[Throws head back as exiting elevator], “Well, its not our fault she upped and moved to France.”

C’est vrai.

M.

Yeah, I know I chundered on about flying in my last blurb, but here we are, and the flying subject continues. For good reason: many of the world’s pipers and pipe bands outside of Scotland are now looking to find, or book, their way to the various and assorted late-summer Scottish gatherings. Like pipebandsmen to an open bar, the big Scottish contests are magnetic to pipers and drummers. And they’re not always easy to make happen. Money’s often tight and year-after-year Caledonian jaunts wear big-time on the family budget.

Still, passion breeds sacrifice and the Scottish adventure invariably happens (I mean, who really needs to save money for retirement?).

Enter Air Canada’s recent pronouncement: new “low-cost carrier to fly in July [2013]” and Edinburgh is a destination – sounds great! After 10 years or so Air Canada finally finds a way to fly direct to Scotland – Scotland! The source of so (so) many of our founding people. But read the fine print – any Scottish banker would tell you that – check out the travel conditions: Air Canada’s new cheapie trans-Atlantic airline, “Rouge”, compared to standard Air Canada seating rules, has dramatically different cabin conditions.

Suck in your stomach, squeeze on your spanx and have a look:

Standard international flights on Air Canada offer economy class seating with a seat pitch of 31 to 33 inches [pardon the metric gap, I'm using airline lingo]. Seat width varies at 17 to 19 inches (17 inches! An impressive measure if you’re a porn star, not so much as a prolonged seating option).

Air Canada’s new Rouge airline offers 29 inch pitch and an expansive 18 between arm rests. So we see seating pitch reduced two to four inches and any futile hope for a sniff of comfort jammed somewhere in the overhead compartment. The airline buffers this thin offering by introducing something called – ca-ching – “Premium Economy” (imagine dramatic echoes when you read this). At roughly twice the price of DVT class (deep vein thrombosis) flyers are given the opportunity to luxuriate in the rarefied comfort of 38 inch seat pitch and an arse-ample 20 inch seat width.

I understand airlines are not charities in place to jet itinerant pipers and drummers around the world but isn’t the move to dramatically increase aircraft passenger seating (often at the expense of lavatory facilities, by the way) getting just a little crazy?

I have to give a small shout out to the airline where my previously blogged PVI (passenger vomiting incident) occured. Air Transat – apparently named the World’s Best Leisure Airline of 2012 – offers economy class seat pitch on their international flights at 32 to 33 inches and seat width of 16 and a half inches. So, I guess, when you fly economy on Air Transat you can put your fork to your mouth without pressing elbows to stomach – you just can’t feel your legs since blood flow is cut off from waist down. They do offer “Club Class”: seat pitch 34 inches and width 19. I have always found their crews excellent, just by the way – a great attitude.

So aside from a general airline whinge I say that when it comes to buying a seat on a plane, watch what you’re buying. The cheapest seats may not be good value, especially when you consider your health.

I hope, too, that instead of a little less, the air travel market swings a little more the way of passenger health and comfort.

Caveat emptor.

M.

Here’s the work of Italian-American artist, Cyrus Cuneo (1879 -1916). This image represents the famous Sir George Simpson, the Dingwall-born (Scotland) governor of what was once known in Canada as Rupert’s Land, an unbelievably massive expanse that surrounded Hudson’s Bay.

George Simpson was the formidable head of the Hudson’s Bay Company, one of the oldest companies in the world and today one of Canada’s biggest department stores (they’re not paying me to say it, but it is a good store). He was apparently an eccentric type, loved the pipes, and so would have them, and a piper, close at hand on his travels – including those in the deep Canadian wilderness [why is it eccentrics are so often the go-to bagpipe lovers of the world?].

Like pipers in some parts of the world – like, say, Cape Breton – who prefer to play sitting down (surely an open invitation to hemorrhoids, by the way), I can’t imagine much fine technique, tuning and rhythm happening while playing pipes in a canoe.

But we’ll see. I hope to report back sometime over the coming warmer months – at least sometime after the spring thaw. Who knows? Maybe the whole canoe experience will prove to be the optimum bagpipe playing place.

Funny how people from the modestly-sized Dingwall can sometimes be the most interesting.

M.

