'They added the magic': Founders of Yukon's bluegrass festival named to hall of fame

John Faulkner neatly sums up why Peter Milner and Bob Hayes — the two late founders of Yukon's Kluane Mountain Bluegrass Festival — are now in the Canadian Bluegrass Hall of Fame.

"They added the magic to the music and mountains," said Faulkner, who's the programmer of the annual summer festival in Haines Junction, Yukon, and a former bandmate of Milner and Hayes.

Milner, who died in 2005, and Hayes, who died in 2022, were posthumously named this month to the hall of fame which celebrates all things bluegrass. 

"Together they didn't just start a festival. They started and ran a legendary festival," reads the bio Faulkner wrote for their induction.  

Milner and Hayes, both musicians and bluegrass fanatics, started the festival in 2003 and it's still going strong. One weekend every June, Haines Junction comes alive with the sound of strings, played by some of the best pickers and fiddlers in the business.

Faulkner says the relatively small event has over the years become a "must-play" festival for local artists, but also for bigger acts from the American bluegrass heartland. He says that's all owing to Milner and Hayes.

"The reputation they forged, I think, is why our festival — which is, you know, a small festival in a small village kind of in the middle of nowhere, bluegrass-wise — is able to attract the best of the best," Faulkner said.

He recalled one year when Dale Ann Bradley, an award-winning singer from Kentucky ("the Bluegrass State"), performed at the festival and got to talking to Hayes.

"Bob said to Dale Ann, 'you know, I'd like to go down to some of the festivals in the South to see how it's done,'" Faulkner recalled.

"And Dale Ann said, 'no, they should come up here to see how it's done!'"

Mark Nelson, president of the Yukon Bluegrass Music Society, said Milner and Hayes just brought a kind of friendly, easy-going "vibe" to the event, and that lives on today.

"A lot of the people who have come to play the festival really became friends with the people who are running the festival," Nelson said.

"I think that's a huge reason for the success."