Posted on June 28, 2014 under Storytelling with 2 comments

Mark Chisholm and Gerald MacDonald – Enchanting!

 

 

“Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling …”

Frederic Weatherly

When I hear the peepers, I know that spring is here and summer is sure to follow.  When the leaves start falling from the trees, winter can’t be far off.  And when I hear the first three notes of a bagpiper playing outdoors, I realize that The Highland Games are just around the corner.

I grew up on Hillcrest Street, next door to one of the best pipers to ever come out of this province.  We were also within shouting distance of Columbus Field.  You could sit in the back yard during the Games and hear Ray Mac’s voice coming through the loudspeakers, announcing the next group of pipers and drummers.

Besides uttering the words “I do”, being piped in and out of the cathedral by Marilyn on our wedding day was the highlight of the ceremony.

Antigonish has a rich tradition of piping and drumming and has produced world class bands over the decades.  One of the missions of The Antigonish Highland Society is to preserve and perpetuate the music of the Gael.  From 2006-2009, The Antigonish Highland Society had a limited number of pipers and drummers.  In 2009, the band decided that they needed to return to a regular summer schedule and partnered with Old Scotia Pipes and Drums from Great Village.

I stopped in at one of their weekly practices in the town of Pictou.  I saw 14 year old Mark Chisholm practicing with his chanter.  Beside him is 80-something Gerald MacDonald, son of “Jack the Piper”.  There is no “generation gap” here.  Just a group of people plying their craft and preserving the Scottish heritage.

This is a story about collaboration.  According to Pipe Major Lorna MacIsaac, “Old Scotia had Ray Halliday, an experienced lead drummer, who helped us recruit and instruct local Antigonish drummers. What was most important was that our partnership would be an opportunity to continue piping and drumming in our individual communities.”  I noticed the shirts that several band members were wearing.  They bear the logos of both bands in order to maintain their identities as they work together. (This could be a template for municipal reform across the province!)

Several years ago, friends from Toronto travelled east for the first time and accepted our invitation to stay with us.  They just so happened to arrive on my birthday.  That summer, my sister-in-law and her family were also staying with us while their daughters attended theatre camp.  Her husband is an accomplished piper.

It was one of those glorious warm, soft summer evenings and a singsong broke out on the front deck.  At around 10:00 o’clock, I could hear the unmistakable skirl of the pipes as Mike rounded the side of the house.  Our guests had never heard the bagpipes.  The look on their faces was a cross between astonishment and fear.  Good thing that someone wasn’t following behind the piper, brandishing a Claymore.  I fear that they might have thought the world was about to end.  We told them that it was the usual end to a Saturday night in Antigonish.

The storied history of piping and the pipe band continues.  Two very different communities have taken what is best and are making beautiful music together.

Slainte!

Posted on June 24, 2014 under Storytelling with one comment

 

 

The MacDonald clan has been known to hold grudges for long periods of time.  We still haven’t gotten over the Glencoe Massacre, and that was a mere 322 years ago.  We will avoid a Campbell at all costs unless it comes in a can and can be heated in less than two minutes.  Some would say that we’re just plain poor sports, but I beg to differ.  We may be poor at sports, but otherwise we’re a reasonably cheerful lot.

It’s hard to imagine talking about a winter sport during the dog days of summer.  Mind you, the hockey season drags on so long these days that hockey is a fair topic at just about any time of the year.  And summer still eludes us.

A chance meeting with an old childhood friend rekindled lots of memories.  And not all of them were pleasant.

When we were growing up, our street teemed with humanity as our parents took the baby boom very seriously.  You were never without someone to play with, even if you were a touch weird.  Mind you, looking back, we all seemed a bit off kilter.

We played hopscotch, red rover and tag.  We then advanced to more serious pursuits like baseball, football and hockey.  There was never any trouble rounding up a dozen kids or so and playing a game of softball in the back field.  Different streets in town had similar demographics and were also able to field teams; this produced some incredible rivalries.

Everyone, boys and girls, played street hockey.  When we weren’t on our knees in the living room saying a decade or two of the rosary, we were out on the street pretending we were Rocket Richard.  And our street was a particularly hot bed for street hockey as it was a dead end street … and the mayor lived at the very top with the best view of the action.

And speaking of Mayors, it seems like just about every mayor in the 125 year history of the town has been a Chisholm or a MacDonald.  This fact did not provide a “pass’ when it came to Mayor Chisholm’s children.  If they were going to play with the other kids, they would get their noses dirtied by times.

The Mayor’s eldest daughter was de facto his eldest son … if you ask her.  When it came to the rough stuff, she could give as good as take.  So when the street hockey season ramped up, she could be found right in the thick of things.

Not everyone can be Jean Belliveau or Bobby Orr.  Someone has to play nets and Mary Beth was thrust into the role of Johnny Bower.  She learned very quickly to take shots.  Some of them verbal and some of them launched from the end of a hockey stick.

