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Accolades keep coming for beloved children’s performer as she enjoys semi-retirement in Sandy Hook

Charlotte Diamond, gold record-earning international children’s songstress, educator and member of the Order of Canada, is settling into semi-retirement on the Sunshine Coast just fine.
Diamond
Singer and songwriter Charlotte Diamond moved to the Sunshine Coast in 2017.

Charlotte Diamond, gold record-earning international children’s songstress, educator and member of the Order of Canada, is settling into semi-retirement on the Sunshine Coast just fine. 

Adding to her long list of accolades, Diamond recently received a Special Distinguished Service Award from the B.C. Music Educators Association, “in recognition of exemplary commitment, talent and leadership for music education” in British Columbia. 

“That was so much fun,” Diamond said in a recent interview at her Sandy Hook home, recalling the October award ceremony in Richmond. “Seven hundred music teachers were there. I know I can get up there and talk, but if I can get them to sing…” Which she did, even getting different sections of the gathering to sing in harmony. It’s an audience-engaging technique Diamond said she learned from watching folk-music legend Pete Seeger do it after she sang with a quartet that had opened for him in a 1982 Vancouver concert. 

“It was incredible to watch him in action. There were 3,000 people in the audience,” she recalled. “He just melded them into one big choir. He just mesmerized everybody.” 

Diamond, a secondary school teacher by original profession, had been building confidence, singing publicly, part time, for some years. But watching Seeger in action was an epiphany. “That was kind of my liftoff. I thought, ‘I could do this.’” 

Fourteen albums later – the latest, Diamonds by the Sea, recorded with her Coast-resident and musician son Matt Diamond – she’s taking things a bit easier since moving to the Coast in 2017. But Diamond is still casting her own performing magic in several concerts a year. “I’m doing five shows at the Vancouver Children’s Festival in May, and the Surrey Children’s Festival, also in May. I’ll be up in Squamish at the end of June and will play in Pender Harbour in November. I’m very open to doing shows.” 

A Vancouver native, Diamond and retired fishermen husband Harry have owned their waterfront property since 1997 and used it for frequent getaways from their former base in Richmond. “I really love being here on the Sunshine Coast. I can go down to the inlet and go kayaking,” she said. “We have this lovely wooded lot. The deer go through and there’s bears and raccoons, squirrels and jays.” 

Diamond also keeps her musical chops sharp playing with Reg and Lynn Dickson’s Music Makers program here on the Coast. And she still keeps in touch with decades-long fans through her Hug Bug newsletter, free to anyone from her charottediamond.com website. 

She said she’s still often recognized by followers, young and old. “This is a very welcoming community. Everybody always says ‘hi.’ If they recognize me they might come up and sing a few bars of I Am a Pizza or Four Hugs a Day, and they could be 45 or 50. That’s the benefit of sticking around for a long time.”