Dene country musician Harry Rusk remembered for 'paving a path' for other Indigenous musicians

From living on a trapline, to being regarded as the first Dene musician to perform at the Grand Ole Opry, Harry Rusk is remembered as an important figure in Canadian country music.  

Rusk died in March at age 87 at his Rainbow Ranch in Carrot Creek, Alta., east of Edson. 

The musician grew up in Kahntah, a small reserve in northern B.C., and his early years were marked with family tragedy and illness. By the age of six, he had already lost his brother and father to tuberculosis. 

"The summer my dad died in 1944, it was a very lonely time for my mother and I," Rusk told CBC in an interview in 1994. 

That same illness would strike Rusk at age 12, but from it came a chance encounter with a Canadian country star that would change the course of his life. 

"Hank Snow came to visit us patients at the Charles Camsell hospital, where I was confined for four years with tuberculosis, way back [on] June 13, 1952, and that really inspired me," Rusk told CBC. 

Rusk's mother bought him his first guitar with money she made from selling moccasins, and he taught himself how to play by listening to Snow records. 

By 1965, Rusk would move to Edmonton, and his career took off.

He appeared on TV on Don Messer's Jubilee, a Canadian folk musical variety show broadcast from Halifax. Snow watched Rusk's performance.

"Hank phoned me and said, 'Come to Nashville, I got you on the Grand Ole Opry,'" Rusk remembered.  

In 1972, Rusk became the first Dene person to perform on the historic Grand Ole Opry stage in Nashville, Tenn. 

Rusk was always a religious person, and it was through his faith that he met his wife Gladys. 

In a recent interview, Gladys recalled meeting Rusk at a church in Edmonton in 1981, where she was asked to perform. 

"I came in that evening, and … this guy was on the guitar, I didn't know who he was, but it was Harry Rusk," Gladys said.