In no particular order:

1. The heat that oppressed every one of us there at this year’s Glengarry Highland Games in Maxville, Ontario. I don’t remember playing bagpipes in hotter conditions. I also don’t remember seeing competitors pass out and led – shaking, as in shock – to St John’s Ambulance first aid tents. The whole day was awful; unpleasant in the extreme. If weather continues to change we’ll (quite rightly) see outdoor competitions in the Northern Hemisphere shift to September and October. Oh, and a bit sadistic for organizers to ask open competitors play their tunes twice-through.

2. Murray Henderson‘s last competitive performance. This moment counts as two, really. Thanks to live streaming of this year’s Glenfiddich, I got to catch the big contest in Italy – in fact, in the lounge of a Tuscan agri-tourismo lounge bar – with Jenny Hazzard, Colin MacLellan , Duilio Vigliotti and Bob Worrall – that would be the first part. Surreal. And so great to see Murray play so well and cap a magnificent career in his vintage redoubtable style – and that’s the second. Still surprised the assembly didn’t see their way to rising to their feet at the end of his last tune.

3. The emotional performance by the Spirit of Scotland band of Donald MacLeod’s pibroch, “Caber Feidh gu Brath”. The band played (along with the soon-to-be-defunct, Lothian & Borders Police Pipe Band) Saturday, January 28, at Glasgow’s Royal Concert Hall. With Alasdair Gillies’ old comrade, Niall Matheson, performing the urlar on his own, the band joined in and played through to the crunluath. Really moving stuff brilliantly played. A pitch-perfect tribute to the late Maestro, Alasdair Gillies.

4. The first low A sounded by the Toronto Police Pipe Band at the World Pipe Band Championships. It sounded good and it felt right:

I am tired and I am alone,
(Tha mi sgìth ‘s mi leam fhìn,)
Playing pipe band medleys that start with E
After three pace rolls…

5. Cracking open the printer’s proof of “Damned Suites and Other Music”: my sixth book of music was a long, difficult project that was worth it in the end. Oh, and the proof copy was right.

6. Having the chance to listen first-hand (as a judge) to Dylan Whittemore’s winning pibroch, “MacFarlane’s Gathering” at this year’s George Sherriff Memorial amateur piping competition in Hamilton, Ontario: a young fellow with boat loads of potential. He’s a source of pride, no doubt, for his teacher, Ed Neigh.

7. Another virtual Glenfiddich moment: seeing my old L&B alumnus pal, Iain Speirs, win the Glenfiddich. What a player – and an even better fellow. I remember as a guy in my early twenties going along to the Speirs family’s Edinburgh home (coat-tailing with Bill and Lillian Livingstone) to visit with Tam and Carol. Iain was but a young stripling (as James Campbell, Kilberry, might’ve said) and played an outstanding command performance of “Lament for Mary MacLeod”.

8. Reading the band’s score sheets from the 2012 World Pipe Band Championships. They loved us, they hated us – but heavy on the later. “I can’t hear the music for the harmonies!”. I felt bad for the band but good for the future of pipe band music development. I mean, really, what does harmony have to do with music?

9. Here’s an especially wank moment: Colin Clansey playing one of his winning selections at The pipes|drums Livingstone contest. Colin played my tune, “The Whitby Runaround” brilliantly. And there was Bill Livingstone in the front row (the “Whitby” of the runaround) and me, in the back – the guy at the back end of the runaround.

10. The Vogue girl walking along Bloor Street in Toronto in July in six-inch heels, in seriously short skirt all the while holding a package of hot dog buns – buns swinging in step (as they should).

11. Young Kyle Coughlin winning his first professional solo competition at Maxville: he won the jigs on his first professional attempt – and – ready for the bald-faced promo: with “Cross-border Side-step” … a tune that’s been good to me, too.

12. Reconnecting Reay Mackay and Willie Morrison at the George Sherriff Memorial competition. When I was a kid a stand-out memory was hearing Reay and Willie, after the Scottish World Festival Tattoo, jig and reel pipe duel in the Sergeant’s Mess of the 48th Highlanders. I recall like yesterday the tunes, especially Willie’s original rendition of “The Cameronian Rant” jig. They hadn’t seen each other since that time. A circle of sorts for me.

So, random memories, for sure. Just mine.

I wish you all the best for the best New Year ever!

M.

In Canada we know that Scots had a big hand in inventing the country. Sir John A MacDonald, Canada’s first Prime Minister, was a Scot through and through. Same for his successor, Perthshire-born Alexander Mackenzie. Canada’s history is riddled with Scots. Canada’s pathfinders and trailblazers are disproportionately over-represented by Scots. Time’s are changing and, sadly, I say, that while a strong weave of Scottishness can still be felt in the backbone of Canadian society, the cultural imprint of Canada’s Scottish forebears fades.

