1972 Scottish World Festival held at the CNE fairgrounds in Toronto Canada. Grade 1 – 28 Bands, Grade 2 – 16 bands, Grade 3 – 28 bands, Grade 4 – 46 bands. I competed in Grade 4 in 1972 (my first year playing pipers) and remember watching the Grade 1 contest from the stands. The following year, older brother Will and I were both in the Grade 1 contest playing pipes with The Waterloo Regional Police Pipe Band. For us it was a dream come true.
Simply click on the file (bottom of the page) you want to listen to or right-click to download. The following recollections by Jim McGillivray.
I attended these as a member of the Guelph Pipe Band starting with the first one in 1972. The weekend competition was only a small part the event. The biggest part were four tattoo shows held each evening from Thursday to Sunday. We rehearsed these on a couple of afternoons mid-week, the first couple of years under D/M Norm MacKenize, and the last couple with, I believe, Larry Fullerton.
The grandstand at Exhibition Place was full each night for the first few years — 33,0000 each time and it really was a good show. I was in my late teens at the time and every night after the pipe bands performed en masse I would scramble to a spot in the stands to watch the Royal Marines band, which never ceased to thrill me. The Gurkhas were also mesmerizing.
I’m not much for massed bands, having played in probably 10 million of them, but it was exciting every night when the bands opened the show by coming out of the the big castle at one end of the field. The stadium lights would hit you as you came onto the astroturf and 33,000 spectators would cheer, obviously impressed by what they saw. I seem to recall the first year the drum corps were put in the middle and massed bands entered from each end of the field and met in the middle. That was always dicey, but very impressive when it worked. In all honesty, the first show was like a dress rehearsal with lots of prayers. The Saturday and Sunday shows were always the best, and I found it quite sad when we marched off after the Sunday show because you knew this was special and might not be back again. These are among my favourite remembrances of my youth.
Memories of these warm summer evenings at the CNE grounds on the lake are indelibly impressed in my mind. As a kid I was awed by my first exposure to names like Muirhead and Sons (though they were past their prime), Shotts and Dykehead, and the real hot band of the day, Red Hackle.
To me the first two years were in a league of their own for quality and atmosphere. I’m afraid they eventually killed it by running it every year and eventually starting to cut corners. I think if they’d run it every three years or so it would still be running today. I recall hearing that the Scottish World Fesitival Tattoo was the only grandstand show that actually made money over the three weeks of the Canadian National Exhibition.
The competition, I think, was devised simply as a way of giving the Scottish bands the incentive to come over.
Cheers,
Jim McGillivray
