We woke up this morning and asked ourselves, whatever happened to that guy who sang opera on Stephen Avenue in the late 80's? Who was he? What's his story? "That guy" was Ted Wayne Wilson, a former oil worker who fell on hard times (he probably lost everything in the late 80's recession) and ended up in Calgary, singing - and living - on the street. Wilson put out at least one tape of his music, selling it in Stephen Avenue record stores and out of his baby carriage in 1987. Patrick Tivy's Herald profile from November 1989 romanticizes Wilson's life, which can't have been an easy one. We weren't able to find out what happened to Wilson - photos of him pop up in the Herald from 1986 to 1990, and then... nothing. [img width=660.5px]//7ca49eb9f67ba1319ef136f9d52cd8b8.cdn.bubble.io/f1732987075286x561623301051932500/richtext_content.jpeg[/img] [b][size=4]Street tenor weathering Calgary's chilly climate[/size][/b] No matter how cold it gets Ted Wilson doesn't mind singing his heart out in the great outdoors. Wilson is Calgary's most popular street singer. Almost every day the Pavarotti of the Pavement can be heard in concert somewhere along the Stephen Avenue Mall. He specializes in opera arias and is always accompanied by recorded tapes of opera themes that he plays on a portable stereo. He's pretty good for an amateur. "I used to sing in the oilfield," he says. "I sang outdoors when I was working. The rest of the guys didn't mind. The equipment is so noisy all the machines, you know so they couldn't hear me anyway. "Now the rigs are down for a spell but I still get to sing outdoors." Wilson, 57, tells me his voice "was a gift. I got it when I was born. I got freckles, warts, and a tenor voice." He got some formal voice training at university in Texas. He also picked up two degrees in psychology. Today he has no home. "I haven't had an address for six months," he says. When it's warm he often sleeps on park benches. Lately he's been spending nights in the basement of a downtown restaurant where he sometimes helps out. The eatery's owner is a friend. On a slow day Wilson will gather no more than $15 or $20 in the old hat he drops on the sidewalk nearby, but "close to Christmas I do better. I'll probably get $125 today."
