May 14, 2026
Founding Canada’s First Beatles Fan Club
Trudy Medcalf recalls meeting The Beatles as President of the Ontario Beatles Fan Club
Trudy Medcalf with The Beatles. Photo courtesy of Trudy Medcalf.
In July of 1963, 14-year-old Trudy Medcalf attended an afternoon concert in the town of Margate, England. Visiting relatives at the time, she and her cousin decided to see a popular English band touring seaside towns for the summer. They bought tickets at the door for 50 pence, which converts to just under $1 Canadian today. It was Trudy’s very first rock concert.
“It wasn’t a fully sold-out performance, but the people there were really keen,” she recalled. “There was this energy to [the band], and I just thought they were amazing.”
This wouldn’t be the last time Trudy saw The Beatles in concert. She would meet the band two times in the next year, all thanks to an article she read that summer while still on vacation in England.
“I happened to see an article in a newspaper about starting a fan club, and I thought, ‘I could write and ask to start a fan club for the Beatles in Canada.’”
Trudy Medcalf, 2026. Photo: Craig Boyko © AGO
In October of that year, North America’s first Beatles fan club was launched from Trudy’s dining room table in Toronto. She initially received around 200 letters expressing interest in joining the fan club and responded to each request with a handwritten letter. Over the next couple of years, the Ontario Beatles Fan Club would grow to be the largest Beatles fan club outside of England, with 90,000 members at its height.
The rapid growth was in part due to the partnership Trudy built with CHUM Radio, which became the fan club’s official sponsor. CHUM Radio helped Trudy distribute her newsletters and provided membership cards. She also hosted a half-hour Beatles show on CHUM every weeknight.
“A cab would come to my high school on Fridays after my last class to bring me to the radio station in downtown Toronto, and it honestly felt like I was [Superman] coming out of my phone booth,” she laughed. “Surprisingly, we never talked about it at school. I had a different life at school, and that was good.”
A publicity photo for The Paunch and Trudy Show on CHUM Radio. Trudy Medcalf is photographed beside CHUM disc Jockey Dave "Paunch" Johnson. Photograph courtesy of Trudy Medcalf
In February 1964, The Beatles performed on The Ed Sullivan Show, a historic performance credited with spreading Beatlemania across North America. Hoping to get coverage of The Beatles’ first trip to North America, CHUM Radio sent Trudy, her father, and her neighbour, Dawne Hester, to New York City to meet the band.
Although The Beatles’ American manager was aware she was coming, wires got crossed, and Trudy couldn’t make it through the throngs of fans surrounding the Plaza Hotel all weekend.
On the Monday following the Ed Sullivan Show performance, and only hours before their flight home, Trudy’s father came up with a plan. With suitcases in hand, they pretended to check in at the Plaza Hotel. While Trudy’s father approached the registration desk, Trudy quickly moved to the house phones and called the number given to her by the Beatles’ manager. After two attempts, their plan worked, and Trudy and Dawne were brought upstairs to a hotel room full of fan mail and members of the Beatles’ entourage. Over the next couple of hours, each Beatle would drop by, including Trudy’s favourite, John Lennon.
“He asked, ‘Are you the fan club people?’ and got down on his knees and started bowing to us,” Trudy reminisced. “And I remember thinking I had ten seconds to come up with the absolute wittiest thing I could say that would endear me to him forever. I couldn’t think of anything! I just stood there.”
Trudy Medcalf's copy of the Summer 1964 issue of The Official Beatles Fan Club National Newsletter Magazine.
A spread from the Summer 1964 issue of The Official Beatles Fan Club National Newsletter Magazine, which features a photograph of Trudy Medcalf and Dawne Hester looking at fan mail in the Plaza Hotel in New York City.
Seven months later, Medcalf reunited with The Beatles at their September 1964 concert at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. She was asked to welcome the band to the city onstage at a press conference scheduled between the two concerts that day. Alongside the mayor and Miss Canada, Trudy also got her turn for press photographs with the band.
“It was a wall of photographers — they were lying, kneeling, crouching, standing on chairs,” Trudy said, recalling the excitement. “And at the concert, from the first strum of the guitar, people started screaming. You couldn’t hear the music.”
The concert was a fitting culmination of that whirlwind year in Medcalf’s life. Though she remained a fan, her involvement with the fan club naturally decreased over the next year or so as she moved into the next stage in her life.
“I discovered jazz music, and protest songs,” she recounted with a smile. “CHUM Radio didn’t need a nightly radio show about the Beatles or a fan club, and The Beatles weren’t touring anymore. But the period documented by Paul McCartney in Eyes of the Storm was, for me, a sparkling bubble. It was intense in the best possible way, and then suddenly, it was over.”
Trudy doesn’t often get the chance to look back at her time as president of the Ontario Beatles Fan Club. With a PhD in Education, she spent many years as a lecturer and researcher in gerontology — the study of old age and old people — and is an award winner for her work on older adult learning. Yet, when she revisits that time as fan club president, Trudy is grateful for all the opportunities she was given at such a young age.
“I rode in parades and appeared on television, once as a guest on a quiz show! I always had this little tape playing in the back of my head that said, ‘Remember, Trudy, you’re a high school kid from Scarborough.’ I think that helped to keep me grounded.
“I always felt I was a player. Never part of the Beatles’ inner circle, of course, but I was never an outsider. Working with the Beatles fan club and CHUM Radio, I felt equal, included, and consulted. For a 14-year-old girl, that was powerful stuff. I notice now, so many years later, that when I talk about this part of my life, it feels once again that I am 14.”
Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm has been organized by the National Portrait Gallery, London, England, in collaboration with Paul McCartney. It is curated by Sir Paul McCartney with Sarah Brown for MPL Communications and Rosie Broadley for the National Portrait Gallery. The presentation at the AGO is organized by Jim Shedden, Curator, Special Projects & Director, Publishing.
AGO Members see Paul McCartney Photographs 1963–64: Eyes of the Storm first, beginning February 18, 2026. AGO Annual Passholders can access the exhibition beginning February 27, 2026. The exhibition opens to the public on March 24, 2026, and is free with general admission. The exhibition will be on view on Level 5 of the AGO from February 18, 2026, to June 7, 2026.
Presented by Bloomberg Connects, a free digital app, the audio tour is available as of February 18. To access the audio guide, click here.
