Beverley “Beve” Matson told her last tale for Tea ‘n’ Tales on Friday. She has been telling tales at the regular Riverside Park event for longer than she can remember.
Due to her allergies to the trees at the Guelph Enabling Garden she can’t continue storytelling outside.
Ordinarily Matson is called Beverley but when she was performing in a play many years ago someone had asked her to spell her name and she said “B-E-V-E” then had to leave before she could finish because she was called on stage.
She started storytelling at Riverside Park before Tea ‘n’ Tales was a regular event and she remembered there were only three people in the audience. On Canada Day this year there were 750 people in attendance.
“I’m a little nervous today,” she said.
“When I first joined Guelph Guild of Storytellers about 25 years ago, Beverley was a member,” said Brian Holstein, storyteller and organizer for Tea ‘n’ Tales.
“This is rather poignant having her here today. Bittersweet because this is the last time that Beve with be telling at Tea ‘n’ Tales,” he said.
Matson hails from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and has lived in a number of places in the world but made her way to Guelph in 1967.
She has a degree in theatre and in one of her drama courses she told her first story The Emperor’s New Clothes.
Matson’s daughter Elizabeth liked her mother to tell the same story over and over again when she was a child. Matson couldn’t stand telling the same story again and again. She made characters out of felt and encouraged her daughter to tell the story with her.
When Watson volunteered at a summer program she took out the felt characters and her daughter said “Mommy, those are my stories.”
Elizabeth gathered the children under a tree and told her stories. She too is a storyteller like her mother.
Matson has been looking into her family’s ancestry. Her great grandmother travelled to Oklahoma in a covered wagon with her children while she was pregnant with Matson’s grandmother. A month later she was born in a dugout.
As a teacher librarian Matson would have her and the children act out the stories.
“When I became a storyteller I found that it was helpful to tell my own stories. They were mine. No one else would tell them,” she said.
"So lately, I've been going with personal stories, family stories," Matson said. Her last story for Tea 'n' Tales was about her adopted father who was involved with the mafia and without him she wouldn't have had the education she has.
Her daughter gave her a subscription to Storyworth where she writes a story a week based on a prompt. By the end she will have a book of her life stories she plans to give to her children.
Matson can be found telling stories at the Guelph Civic Museum for Tales on the Hill in the winter.
