By Jim Barber
If you’re looking for dirt. If you’re looking for an insider’s view of the ups and downs, the good, the bad or the seamier underbelly of the music industry, if you’re looking for the proverbial, sex, drugs and rock and roll (and fiddles!!) and hell-bent-for-leather stories of relationship tumult and substance-fueled misbehavior, I Have a Love Story is most assuredly NOT the book for you.
If you’ve spent even five minutes with its author, the iconic Canadian fiddler/tunesmith/performer Natalie MacMaster you’d know that this is not the sort of book she would ever write, because that’s not the life she’s led. She possesses the class, propriety and rectitude that is exhibited by most people who grew up in small communities, surrounded by family and friends, many of whom rely on the elements and the providential provisions of nature for their livings. So, no, she’s not going to create and release the usual sort of salacious, headline-grabbing, click-baiting autobiography that is almost expected in the TMZ-like world in which we live.
Not that her life has been perfect. When you’ve grown up in the often rough and tumble east coast, where everything in life that’s worth having is hard earned, when you’re born with an unbridled creative spirit, when you’re in the public spotlight for all of your adult life, when you have seven children and married into a family [her hubby is Donnell Leahy, from the prodigious Leahy family of musicians] that pretty much needs its own area code for its sheer numbers, when one of those children is born with unique, but beautiful challenges, life is a jumbling, tumbling, often chaotic, and never sedate.
MacMaster has had to ‘master’ time management in ways most people could never fathom. She’s had to create a work life balance that belies belief, but is in fact based very much on belief and faith … and especially love.
The book does contain anecdotes, and remembrances and stories from home, stories from the road, and stories of creativity, struggle and overcoming. But they are all presented in the service of the core theme of the book – love. It is not a chronological recitation of facts, recordings, shows, births, deaths, accolades, nor is it an exercise in celebrity name dropping for name dropping’s sake (but yes, she met a Pope!).
MacMaster’s intention for this project, which was actually inspired by the darker side of humanity, is to bring some light to the world. The best way she felt she could do that was to talk about the light in her life, the light illuminated by her passion for music, her devotion to her faith and the unabating, almost reverent love she exhibits for her husband Donnell, and their seven children.
“I was asked early on in the process to think of three words to describe what I wanted the book to be. I wanted it to be a good read, well crafted and playful. I wanted it to resonate and I wanted to inspire, I wanted to energize people to action. So, when the publisher was talking to me about it being a memoir, I said that’s really got nothing to do with it. The good read part is the information, and a few funny things and stories about traveling and being a musician. But there’s so much I just didn’t put in because I thought it’s going to deter the focus. I’m only going to include as much of that as makes it an enjoyable read. And it helps shape the significance of moments for the reader, like when I had a baby, what was it like thinking that I’m gonna have to give it all up. Well, they have to know what it is I might be giving up. And I wasn’t even thinking of an audience. I was so detached from the marketing aspect. Even when I called the publishing company, I was still kind of fearful to put it out there. So, I wasn’t in the zone of thinking about the hands that were going to receive it. I just kept thinking, ‘I just have to put this out into the world. I have to get this off my chest, off my heart. And I have to document it and put it out into the world.’ And, honestly, I wasn’t considering all these parts that are part of the business aspect of it,” she said.
“Number one, I hope it inspires people to be more proactive in who they are and what they want to become as it pertains to love. I feel that the world has created these slogans like ‘you’re worth it,’ ‘you deserve it,’ and all this kind of stuff. Well, there’s another slogan that needs to be out there which is, ‘work hard for love.’ We can’t just accept ourselves where we’re at and justify things that we do that aren’t of loving intention. We’re human, so I get it. And when I speak like this, this is one of the hesitations I have for putting this book out because I don’t want people thinking that I’m some kind of self-help guru. I’m just sitting in the boat with everybody else, and I am certainly far from anything that is perfect. So, I see it as me having experienced falling off, falling short all the time. The thing that freaks me out is how fragile human nature is. I can’t get over the times I’ve decided that I’m not going to do something anymore, or that I want to be more like this type of person, and literally seconds later, I fall out of the boat and just do something stupid again that I determined so strongly in my heart that I was not going to do. And certainly, when you have kids and you’re in the parenting role, stuff like that is happening all the time. But the goal is to pick yourself up, don’t accept it, keep trying. Keep trying because there’s always hope. I believe that the only way we attain anything that is of great value in our lives is to work for it, and that you have to work for love. That’s kind of the meaning of it – it’s an action. Sometimes, for some people, love is very easy because you love the people you love, but sometimes it’s really hard, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. And there was the inspiration that I saw from my parents’ general. And this is what I was kind of focusing on was just going back to the basics, like the Golden Rule [do unto others, as you would have them do unto you]. We’ve become so empowered by our own speech, right, that I everybody’s out there shouting out opinions, but really, sometimes we can just be quiet and help somebody.”
