Simon Fraser University Pipe Band Robbie Burns Dinner

Thanks to Anne Lindsay, a rare Scottish lass of great wit, I was introduced to my first Robbie Burns dinner and have been going ever since.  Every one is the same and everyone is different.  The best is the Piping in of the Haggis and the hilarious Ode to the Haggis.
Last year Lorne Kay and I were at the Simon Frazer Burns Dinner. Lorne is a great fan of their pipe band and took me to their Tattoo some decades back. When I solo sailed my Folkes sailboat one winter across the Pacific to Hawaii I loved having along a Simon Fraser Pipe Band CD I played full volume one day when the boat and myself needed some uplifting.
This night we introduced my two Scottish origin friends, Dr. George Chalmers and Jane Fairbairn to the sacred inner circle of Burns Supper fans.  My brother and his family were dressed in Hay Tartan kilts enjoying the Robbie Burns Haggis in Ottawa while we were a few hours behind enjoying ours.  My friend Laura, with her own Scottish Heritage, was again enjoying another Ode to Haggis.  She doesn’t like Haggis but she loves the Simon Frazer Pipe Band and Highland Dancers.
A wonderful night.  At our table we had a man from Edinburgh whose accent was royal.  We also had a man from the Hebrides who told us of his stone house and the hundred other people who lived on the island.  There’s not much more Scottish than that.  The night had George reminiscing about his Scottish uncles and aunts growing up. Jane had done her masters at Simon Fraser and loved being back among some of the alumni.  I am really thankful that I could pass on to George and Jane what Anne once shared with me.  Every year I enjoy the evening even better.
I just love the haggis.  This night of haggis is as close to mass as the secular can come.  I feel all saintly and purified after I’ve had the rich feast of guts and cereal.
The silent auction raises money for the Band which continues win world championships.  What a night!  What royal music! And tremendous dance.
Thank You Simon Fraser Pipe Band.  I had tears in my eyes listening to you.

SFU Pipe Band Robbie Burns Dinner 2014

My Scottish Canadian friend, Anne, introduced me to Robbie Burns Dinner decades back in Courtenay on Vancouver Island.  She was a brilliant and beautiful social worker in Port Hardy when I was the young psychiatrist in Courtenay.  I’d never been to a Robbie Burns dinner but loved all things about my roots.  I’d read Robbie Burns poetry in my teens and carried a little collection with me when I’d travelled Europe on bicycle.  Thanks to Anne I was introduced to haggis and have never been the same since.
My friend Lorne Kay's father introduced him to Robbie Burns dinners as a child.  Lorne got tickets for us and the girls one year. That’s how I first heard the SFU Pipe Band.  They’re world champions 6 times over. That Tattoo I attended by SFU was reminiscent of the great tattoo my chambermaid aunt in Holyrood got me into. I was visiting Edinburgh as a young man and didn’t know what a chambermaid was, let alone a tattoo.
This year Lorne’s partner was in Australia and I was without a date.  The Moray and Nain Robbie Burns dinner I really like to attend has much dancing usually with the Mad Celt.  Lorne and I would be both dressed in kilts but neither would defer to dance the lady’s part.  Hence my idea that I get us tickets to the SFU Pipe Band Robbie Burns Dinner.
After hearing the Pipe Band first with Lorne I’d bought their records and played their grand music in my sailboat a thousand miles from land crossing seas.  Nothing more rousing for the spirits than well played Scottish bag pipes. There’s the drums too.
At the dinner we sat at Falkirk table with a couple of the mothers of the band’s Snare Drum players.  It caused me to pay special attention to the drums and they really were something.
It’s all about the haggis though. The piping in of the haggis was indeed the best I’d known.  The reek of the haggis was perhaps the best I’d known as well.  Then the Address to the Haggis was done with admirable flair. Our MC Jim Gallacher not only recited the poem but threw his whole body into the hacking of the haggis.  Great theatre.
The Selkirk Grace was followed by a superb buffet dinner put on by the Executive Plaza Hotel, North Road.  A lovely young lady whose name I missed sang the Star of Robbie Burns flawlessly.
There were pipers and dancers and a great silent auction.  The MLA and Mayor were there.  I remember one was Stewart and thought that admirably fitting for a leader.  A tribute to the Pipe Major of 36 years had been done by Simon Frazer University.
The conversation at our table was marvellous.  The attractive woman beside me had just learned to skin a deer and her partner had very funny stories of early days with a power boat.  Lorne, “the Laird”, talked of chess and his time in Australia.
Having eaten haggis again, with the finest of bagpipe music playing, I was simply in heaven.   The SFU Pipe Band do know how to host a Robbie Burns Dinner.   I even scored a pair of Canucks tickets in the Silent Auction.
“Fair fa’your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o’ the pudding race!