I think I had a crush on her at the time but then again, young boys have crushes on just about every member of the fairer sex at that age.  I thought I would impress her with my slap shot.  Back then, we weren’t sissies.  None of this soft tennis ball crap.  No, we played with a real puck.  Real pucks hurt even when you’re wearing appropriate gear.  She didn’t have any real equipment, so when my shot came at her at pretty good velocity (about 8 mph!), it struck her in the shin with brutish force, leaving her slumped on the asphalt in tears.

I was taught to be a gentleman, and when a young lady is in distress you’re supposed to ride in on the white stallion and save her.  My offer of a hand and a kind word was met with a scowl, followed quickly by two of the fastest left/right combos ever seen.  She laid a first class beating on me.  Now it was me lying on the pavement with a bloodied lip and a tear forming in the corner of my eye.

We both raced to our respective homes.  She wept as she explained to her father the thuggery of her neighbor.  I wailed as I explained to my mother that the fair haired girl from just up the street had beaten the tar out of me.

And that was the end of it, until just a few days ago when we met to go over details of an upcoming community event.  To the utter amazement of the other people in the room, she lifted her pant leg ever so slightly, to show a small indentation in her shin.

It seems like the MacDonalds aren’t the only clan with long memories.

Posted on June 21, 2014 under Storytelling with one comment

Mary Ann Falls

 

 

It’s almost time to bring the bathing suit out of hibernation.  Almost, I say, because we have had one of the longest winters and coldest springs that anyone can remember.  In a few days’ time, young children will burst through the doors of the school and face the endless possibility that is summer.  There is no better feeling in the world than being a child with two months to do nothing but have fun.

We were fortunate to have had a place to spend our summers when we were kids.  We would hop into the car with our parents and make the twenty minute drive to Bayfield.  This is where most of us learned to swim, some of us much better than others.  Our own four kids spent many happy hours at the same beach.

Some people swim year round.  When they’re not swimming in the ocean or their own pool at the house, they may be found at the university doing laps.  As part of my marathon training I used to do pool running.  It is exactly as it sounds. You simply mimic the running motion is water without the pounding on the knees.

There’s swimming and then there’s skinny dipping.

I would like to say that I am an expert on skinny dipping but I am not here to bare my soul or any other body part.  I may have swum “au natural” when I was two or three and that’s all I’ll admit to.

When I lived in Victoria I occasionally drove to the famous Sooke Potholes to go for a dip.  I didn’t know much about this place the first time I went there.  There is a river that comes down from the mountain, forming several natural pools in a step-like fashion.  The pool closest to the bottom is the warmest and is most often frequented by families with small children and senior citizens who don’t want to take the hike all the way to the top.  I quickly discovered that the higher up I went, the skimpier the bathing suits became until the final pool where no bathing suits were required.

I haven’t been there in years but am threatening to go back to Sooke to check it out.  I’m wondering if I will have the energy, or the nerve, to make it back to the top of the mountain!

I remember vividly a trip my future wife and I took to Neil’s Harbor when we were courting.  My brother was the doctor at Soldier’s Memorial Hospital.  He and his wife suggested places to swim, including all of the wonderful beaches in and around Ingonish.  Over the years I had seen the signs for Mary Ann Falls and was intrigued to go there when it appeared on my sister-in-law’s list.  She was a native of Neil’s Harbor and knew the area well.

We drove into the secluded forest glen that enclosed the Falls.  We changed into our bathing suits and securely locked the car, with our wallets and dry clothes inside.   I didn’t think twice about putting the keys in my swimming trunks.

We had a glorious swim and when we exited the chilly waters, I discovered that the car keys were missing.  Nobody could accuse us of skinny dipping that day.  The keys had to have sunk to the bottom of the deep, dark pool at the base of Mary Ann Falls.  The locals told me that I would need scuba equipment to retrieve them.  With no towel or dry clothing we walked a few kilometers to get to the highway and hitchhiked back to Neil’s Harbor.  My sister had to drive three and a half hours from Antigonish to bring us the spare keys.  Can you say, “Not amused”?

Some people even swim in the winter … outdoors.  And I’m not talking about the polar bear dips which are popular on New Year’s Day.

The story is told of two couples who got together one New Year’s Eve for a meal and some revelry.  It was a stormy evening with the wind whipping the snow into impressively high drifts.  The wine was flowing.  Late into the session, one of the men thought it might be fun to skinny dip in a massive snowdrift just off the back deck.  This made perfect sense to the other guy.  The women would have none of it.  That is, until the bribes surfaced.  In exchange for “taking the plunge”, one would receive a coveted dining room table from her spouse while the other would be rewarded with a long desired leather coat.

After many hours of silliness this all made perfect sense.  Shortly after midnight, the lights were dimmed to avoid the prying eyes of neighbors.  The clothes came off and the giggling began as, one by one, the participants, male and female, plunged into the snow bank.

“Now a promise made, is a debt unpaid” (Robert Service).  Two weeks later, a lovely birch table graced the house of one of the woman.  Sadly, the other woman did not receive her leather coat.  She did, however, receive an 8 lb. 6 oz. daughter, exactly 9 months later.

Look before you leap.