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The mission of the Courtenay
Legion Pipe Band is: To provide members of the community of Courtenay and surrounding areas opportunities
to learn and play the great highland bagpipes and drums for the love of the music while acting as ambassadors of goodwill
for the Royal Canadian Legion and the community of Courtenay. To strive for
excellence in playing bagpipe and drum music while encouraging, teaching and developing the skills of the players in a supportive
environment.
Although the band may choose to compete from time
to time in highland games, the main focus of the band is to provide quality public performances and share the passion for
the music with the community.
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Music and
Repertoire
The Courtenay Legion Pipe Band plays at a grade four
level. This means that our band plays music suitable for beginning and developing pipers. We play many of the recognized and
favourite marching tunes for parades and performances as well as some of our own unique tunes and performance sets. Many of
our individual pipers and drummers are quite accomplished and skilled players with extensive musical repertoires of all types
of piping and dance tunes. Unlike many other musicians, pipers and drummers do not carry musical scores with them while performing
- all music must be played from memory!
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Here is a short sample of what our band sounds like.
This video shows the band performing in one of the Cumberland hotels on the May 24th 'Empire Day' celebration. Video
courtesy of S. Murphy
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PLAY VIDEO
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Uniforms
Our pipe band follows the traditions of many police and
military pipe bands. We are outfitted with formal doublets (tunics), kilts and matching hose and plaids, horsehair sporrans,
spats, belts and crossbelts. Our pipers wear the full piper's plaid and the Glengarry hat with a white feather hackle
placed behind the hat badge. Our drummers wear a shorter drummer's plaid attached at the
front of the doublet by a large cairn gorm broach pin and thrown over the shoulder to hang loose in the back. They also wear
a black ostrich feather bonnet with a large white feather plume. When carrying the drums, the drummers wear the horsehair
sporran at the side of the kilt instead of the front.
We sometimes wear a slightly less formal uniform with white short sleeve dress shirts
and black ties, alternate leather sporran, lovat green hose and black shoes without spats. |
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Tartan and
Insignia
The original band wore the green hunting 'Stewart'
tartan with uniform tunics of the Canadian Scottish Regiment. After disbandment, the Royal Canadian Legion took over sponsorship
of the pipe band and the 'MacBeth' tartan was adopted as the new colours of the kilts, plaids, hose and hat badge
patches. We proudly wear the the Royal Canadian Legion hat badges and shoulder crests on our uniforms to acknowledge their
sponsorship and support. Uniforms also include rank insignia and piper or drummer designation badges and crests.
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