Loreena McKennitt has made her mark internationally with her signature mix of Celtic and world music, multiplatinum albums, sold-out tours and two Grammy nominations and two Juno wins; but in the town of Stratford, Ont., she’s a local, who can be counted on for holiday cheer.

It started in 2021, with the debut of her Under A Winter’s Moon concert at a local church. “The first performance was kind of a spontaneous rescue exercise at the last phase of COVID when there was a bit of cabin fever setting in,” she tells Zoomer. “I needed to do something. And it felt like in Stratford, there was a need for some distraction.” She quickly assembled members of a local Celtic band the Bookends to join her in performing traditional Christmas carols. Stratford Theatre veteran Cedric Smith (The Road to Avonlea) narrated Dylan Thomas’s poem, A Child’s Christmas in Wales and Tom Jackson added a recording of The Sky Woman Indigenous creation story. “I quickly assembled all this material,” she says. “But, I mean, it wasn’t like I thought it would have a life beyond this one performance.”

McKennitt, who plays harp, piano and accordion, remounted the show in Stratford and other Southern Ontario locations in 2022 and 2023 – and released a live recording of it in 2022. This year, she’s putting out an extended edition, which includes the concert’s encores of Silent Night and The King. She’s also bringing the concert back to Stratford, London and Toronto (Dec. 10 to 14).

McKennitt, 68, who released a new album, Live In Madrid, in November, spoke to us from her office at Stratford’s Falstaff Children’s Centre, a building she purchased in the ’90s to house and offer services for children and families in the community. The musician also sponsors swimming lessons through a charity she founded in 1998 after her fiancé perished in a boating incident. “It’s kind of an odd hybrid [doing music and community work] but I think of Sarah McLachlan and I think of Tom Jackson, there are many artists who have passion projects that aren’t squarely centred on their career – they are trying to put back into the community some way.”

Zoomer: Other than the Under A Winter’s Moon shows, what are your holiday traditions? Do you stay in Stratford?

Loreena McKinnett: I usually spend the holidays in Stratford – it’s pretty here, particularly if it snows. And I do attach myself to traditions. I don’t have any family here; my brother and his family are in Manitoba. So I usually host a potluck Christmas at my farm with some strays. That word strays reminds me of my friend Doris McCarthy, the artist. She built her own place up in the Scarborough Bluffs [on Lake Ontario outside of Toronto], and one year in the lead up to Christmas, she phoned and said, “Loreena, I was wondering if you and your mother would like to join a bunch of strays for Christmas at my place.” It was the greatest thing because she had a little scavenger hunt for things around the house. It was very, very homespun, and we sat in her beautiful little art studio, and we read aloud – and it was really precious.

Z: I heard you also host a community event at the Falstaff Family Centre.

LM: Yes, Cookies & Carols! We have Michael Fox, a former actor from the [Stratford] theatre, who acts as the host. And I’m banging away at carols on the piano, and Cedric Smith [actor and musician] usually does a little piece from A Child’s Christmas in Wales and I’ll sing a song. Sometimes we have a few other artists sing or narrate something like The Grinch or ’Twas the Night Before Christmas. But the main focus is really singing carols. It’s very well attended by families with young children, quite young children. I find many families don’t go to church much anymore and there may not be that much music in the schools. So you’ve got children growing up never really having sung Christmas carols, which I find alarming. Where I grew up in southern Manitoba, it was such a musical community and Christmas carols and Christmas music were what you settled into for the full month of December. It was embedded in your being. So we’re trying to compensate for any lack of opportunity.

Z: How did you end up living in Stratford and becoming so involved in the community?

LM: Well, as a kind of quirk of fate, in February 1981 I was visiting some friends in Toronto. I was living in Winnipeg at that point. And I auditioned for the Stratford Festival Theatre at the Equity Offices in Toronto. And they invited me to be part of the chorus of H.M.S. Pinafore that year. I kept my place in Winnipeg because I thought I was only going to be in Stratford for a few months. But [the Stratford Festival’s then artistic director] John Hirsch invited me to be part of the acting company the next year. I sang the part of Ceres in The Tempest, and I understudied the role of Portia in Julius Caesar and actually had to perform one night. And then I was working as a composer for the festival in 1984. My career in music didn’t take off until about 1990, so I had had a decade here, living in a cheap little half-apartment, and people knew me. So, you know, I am very unmindful of the public-facing part of my career, it’s just a very normal existence. I feel the danger of this career path is that you get really removed from normal life and from being part of a community. And I never wanted it.

Z: It sounds like a unique journey. 

LM: It has been for me – that’s kind of the story of my life. And I think many people’s lives. I always wanted to be a veterinarian. And if I wasn’t a veterinarian, I wanted to be in forestry or wildlife conservation. But I never dreamed about being a singer. I mean, I sang. I was in music all my teenage life and growing up life. So I maintain that music chose me almost all the way along. Thankfully. 

Z: Speaking of being chosen, you were inducted into [CARA’s] Canadian Music Hall of Fame this year. Did you attend the ceremony?

LM: The ceremony was very moving in many respects for me. It’s humbling to find myself in the gallery of people who were my inspirations, like Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. But also hearing [fellow nominees] Dan Hill and Ginette Reno recognized. That was just brilliant.

Z: It was a really varied group of musicians inducted this year. Besides yourself, Dan and Ginette, there was [pop-punk band] Sum 41 and [’80s hair rockers] Glass Tiger. I can’t imagine you would have crossed paths with many of these artists over the years.

LM: No, and that’s what made it so surreal. You’re reminded how much musical wealth there has been, and continues to be, in this country. And it’s easy to take it for granted because it feels like we all know each other; but when you stand back and look at what Canada has produced, it’s pretty impressive. 

Z: Of course, you’re a two-time hall-of-famer, having also been inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. How did you feel receiving that honour? 

LM: I have to confess, I’ve never felt like my songwriting has been … well, we don’t have a great objective view of what we do and I feel very critical about my work all the time. But I guess that the process that I’ve conducted – pursuing the history of the Celts, which has taken me all over the world, studying the history, the culture, all these ingredients and then trying to spin it back into my music, into an act of musical travel writing – I can see that that is unusual. Anyway, both honours are wonderful. You don’t go for these things, but it’s always wonderful. 

Z: Have you thought about writing an actual travel book or a memoir?

LM: Yes, it’s come up. It’s definitely on the radar. But it’s tricky, what would be the shape or emphasis? The travels, wow, I think of the train trip across Siberia, from Vladivostok to Moscow, in 1995 – that was incredible. But there’s also building my career from nothing. And even in recent years, there are all the non-music-industry things, like I was an Honorary Colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force for 17 years. There are a lot of facets to my life, so we’ll see. 

Z: Just one last question to put us back in the seasonal frame of mind. What holiday music do you play every year?

LM: Well, I’ve still got a CD player, so I pull out this beautiful, exquisite Christmas music from Scandinavia, particularly Norway, by Sondre Bratland.  And I listen to more conventional choral music from King’s College Cambridge and a choir from Elora, Ont., called the Elora Singers, who made a beautiful recording of Christmas music. Also, [Canadian children’s singer] Fred Penner actually made a really nice compilation a few years ago, and I’ll play it around the office. I’ll play it loud so the kids next door can hear it.