Edith Butler

Édith Butler O.C. (born Marie Nicole Butler 27 July 1942 in Paquetville, New Brunswick) is an Acadian singer-songwriter and folklorist.

Her career began in the early 1960s with performances in Moncton, followed by national appearances on CBC Television’s Singalong Jubilee. Edith Butler worked in Music Production on the movies La Traversee de la Pacific and Gapi.
She began singing in cafés in Moncton while studying. Between 1962 and 1967 she performed mainly at festivals and on Halifax TV, singing Acadian folksongs to her own guitar accompaniment. She took the leading role in the film Les Acadiens de la dispersion, produced by the NFB in 1964. After teaching 1964-6 in Bathurst, NB, she did ethnographic research 1966-9 at Laval University and continued to perform in boîtes à chansons in the Quebec City area. At Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan, she was a featured performer at the Canadian Pavilion for six months. That same year she took part in the Mariposa Folk Festival and other festivals in Toronto and Washington. She toured Ireland in 1971 and Europe in 1973.

The musical collaboration between Reads Aubut and Édith Butler dates back to 1973.  Auteure and in love with music, Read Aubut will be one of the first artists, with Édith Butler to make known the Acadian culture to Canada and in the French-speaking world.

Paquetville was, as early as the departure, a celebration.  This was in fact to underline the Centennial one of his foundation by the priest Package that the idea to write a song on the natal town of Édith Butler was born.  The inhabitants of Paquetville are trusted their town, of its forests of sweetened maples, of its bovine farms, of its rivers, of his proximity with the sea, of its big fertile earths, of its traditions, of his history, of its songs, of his accent singing and of its children a little all cousins when one there looks at of more near.

Paquetville was sung to Japan, in Ireland, in England, in France, in Switzerland, in Belgium, in Ireland, to the United States, to Canada, to the Quebec and in Acadia.  The song was heard everywhere, so well that she was resumed, sung or parodied by a group of artists of which Reemerged Simard, andré-philippe Gagnon and Céline Dion.”