A Passing Fancy

A Passing Fancy

A Passing Fancy is a Toronto group active from 1965 to 1969. It begins under the name The Dimensions and emerges in Yorkville Village in 1966. The band’s material and image are shaped by record store owner Walter Honsberger and his partner Dan Bartollini, who help bring the group to Columbia Records on a standard three-single contract.

Style and origins

The group is associated with psychedelic pop and sunshine pop, and it plays within the wider Toronto psychedelic scene of the 1960s. Its rise is tied to local activity in Yorkville Village before it expands through touring in Ontario and then Eastern Canada, where radio support helps build its audience.

Recordings and chart success

Jay Telfer serves as the band’s songwriter and works with Errol Blackwood on the first Columbia single, “I’m Losing You Tonight,” which appears in early 1967 and reaches number 22 on the charts. The follow-up, “You’re Going Out Of Your Mind,” reaches number 37 later that year. The band then has its strongest chart showing with “I Believe In Sunshine,” which reaches number 28 in 1967 after a short chart run. Columbia issues one more single, “People In Me,” in early 1968, but it does not chart.

When Columbia does not support a full album, Honsberger and Bartollini form Boo Records and assemble enough material for a self-titled album in 1968. That release includes the earlier Columbia singles, with an altered mix of “People In Me,” and also adds tracks recorded during a period when the lineup changes several times. Boo Records later issues another single, “Island,” in June 1968, but it does not gain radio support.

Performances and later history

A Passing Fancy performs at Expo ’67 and takes part in a cultural exchange with the Montreal band Les Tetes Blanches. By early 1969 the group has split up. It later reunites for a one-off performance in Yorkville in the late 1980s.

Members and related activity

Jay Telfer later writes “Ten Pound Note” for Steel River. He also maintains a solo career while A Passing Fancy is active, plays guitar in the Toronto stage production of Hair, and later records for Axe Records in 1973 and 1974. Fergus Hambleton, who replaces Telfer in A Passing Fancy, later appears in RAIN, records as FERGUS for Capitol Records, and goes on to join The Ginger Group, The Basics and The Sattalites. Other associated figures include Kevan Staples, who plays lead guitar on Goody Two Shoes’ 1969 Allied Records album Come Together after working as an A Passing Fancy roadie.

Fruchtman continues to play bass in Toronto, Seon moves to Pickering and sets up a dental practice, Wilson becomes a corporate executive head-hunter and co-owns a Toronto nightclub, and Price becomes president of Tridont Ltd.