[2] Helen Gray left the group in 1954 to get married, and was replaced by Simone Johnston who had also attended Camp Naivelt with the others, although she was not Jewish.
As well, from 1954 to 1961, Toronto musician, composer and advertising executive Samuel Goldberg was instrumental in working with the Travellers as their artistic director and agent.
The tensions that existed in the group and the clashes that went on were at once human, they were politically driven, there was some resentment, and there were honest differences of opinion.
In 1962, The Travellers were invited by the Canadian government to tour the Soviet Union as part of a Canada-USSR cultural exchange performing 19 concerts.
While the tour was a success, a visit by the group to see Gray's aunt (who was living in Lithuania) exposed divisions between Gray and Dolgay, who disagreed sharply about the Soviet government's treatment of their citizens (particularly Jewish citizens), with Dolgay again supporting the Soviet policies.
The next year the Travellers toured Canada, but were denied entry to the United States when they announced plans to sing at rallies in support of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Instead, they held a fundraiser for MLK in Toronto alongside Harry Belafonte and Oscar Peterson.
Gray felt that in addition to their internal political disputes that Dolgay's "archaic" instrument (mandocello), "dour" stage demeanour, and reluctance to modernize the act was keeping The Travellers from being successful.
The group continued to tour, but was again refused entry into the U.S. in 1965, as they were deemed to have ties to leftist causes and organizations (including Camp Naivelt) disapproved of by the American government.
[4] The Travellers continued to record and release albums in Canada through the 1960s, still keeping to a traditional folk repertoire but occasionally incorporating new folk-oriented material from Bob Dylan, as well more regularly adding songs by newly-emerging Canadian songwriters like Ian Tyson, Oscar Brand, Wade Hemsworth, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen into the mix.
A soundtrack of the musical was issued in which the Travellers performed two songs, including Gordon Lightfoot's "Canadian Railroad Trilogy".
By the mid-1960s, Gray (by that time the group's only original member) became increasingly interested in pushing the Travellers to be a more commercially viable act, and worked towards achieving that goal.
By 1970, the Travellers line-up (which still included Gray, Woodley and Hampson) was expanded to move towards a more contemporary folk-rock sound.
The film made no attempt to disguise the intra-band tensions that still existed, especially between Gray and Dolgay, but also between other band members.