By Pepper Parr
December 12th, 2024
BURLINGTON, ON
We erred.
We tripped over Peter J. Van Dyk and his son Peter W. Van Dyk Both are part of PV&V Insurance Centre Ltd., a family owned and operated insurance brokerage based in Burlington, Ontario.
Peter J. Van Dykwas was at one time actively involved in Sound of Music. Peter W. Van Dyk has never been involved with the Sound of Music organization. He is however a musician.
Our apologies to Peter W – we missed the differences.
Peter W. Van Dyk
The Burlington Performing Arts Centre Board of Directors named Peter W. Van Dyk their new Board Chair by acclamation at their meeting on November 28, 2024. Van Dyk replaces Ken Smithard, who has served on the Board since 2016 and whose term concluded at the end of November. Van Dyk was born and raised in Burlington and is an insurance professional with PV&V Insurance Centre Ltd. Prior to starting his career in insurance, he was active as a musician locally and toured Ontario and Canada.
Ken Smithard,
“On behalf of the Board, staff, and volunteers, I want to thank Ken for his dedicated service on the Board over the past eight years, and especially for his steady guidance through the transitions of the past year. He leaves the Board well positioned for 2025 and will be missed. BPAC has an amazing team of staff and volunteers, and I look forward to announcing our new Executive Director early in the New Year, to lead BPAC into its next chapter,” says Van Dyk.
In addition, Jim Thompson has been acclaimed to the position of Vice Chair and Chair of the Governance, Ethics and Human Resources Committee; James Sweetlove has been appointed to the position of Corporate Secretary; Deirdre Flynn has been appointed Recording Secretary; Carrie Gervais has been appointed Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee, and Stephen Bell has been appointed Chair of the Development and Relationship Committee.
The Board, staff and volunteers at the Burlington Performing Arts Centre look forward to welcoming patrons from the Burlington community and beyond to our holiday concerts and the second half of our season in 2025.
Lucy White, is in place serving as Interim Executive Director.
Peter W. Van Dyk has in the past served on the Board of the Sound of Music. We have not been able to reach Mr. Van Dyk for comment.
The Gazette has heard from people who are volunteers. The comments they made in the Gazette are set out below.
Hundreds of volunteers make the Sound of Music Festival work – two of them mark the location for a vendor.
This was never more true than in 2018 when a mass exodus of volunteers, staff (and all of their collective knowledge) occurred because a corrupt board fired the long serving ED who was running a very successful and fiscally responsible festival. That entire group could not bring ourselves to bust our collective @$$es all year long for the clowns who took over the BoD. We tried to bring this forward by writing a very detailed letter to council and the mayor back then, but they either said that it was too big to fail, we were blowing it all out of proportion, or flat out ignored us. 6 years later, none of us are surprised by this. We are all sad for what has become of a festival that we all loved.
Interesting…none of this was an issue when Dave Miller was Executive Director, before he was canned by the board.