The seeds for the book were planted more than seven years ago, but she really didn’t bear down and ramp up the writing until about three years ago.
“It basically started with this experience that I had seven years ago that just left such a burning, yearning fire in me that did not stop until I got this out of me, until I got these thoughts out of me. I really think it was divinely inspired in some ways. I wrote little bits all through that time, and as you can imagine, we live very busy lives. And I wasn’t exactly sure in what format or how this was going to transpire. I just knew I had to get it out of me. And of course, Donnell kept reading the little blurbs saying, ‘Natalie, you’ve got to write a book. This is beautiful.’ And for him to say that meant a lot because he’s pretty fussy and I know him well and he doesn’t sugarcoat. So that’s why I started taking it seriously three years ago. Part of the fear of doing this publicly in a big way was exactly because we’re both old school, in that we don’t really talk about private things in a public way. I didn’t grow up like that and I’m not like that. And of course, us living in the public with regards to having a music career, we’ve learned to fulfill that part of the industry, but it’s not a natural thing,” she explained, explaining that there was no special significance or meticulous planning behind the timing of the release of the book for this fall.
“I think it was just the way the timing worked out. I worked to the best of my ability. We set deadlines to say, okay by this time next year, and I’m thinking, ‘okay, I can have that done next year.’ I didn’t want this thing lingering for 10 years, so okay, let’s try for next year. And then next year came and deadlines were approaching and I had to apologize, I wasn’t at the stage of the process that I want to be. Okay, so let’s set a new deadline. I just kept working with new sets of deadlines based on the availabilities in my life and the ebb and flow of all that. I just could not carve out the time necessary. But it wasn’t from an inability to write. I wasn’t sitting there wondering what to write. That never happened once. It was always just scrambling to squeeze out as much as I could with the shortest amount of time that I had. And by the time it all synched up, it’s worked out that here we are in October of 2025.”
Later in the conversation, she reiterated how powerful the pull to write the book, to discharge the thoughts and feelings and stories from her psyche was, beyond simply wanting to tell the story of her life.
“I had this original intention and really that’s all I had, to a burning degree. I would never have invested this amount of time otherwise. This book took me, I’m sure, a hundred times more work than I ever imagined. I didn’t even think I’d be having to write so much. I thought I’d get help to write it. And I remember Donnell and I were on the conference call with the publisher and Donnell said to them as well as to me, ‘I think Natalie should try this on her own first.’ And it never changed from there,” MacMaster said.
“It is definitely my voice, which was what he wanted, but it was just so much work. My point is just that I believe I was divinely inspired. Not to say that God would actually come down and work with little ol’ me, but I know that there was such a rave in my body that like rubbed my mind and heart and soul. I couldn’t sleep; I had to get it out.”
While I Have A Love Story is being marketed as a memoir, it really is, as the title of this article says, more a meditation on love, as MacMaster has experienced and expressed it throughout her life. And it is focused on the intertwining of her love for music and her love for family and how one has fed the other, one has reinforced the other, one has supported and inspired the other, from her earliest days in Cape Breton Island through to her full house (seven kids and many assorted pets and farm animals … oh and hubby Donnell), full career (still loads of shows throughout North America and occasionally abroad, with kids in tow) and a this an abundantly full, but incredibly busy life.
