Sybil Agnew Butterfield 

Festival marks the passing of an outstanding former PresidenT

One simply cannot overstate the contribution Sybil Agnew Butterfield made for over a half century to the lifeblood of the GVPAF (formerly the Victoria Music Festival).  

Sybil “left the party” (in the words of her family) on July 29, 2023 in her 96th year and the Festival community joins her family, friends and countless admirers in celebrating her extraordinary life. A military daughter, she embodied “Truth Duty Honour,” the motto of the Royal Canadian Military College in Kingston where her father was Commandant. 

Her contributions to the Festival began in the early 1970s as a volunteer and mother of many young participants who distinguished themselves in voice, dance, piano and strings. Over subsequent decades she served tirelessly as section head, volunteer coordinator, board member, president, and ultimately Honorary Life Member.  

In 1998, at a time when technology was beginning to impact even nonprofit and volunteer organizations, and the Festival was facing serious organizational challenges, Sybil was conscripted by the Festival board to serve as president, and she immediately set her hand to the task. She recruited new board members with needed expertise, enlisted countless new volunteers from her network of friends, and established the first Festival office in the First Metropolitan United Church at Quadra & Balmoral, purchasing our first computer through a government subsidy, acquiring a donated copier and FAX machine, and hiring the first Office Administrator. She was visionary in recognizing that the era of volunteers (mostly women) running the Festival organization from their kitchen tables, as they had done so successfully since its inception, was coming to an end, and our organization would need to evolve in order to survive. 

Yet while busy instituting necessary structural changes to the Festival in consultation with others, Sybil always made time to add her own inimitable touches, such as the Roberto & Mary Wood Scholarship Concert Tea for the audience awaiting the Jurists’ decision, and welcome baskets for Festival adjudicators. 

In Sybil’s presence, one was always struck by how many people she interacted with. One board member accompanying her to a particular Symphony performance, just out of curiosity, managed to count 74! Wherever she went, Sybil was always drumming up support for the Festival, extracting promises of volunteer hours or laying groundwork for new programs and award prizes. She was indefatigable, relentless. Resistance was futile! 

Yet despite her indomitable nature, Sybil was unfailingly courteous and respectful towards everyone. She had a particular affinity for the young performers, whose progress within the Festival over the years she endlessly encouraged, and whose subsequent careers she avidly followed.  

Sybil officially stepped back in 2003, though you were sure to see her for many years thereafter at every Festival session or concert in which one of her many grandchildren was performing. And the Festival board honoured her many decades of service by establishing The Sybil Agnew Butterfield Fund to provide an annual award for a deserving Festival participant from any discipline. 

In the words of the first Office Administrator, “All my memories of Sybil are suffused with her gift for evoking laughter (especially at board meetings!) and her tendency to somehow always be accompanied by a gaggle of volunteers wherever she went. She was a true leader because so many were inspired to follow her!” 

Carol Brown