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Penny Lang, the much-beloved doyenne of Montreal’s folk music scene, died at her home in Madeira Park on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast, where she had been living since 2005.

Lang had celebrated her 74th birthday with family and friends on July 15. Indications are that she suffered a massive stroke. She had recovered from an earlier stroke suffered in 2000.

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Lang was born in 1942 to a musical family in east end Montreal.

“Both of my grandmothers sang and I was very influenced by them,” she told me in an interview for a 2001 Gazette feature. “One sang hymns and the other, who came from Scotland, was a drinking and smoking woman. She had a good time singing funny, goofy songs.”

Both of her parents played guitar and sang old-time country songs around the kitchen table. Young Penny was playing guitar by age 10 and soon after began joining her father on stage when he sang at local Legion halls.

In her late teens, Lang got caught up in the folk revival that had taken the musical world by storm. Working at a YMCA summer camp for inner-city kids, Lang was mentored by Maureen McBride. From McBride she picked up traditional folk songs and learned the fundamentals of stagecraft – particularly how to involve her audience in a performance.