Juno Awards : Tegan and Sara: Let's Get Physical

I am sitting at my computer watching the Juno Awards and the first award for best single goes to Tegan and Sara Quinn. Back in the 1990's, I developed the broadcasting program at Crescent Heights High School and two twin girls named Tegan and Sara attended my broadcasting classes as grade 10 and grade 11 broadcasting students. I remember these two girls because they were identical twins and difficult to tell apart when they were separate.  Sara was a little lighter in build and Tegan was a little chubbier in her facial features.  Both girls has full length hair that descended below their waste. They loved wearing baggy blue jeans, loose fitting flannel shirts and big belts with chains attached.  One day Tegan brought an acoustic guitar into the classroom and began strumming and Sara began to sing to the melody. I asked them who wrote the song and Tegan said she made up the melody and Sara made up the lyrics. It was something they did for fun.  Both girls were typical adolescents with mood swings and crushes on different boys.  These two girls were free spirits who at the time did not know what they would do in life, they just lived for the weekend with their group of friends.  I cannot remember the name of their first song that they sang for me but what I remembered was that their voices harmonized beautifully and they sang their lyrics with emotion.   The two girls prided themselves on writing their own original music and did not like doing cover songs.  I told the two girls that they should start going to coffee shops that have an open mic and start playing at coffee shops.  The girls asked me "What if the people at the coffee shops refuse to let us play?"  I told them to keep going to different coffee shops and offer to play for free and give them a short sample of what you play and if they refuse come back next week and keep bothering them until they finally agree to let you play. The whole broadcasting class that these girls attended for two years were all a bunch of free spirits and I gave them freedom to create because this was a locally developed course that I had created at the school that had developed into a full time program in three years.  One day the two girls came to see me and were so exited because they were now performing in coffee shops and you have to remember they were only grade 10 students.  In Grade 12 they won a battle of the bands contest in Calgary and ended up opening as an act with Sara MacGlauchan  at Lilith Fair and their career as musicians was on its way.  About five years later, Tegan and Sara were doing the University Campus's and I saw them perform at McKewan Hall at the U. of C. campus and saw them afterwards as they were selling their CD's.  Sara and Tegan were thrilled to see me and they had not changed a bit, they were still those two enthusiastic performers.  Watching them accept their Juno Award tonight, I can see they have remained the same--Sara is the spokesperson and Tegan lets Sara take the lead.  Tegan and Sara always prided themselves in saying that they were not main stream performers but with their original music today they have kept redefining themselves and now they are main stream but Tegan and Sara it does not matter, you are still the same little girls I used to teach. I am so proud of you for following a dream and finding success.