograph by Samuel King Hutton.

References

^{1 J.W. Davey, The Fall of Torngak: or, The Moravian Mission on the Coast of Labrador (Partridge, 1905): 230-1.}

^{2 Nurse Walmsley, “A Warm Welcome in a Cold Land,” Moravian Missions 13, no. 3 (March 1915): 37.}