“When the book comes out, I know people might say that with all the crazy things going on in the world right now, it’s perfect timing. Well, seven years ago, I felt like that. That is what sparked it. It was all these crazy headlines. And I was like, what’s going on? My mother was sharing some horrible tragic things that were going on back home [Nova Scotia] at the time and just the other day she asked me what was it that she shared that made me feel so down? And I won’t say it to you over the phone, and I’ve decided I’m not going to tell anybody, but it had to do with death and nature and suffering and all that. I reminded her of that and so at that time I was realizing that we’re not safe anywhere. Evil, or whatever word you want to call it, lurks everywhere. And you can be in the most beautiful part of the world, the most populated or the most unpopulated and you can be affected by it in some way. That’s what made me feel really down, but also sparked me thinking about all these things that I needed to write down,” she said.
“And I didn’t intend on sharing so much of the story of my career, so it’s turned into sort of a memoir, but really, the original motivation was to write the story on love. Just sharing my thoughts on love. Let’s just kind of go back to the old common sense, simple, basic everyday love that we grew up with. Let’s reconnect with that and just keep spreading that.”
What the book lacks in length (160 pages, including a number of photos a few homespun recipies and some sheet music], it makes up for in depth and attention to its central focus. But even though it’s not an epic Stephen King-like tome, there still was tens of thousands of words to be written, rewritten, rewritten and rewritten again. The idea that rewriting is as important, and in many cases more important, came to MacMaster from someone who knows a little something about crafting timeless art – legendary producer extraordinaire Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange, best known for his work producing albums by AC/DC, Def Leppard, Bryan Adams and his ex-wife Shania Twain.
“It reminds me of a quote that Donnell told me that Mutt Lange talked about. He and Leahy recorded and toured with Shania Twain for so many years and Mutt would always say that the key to writing, and he was talking about music, but it applies to any kind of writing, the key is rewriting. The rewriting is important. Even if you only keep one line in the whole song, scrap the rest. And certainly, I felt like that writing this book,” she said.
“The magic started to happen with the rewriting and rewriting of sections and looking at it for the hundredth time. So, I did tire a lot and there were deadlines looming and I’m like, this book has to be done. But we saved all the stuff that we cut out, so maybe, when there’s another edition of the book, we can add some of it back in. And at times it was a real frustration to try and untangle this web. As Donnell has said, jokingly, but also slightly seriously, ‘that book has been a detriment to our family.’ It was freaking hard. And I’m not a writer. I’m not efficient with words, I’m barely literate. I mean, once I had to do this interview with CBC about the 10 favourite books I’ve read and I said to Donnell, ‘they want 10 books. I don’t know if I’ve ever even read 10 books.’ Like, I never read. I was never encouraged to read as a child. I did my history homework and I did my literature homework, whatever it was and I read for that, but that was it. It wasn’t until I was probably in my 20s that I think the first book I ever read that wasn’t for school was A Prayer for Owen Meany [by American writer John Irving]. Somebody suggested it to me and it was then that I discovered the joy of walking into a bookstore. So, I picked up this book and I enjoyed every morsel of it, and I came to understand that thing where you can’t put the book down, and all you can think of all day is, ‘I can’t wait to get back into my book.’ But then, you know, busy, busy, busy lives, kids, Donnell, music. So, yeah, I don’t really read and the things that I have read, no one wants to really know about. Devotional stuff is what I’m into [MacMaster was raised Catholic as was Leahy and they are both prayerful, observant churchgoers] because I can read a paragraph or two before I go to bed and think, ‘okay, I’m going to try harder tomorrow.’”
What flabbergasted the writer of this piece is the fact that pretty much all the writing was done on MacMaster’s phone, not with pen and ink, or on a keyboard in front of a desktop computer on a desk, but during stolen moments when she had time, solitude and the mental focus to whirl through a few paragraphs with her thumbs going a million miles an hour.
“I didn’t blink an eye. And every time they’d say they wanted it in different formats or whatever, or said, ‘why don’t you trying writing this on your computer or something like that?’ Well, I don’t have a computer. Yes we have computers in our house. One was Donnell’s one was kind of the family computer. And I’ve never been a computer person. I never sit at a computer. I never have. I wouldn’t even know how to answer an email off a computer. So, I just do everything on my phone, I just go to the notes page and start writing,” she said.
