Dear Editor:
As a member of a competitive group of talented individuals, I have to practise. The young people I help coach, they need places to practise too. The Lower Mainland is blessed to have a large and active community of other groups to compete against and have fun with too. On a warm, sunny day, you might find me or one of the young people I mentor out in a park, practising our craft.
The group I play with (Robert Malcolm Memorial) is a competitive, world champion pipe band. Yes, bagpipes.
Vancouver has a very vibrant piping community. You may have seen or heard the North Shore’s own JP Fell band, the B.C. Irish regimental pipe band, the VPD pipe band and the Delta Police pipe band (who performed at Rogers Arena with Sir Paul McCartney). Vancouver is also home six-time world champion Simon Fraser University pipe bands.
I am regularly asked to play for ceremonial events: weddings, memorials, dedications, sports tournaments (Argyle Secondary’s mascot is in fact a piper), and special events.
I have band practice elsewhere twice weekly, play in my parking garage a few times a week (midday, midweek, when most of my building’s occupants are at work and young children hopefully aren’t napping), and sometimes, on sunny days – midday, and certainly well before anyone’s bedtime – I play at my local park. For 30 to 60 minutes at most. And sometimes my young mentee pipes there too.
Everyone has to practise somewhere. Public parks are for everybody.
Passersby often come up to chat, and there’s usually a few people who sit on benches or the grass nearby to listen. Sometimes kids come to us and ask questions, and I’m usually happy to oblige. I thank those patient and kind people who allow us to do this a few times a week. It’s only 30 to 60 minutes, but every chance we get to practise counts.
I was very surprised on a recent weekend when a woman, maybe about 40 years old, walking by in a nice sundress and big sunglasses told me and my young mentee that we were “just awful,” and to “stop right now.”
What kind of person says that? She could have at least said something a bit kinder, such as “will you be finished soon?” Or maybe just put her headphones in and kept walking. Bagpipes aren’t everybody’s taste in music, but we weren’t asking her to stay and listen.
I’d say that bagpipes sound better than the construction noise from the tower going up on the corner, or the road grader going up and down the street, or the engine of that expensive muscle car.
There’s an RV with a small generator running for short periods of time in the parking lot by my condo. There’s a toddler who occasionally throws tantrums next door. I often step out onto my patio to find a group of teens in their secret hideout, a shrub, listening to music on their school lunch break.
We’re living in an increasingly dense neighbourhood, we’re going to have to be more tolerant of each other.
Thank you to all the kind people who stop to listen and allow me to practise my unique and powerful instrument. And to those who don’t like it, just keep on walking by. It won’t last long.
Adrienne Quane
North Vancouver
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