Tyneside Pipers: First Day of the Somme

| July 1, 2019

La Boiselle this day so many years ago… This Day – 1 July 2019 When I can…I walk this ground, towards La Boiselle… We are in this place, peaceful now, but where the hearts of men once beat with adrenaline as they advanced. Their rhythms interrupted by the stuttering power of the seemingly endless machine […]

Essex Scottish Pipe Major

| January 29, 2019

“Jock” Copland – Always Ready A return to the stacks at the University of Victoria Library provided a hidden gem amongst familiar pages that, this day, I turn a little slower finding clues within the pictorial offerings. This one image here – records the familiar collar badges of a Canadian regiment – The Essex Scottish […]

51st (Highland) Division Memorial (1924)

| September 3, 2018

Friends are good on the day of battle Located near to Y Ravine, within the present day Newfoundland Park, the 51st Division Memorial commemorates their success during the Battle of the Ancre 13 November 1916. The memorial project was aided by the good work of  Lieutenant Colonel Nangle, the former Roman Catholic padre of the […]

Here the Pipes Will Lay Beside Me

| June 10, 2018

Someday Here We Will Meet Again …a while ago I have stood here many times, brought others to you and wondered who you are…and yet for all the time that has passed – today you have spoken. Who are you Piper John MacLeod? …this day I have walked this place of memory since the late […]

And we will all go together

| February 17, 2018

Will Ye Go Lassie Go Though perhaps this tune has wandered to my ears sometime in my past, it was only recently when the tune was featured in Their Finest that the melody, sung by actor Bill Nighy, has become anchored to my person. That anchor comes, not only in the form of the lyric […]