“I was just using my thumbs and it wasn’t until I was probably 90 per cent done the book and [daughter] Clare said, ‘mom, you know you can speak into the phone and it takes your words down.’ I did not know that, so I tried it but I found that I couldn’t think the same way. It didn’t work. I can’t speak my words; I have to write them down. And in terms of doing it in bits and pieces, I have to do it that way. It’s called survival, and it’s the way I’ve operated my whole life. And when people ask how do I do it all? Well, I’m doing it all, all the time. Look at today for example. Today I take Maria and Julia to piano lessons, and I always look forward to that moment. Like, I have it planned in the morning. I’m like, ‘oh my gosh, I have an hour and 15 minutes to an hour and a half where I can sit in the car by myself and write.’ I can just turn my mind on and I will instantly have creativity right then and there, just like turning on a faucet. And I have books and books and lists and lists and like notepad type books and note pages on my phone. Donnell tells me I have lists of my lists. I can’t even keep track of time, I have no organizational methods, I’m all over the place. I’m like a mad scientist. But if something doesn’t come to me in a split second, which I almost always does, I just flip to one of those pages in my notepad and I’m right back to where I was and away I go.
As mentioned a few times above, MacMaster and Leahy have seven children, ranging in age from 20 down to nine (Mary Frances, Michael, Clare, Julia, Alec, Sadie and Maria.) Eleven-year-old Sadie has Down Syndrome (MacMaster dedicates arguably the most beautifully, joyfully, inspiring pieces of writing in the book to the subject of Sadie and the blessings she’s brought to everyone’s lives), and she and her siblings are heavily involved in music, some in athletics, all in helping out around the house with the older ones helping dad Donnell with farming the traditional family farmland not far from Peterborough, Ontario. As a family, they tour the world because of music, with both Leahy and MacMaster performing alongside the kids. Saying it’s a busy life is a decidedly significant understatement. But, as MacMaster has said above, it’s all she’s known, all Donnell has known, and all their kids have known.
And the creative spark and desire to perform and keep trying new avenues to satiate that part of her life has meant that the stolen moments early in the morning, late at night, or in the parking lot waiting for music lessons to end hasn’t stopped with the publication of I Have A Love Story. Instead, MacMaster is working with to create a symphony show based on the book.
“It’s going to be for 2026, and it’s going to feature kind of excerpts from the book. So, the musical journey of my upbringing and Cape Breton Island, and beginning to write my own music will probably all be in the first half. The second half of the show will probably be more personal, my love life, you know – getting married and then having children and the journey that is told through the book. Like the part when Donnell and I got married, we have an orchestrated version of “Wedding Day Jig’ [which was their wedding present to one another] and that was included in the book. I have this kind of theme and idea and I have an orchestrator working on the Alison Krause song [‘Neil Gow’s Lament for the Death of his Second wife’] so I’ll take that time today to flesh the one out more,” she said. When asked whether the show is going to be a family affair like most of her other stage work, MacMaster paused for a second before answering.
“It’s interesting that you mention that because originally, like a couple of years ago when we were talking to management, I was saying that I still want to play by myself. Every show I’ve done over the past 10 years, generally speaking, it’s been with my husband and then my husband and my kids. So, I have a ton of music that I’m doing myself and I don’t really have an outlet because when I’m onstage, I’m sharing with my husband and my kids. I’m not getting to indulge in all the musical stuff I have. So, Donnell keeps saying to me that I’ve got to do my own tour sometime. It was decided that maybe I would do symphony shows, because I’ve done them my whole life. And I thought maybe I’ll maintain that as my own thing. And so, this concept came – it was actually Donnell who suggested it at one point that I should take the book and turn it into a symphony.”
At present, MacMaster is in the midst of a press tour for the book, in amongst the plethora of other activities she has in her life. But while she does talk about how wearying it can be at times, in her next breath she also expresses how she loves every second of it, every family meal, every, every trip to the music teacher or the playing field, every moment of playful banter with Donnell or moments of creative energy with her trusty fiddle in hand.
It is a life filled with the best things she can image – love, laughter, family, fun and faith – all captured not only for her posterity in I Have A Love Story, but for those seeking to read about a life well lived to inspire one of their own.
I Have A Love Story is available in all bookstores. https://go.ilovebooks.ca/i-have-a-love-story.
For more information on any upcoming shows, visit https://natalieanddonnell.com/natalie-macmaster.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at bigjim1428@hotmail.com.
