Keeping It All in Perspective
When you're part of a competition band, and you seek to win competitions, it can be a bit disheartening when you don't. As Andrew Berthoff pointed out in a recent blog, one thing that you need to learn to do is lose contests, because you lose a lot more than you win, on average. In the past two years, the CRPB has learned a lot about losing competitions, because we have lost more than at any other time in the band's history. At a time when the overall Grade 2 standard is rising, ours fell drastically, and it has been a long road back, and the journey's not done yet.

One thing the digital age does for pipe bands, is put every performance into a context—how you compared to last time out, how you compare to the competition, and how you compare to the world standard. The most recent recording of the CRPB shows that we have come a very long way since this time last year, and that we have some distance to go yet. See for yourself.



There's a lot to criticize here, and no one is ripping it apart more enthusiastically than us, and you can bet that we'll be working to get this into what we hope it can be, and get people performing to the level that it will take to be more competitive in the grade.

The thing that makes this recording so great, is that you can see and hear a definitive change from previous recordings. It's getting better, and we're not half done yet. And if you're looking in from afar, keep in mind that very few of these players have ever played in a grade 2 band, and none are coming from great Grade 4 or 3 bands. These players are mostly coming from very basic Grade 4 bands, and they are working very hard to improve their game.



On the way home from Brandon, we turned in to Wapella, Saskatchewan, weaved through the town, and headed 10 minutes south to St. Andrew's Church, which was the heart of the Gaelic community that immigrated to Saskatchewan from South Uist and Benbecula in 1883 and after. They are known as the Lady Cathcart Settlers. In the late 1970s and early '80s, I was in close contact with Alan McDonald of Wapella, who was a descendant of the settlers. He used to bring a group of us out to the parish hall at St. Andrew's to perform each St. Andrew's Night in November, and in the summer, we organized a piping and drumming competition there for several years in conjunction with the annual summer sports day. We had solo piping, drumming, quartets, and even bands some years, and there was a group of Highland dancers from Moosomin who performed each year.

Over time, the games there faded. I moved to BC for a few years, and Alan moved on to other things. Sunday I stood at his grave, and Eilidh played "Lament for Mary MacLeod" in the churchyard, while we thought about Allan and Margaret McDonald, and all those pioneering Scots who left the Hebrides for life in Saskatchewan.

While we were putting the pipes back in the car, and getting ready to leave, another vehicle pulled up, and a family got out with some flowers for the graves. We struck up a conversation, and as it turned out, this was Alan's daughter and her family, out to tend to the family grave as a spring ritual.

And so, all the contest thoughts fall away. We'll be working hard to make a better job of the music that we play. At the same time, we'll be keeping in mind that there's more to this whole thing than the winning and losing.