Bagpipes

When I worked on television, I loved working on remote broadcasts. It meant getting out of the humdrum of the day-to-day routine. The hours were usually long and on a weekend, meaning lots of overtime. Since I was making just over $100 per week at the time, the extra money was useful.

At the time CKCO in Kitchener did a lot of events outside the station. I have never seen a place that did more parades than we did. One year we covered three Santa Claus Parades. You think the kids would have caught on that Santa didn’t look exactly the same in all three. Mix in an Oktoberfest Parade and an agricultural parade in Brantford and you get the idea.

I was pretty excited when I was asked if I wanted to do the Fergus Highland Games. Excited? I was ecstatic – that is until I experienced the actual event.

We arrived to the sound of bagpipes. We had coffee to the sound of bagpipes. During lunch, we were serenaded by, well, bagpipes. Bagpipes, bagpipes, bagpipes all day long! They never stopped.

When I got home, I could still hear them. They permeated my dreams.

Now I can only take bagpipes in small doses. The sound is similar to a cat in pain. I swear that there are only five tunes that you can play on this instument.

The only problem is that we Canadians love them. A soldier dies in Afghanistan and we hear the television news report at the funeral. How does it open? The sound of bagpipes. I don’t want to be misunderstood here. I am sad that somebody has died. It’ just gets to be a bit monotonous when every item on the same subject starts the same way.

If people are led into a building, somebody wearing a kilt squeezing the blessed bag escorts them. Politicians love it. They feel it gives them a regal entry, I guess. The Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame does it. We lead the students down to our storytelling festival under the influence of the pipes. Many have them at weddings. If there is any event that Canadians don’t think will be embellished by the sound of bagpipes? Sometime I don’t think so.

I ask you to consider this. Canada considers itself a multi-cultural country. Whole neighbourhoods are devoted to people from various nations. When the World Cup of soccer is on, many eyes are glued to the television sets even though Canada has only been at the event once, I believe. Why? Because no matter what teams are playing, many Canadians consider it their team.

Since we have so many cultures close to our hearts, why to we always seem to pick the Scottish when it comes to parading people around? Are we immune to a good brass band? How about playing sitars, balalykas or alpenhorns? Please play anything except the bagpipes for me. They are simply too cliché.