One thing that makes Canada great, thanks in part to the intellectual groundwork laid by Scots, is its ethnic diversity. The 2011 census told us that at 5.9% Canada has the fastest growth rate of all G8 countries – and that statistic has zero to do with horny Canucks. It’s immigration that’s adding to Canada’s people, to our population – just like the rest of the western world. In 2011 China, India and the Philippines helped Canada move forward – not Scots and Celtic-y types. And I say that’s a fine thing, a good thing – no, a great thing.

We just need to integrate, to nurture and to support our newcomers to the Canadian way of life, while doing our best, when it makes good sense, to take in and integrate the many great things – the cultural strengths – that newcomers bring. And that’s a rare trick while trying to keep strong the cultural threads that have gone to make up the ever-changing weave of Canadian culture. I count the music of the Scot – the Great Highland Bagpipe – high among those threads.

The Great Highland Bagpipe, voice of the Gael and a well-loved splash of colour in the workaday life of a Canadian needs support. The pipes are taken for granted by Canadians, especially those not involved in crazy piping competitions, recitals or any number of insular events the piping sub-culture schemes to hatch.

I suggest to you that even within the piping and pipe band community the whole damned thing is taken for granted. Our events: Highland games, Burns Suppers, piping workshops, schools, our bands, too, are all suffering. They’re under-subscribed, they’re weak. There’s apathy about. People seem to think these events will always be around, or there to “crash” at the last moment if there’s nothing else better to do.

Well here’s your newsflash: they won’t be. The Great Highland Bagpipe is fading in Canada. I point the finger to apathy from those with roots and associations in the culture. Period.

There’s no one to blame but ourselves. We’ll drop $60 on a night at the movies, no problem – some usually crappy (or worse, ordinary and unsatisfying) Pixar thing or substandard Hollywood “prequel” but heaven help us if a bagpipe or Scottish thing has a gate of over five bucks, “I’m staying home”. We need to seriously shift our sense of what has value.

And on that happy note, please come out to The Livingstone (presented by pipes|drums) event on Saturday, October 6, 2012. With fancy-shmancy hor d’oeuvres, a fine venue in The Hamilton Club and seven super-experienced recitalists, you just can’t go wrong.

If you don’t come, it won’t happen again.

And that would be sad.

Think of the people before us; think of the people after us.

M.

I had a look today at historic results – well, “historic”, I mean from two weeks ago, and it’s interesting how close MyVote users came to actual officially-judged outcomes. While the final of the grade one World’s wasn’t quite right, there was a general accuracy, if that combo of words makes any sense, to the final result – all courtesy of crowdsourcing via MyVote.

On a July judging junket (sorry, couldn’t resist) MyVote came up in conversation with the judges group. One seasoned judge was vehemently against the use of MyVote, thinking it would undermine the well-considered assessment of an on-site and accredited (not behind a laptop) judge. I leave it to you to agree or disagree.

I will say that MyVote is currently open and offering all comers the chance to vote for their favourite grade one Worlds medley.

I’ve voted – can’t say my choice – but on you go!

Have fun! Remember, that’s what this game is meant to be all about.

M.

So, after a bit of research this aft, here you go:

http://youtu.be/2ettuZ-OiR0

Aside from a bit of wet, maybe, know that no injury was suffered in the filming of this snippet – aside from sore kangaroo feets.

M.

People come from all over with Canada, the US and the UK standing out as the top three countries of visitor origin. Readers land here from some of the most unlikely places with regulars from Kiev, Ukraine and Western Samoa (probably spammers, I know).

People – you – seem most interested in pipe band stuff, especially anything to do with the World Pipe Band Championship – seriously – and least interested in my cheery little quotes or bon mots; those little gems I imagine are especially thought-provoking. Oh well, pearls before swine, as the saying goes (joke!).

So there you have it. Five years.

Onwards and onwards.

M.

Checkout timing mark 01:00 and catch the lyric “…for he goes birling down and down the white water..”.

“Birling”, you’ll know, is the spinning and moving forward of the logs in the water (and is, in fact, now a sport!) but note that birling is an old Scots word for rotating or to move rapidly – the kind of thing pipers’ pinky fingers do in the closing parts of Donald MacLeod’s “Crossing the Minch”.

M.

M.