For Walter, the musical experience began in 1958.  It was like a musical revolution at the farm log house, when the newly minted Sears Flat top guitar was gingery delivered to Walter by his father, from the local town of Smokey Lake, Alberta.  The payment terms were predetermined for the $8.00 guitar.  Walter would earn $4.00 by Christmas carolling farmhouse to farmhouse, as tradition had it at the time, and his parents contributed the remaining $4.00.  What a dream come true. 

Walter was musically self-taught at the time with a Sears guitar instruction manual, often studying into the wee hours beside a flickering coal oil lamp.  The basic and orchestral chord lessons were painful, but inspiring and emotionally rewarding.  One day, he said loudly to nobody in sight, one day.  This was the beginning of something unknown.

In time Walter would fasten his guitar firmly on his bicycle handlebars and trek almost four miles to his friend Bob Rubuliak, who played a twelve bass accordion.  They would practice endlessly for hours and every free day available, and in time they felt like the Johnny Cash Tennesssee Two, but perhaps more like the Smoky Lake Two.  Story has it that they would practice on top of a woodpile, playing to thousands of imaginary fans in the field, but in reality the fans were the stalks of grain moving side to side waving to them in graceful appreciation.