The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

10 - The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday December 17, 2008 www.oakvillebeaver.com Living Oakville Beaver LIVING EDITOR: ANGELA BLACKBURN Phone: 905-845-3824, ext. 248 Fax: 905-337-5567 e-mail: ablackburn@oakvillebeaver.com Forging new links By Angela Blackburn OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF "I was with her when her children were born. She's just a special person." Monica Tibbett, Interlink Choir co-founder RON KUZYK / OAKVILLE BEAVER A BELIEVER: Jean Barber, music director at Emily Carr Public School believes in the benefits of linking students and seniors and has been doing so with Oakville's Interlink Choir for 20 years. hy do nearly three dozen seniors sing in a choir with 50 students in Grades 4 to 7? "Why?" booms 76-year-old Michael Thompson, a former British artillery officer who possesses a most commanding British brogue. "Oh, it's such fun," he said. It has led the Oakville senior, whose grandchildren live in Alberta, Washington and California, to also volunteer with a Grade 3 reading program, when he first got involved with the choir because of his wife Sarah's passion for singing. Such is the fun had by the senior members of Oakville's Interlink Choir. Such are the fruits of the passion of its conductor, Jean Barber, the music director at Oakville's new Emily Carr Public School and a 30-year veteran of local music classrooms. Carr helps direct the senior choir if required, and did so when she was on maternity leave with both her son Scott and daughter Julia -- now aged 18 and 15, respectively. W Her husband Peter is supportive and as any of the Interlink Choir seniors tell you, she makes a mean brownie. "I was with her when her children were born. She's just a special person," said choir cofounder Monica Tibbett, 85, a former bat woman in the British air force. It was Tibbett who got the ball rolling on the Interlink Choir with local seniors 20 years ago. Barber took care of the school side of it. It began as a program that was funded through the Canadian Mental Health Association, Oakville branch as a means of enriching the lives of students by providing friendships with seniors, while providing a way to alleviate the isolation of seniors. The program is the Canadian version of Close Harmony, a program born in the Bronx, New York. Today, the choir hosts a fundraising See Interlink page 13