JAIMEY HAMILTON AT SUNFEST
What: Sunfest Country Music Festival
Where: Laketown Ranch Music and Recreation Park, 8811-2 Youbou Rd., Lake Cowichan
When: Saturday, 6 p.m. (Lakenight Stage) and Sunday, 2:30 p.m. (Flats Stage)
Tickets: sunfest.frontgatetickets.com
Country singer-songwriter Jaimey Hamilton celebrated her 24th birthday last week with a full-band rehearsal, one of many leading up to her pair of appearances this weekend at Lake Cowichan’s Sunfest Country Music Festival.
The Victoria native doesn’t celebrate like others do on their birthday, however. She saves her party energy for Aug. 23, the day when doctors pronounced her to be cancer free.
“Doctors said that was the day of my rebirth,” Hamilton said with a laugh. “My family and I, every year we celebrate that as my second birthday.”
Hamilton was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at five years old. Given her age at the time, she did not undergo radiation, and was placed on a low-dose chemotherapy treatment. She would not get off easy next time. Hamilton relapsed at nine years old, prompting doctors to take a more aggressive approach.
“I was at the hospital in Vancouver every two weeks, doing chemo and radiation,” she said. “It was a lot.”
Following two years of treatment, the cancer went into remission — but for only eight months. She relapsed for a third time when she was 12, resulting in chemotherapy, radiation, and a bone marrow transplant on Aug. 23, 2012 — her aforementioned second birthday.
“I made it through,” she said. “As of right now, I am 11 years cancer free.”
Hamilton was athletic as a child, and played both soccer and baseball competitively. When the cancer treatments were ordered, her sporting life took a backseat. One thing she could do from her hospital bed was play guitar, and she began applying herself starting when she was nine.
“It was a healing outlet. I found my passion through that.”
Music now takes priority over almost everything else, Hamilton said. She graduated from the music performance program at the Victoria Conservatory of Music before the pandemic, and is now geared up to make inroads as a professional.
Hamilton and her family spend their summers in the Lake Cowichan area, so when it came time to shoot a video for her new single, Stompin’ Ground, the lake situated across the street from Laketown Ranch Music and Recreation Park — where she will be performing at Sunfest this weekend — made perfect sense. In the clip, while boating with friends on Lake Cowichan, Hamilton sings, “Having drinks out on the lake, why would I leave for goodness’ sake?/Another song, around round, leave me here in my stomping ground.”
She has performed at Sunfest three times before, when she was a teenager. Her performances on side stages Saturday and Sunday, will showcase Stompin’ Ground and other new material. Her set Sunday afternoon is part of a showcase put on by the B.C. Country Music Association, a testament to her abilities.
No matter the outcome, she’s already a winner.
“There were a lot of dark times, and times when I wondered if I would be healthy enough to live a normal life, whatever that is.
“I could only take it day by day. I didn’t want to look too far in the future. I tried to not let my mind go there. We did not know what tomorrow would bring.”
>>> To comment on this article, write a letter to the editor: [email protected]
