Robert Burns Day is marked every January 25th, the day of great man’s birth in 1759. The day is often marked by a “Burns Supper”, a usually formal gathering marked by much ritual (and whisky).

Bagpipes are a big part of the Burns Supper sequence of events with the haggis “piped in” with the tune “A Man’s a Man for a’ That” (the name of one of Robert [never "Robbie" or "Rabbie"!] Burns’ great works).

Following the “Address to the Haggis” the haggis and haggis porters are piped out of the dining area to the tune “Neil Gow’s Farewell to Whisky“.

No need to attend a Burns Supper to mark the occasion. Read a Burns poem and reflect. That’ll do.

Tom’s red car – Objects in mirror are creepier than they appear

Tom Foote is a stalker, I think to myself, as I see him creep up behind me in his red Saturn. I take a photo on my cell phone through the side mirror as evidence, which is when I get the idea for this here blog thingy. We pull off at the next rest stop for a coffee and greeting. Back on the road, the comedy tour ensues. Myriad texts and photos are taken to entertain and document the journey, instead of actually watching where we are going.

Alex’s car from Tom’s P.O.V.

“Hi, Tom!”

“Guys, please look where you’re going – idiots.”

“48A.”

We get to exit 48A. Park my truck at the commuter lot. Pile stuff into Tommy’s ride. Check for passports. Double check. Check again. Gas up. Back on the road, on schedule.

“ABBA”

For entertainment, Tom has brought along The Best of ABBA – The Millennium Collection, with specific selections to share with me. He claims he bought it for his daughters, informing me that they were all into a musical called Mamma Mia, which is based on ABBA or uses their songs or something. But I think Tom just plain digs ABBA. The blonde girl, while very “70s” looking, is still pretty foxy, so it’s cool.

Other activities include practicing drum scores, ever-present rude jokes and making an hilarious (others might say, ridiculous) yarn of anything in sight.

“The Border!”

Uh, oh. 8:30pm. Lewiston Border Bridge. Don’t normally cross at this hour. Bummer. Traffic backed-up all the way on to the bridge.

“Border displeasure.”

“Tom naps.”

45 minutes at the border and finally we get through, kept busy by a round of border-crossing jokes, ranging from the ever-popular “eh, where’s John Candy, eh” to the more sophisticated “do you got any mooses in there” to “we bring you ABBA as peace offering to your country”. Not good, you chuckle to yourselves? Quite. We see a nasty storm awaiting us in the distance. I send Ken Constable, our host for the night in Toronto, a message to say we’re running late.

At about 9:30pm, a few `km’ south of Hamilton, driving in this wild downpour, we snap, and decide to record a little jungle music on my BlackBerry. (I’m hoping to sell a band sponsorship by mentioning BlackBerry in this blog)

“Uh. Are you people working, or what?”

A quick stop to grab some food at our usual. A closed store offers a silly photo op. A group of drunk, way-too-young-to-be-drunk, teenage girls stumble out of their limo and into the rest stop. We snicker. Prom season, it seems. Tom notices, and rudely points to a man who has something very wrong with his nose, or is perhaps just wearing a SARS/swine flu mask.

Back in the car. Dash up the rest of the way. Find Kenny’s Swank pad. Into the bar for a pint (which is handily downstairs in Ken’s building). Ken meets us on his way back from a party.

“Rockband, anyone?”

“Rock and Roll Tommy”

Beer and conversation flow, and we decide to get on Kenny’s Rockband video game. Tom and I are new to this but seem to score well, despite our inebriated selves.

“The Double-Balmoral.”

We crash out around three am (I mean, um, er, midnight, if you’re name is Doug Stronach), in plenty of time to be ready for tomorrow’s practice.
Breakfast. Practice. New music. Back in the car.

“Uh oh.”

“A Bit of Trouble”

Back at the border, we find ourselves laughing at the apparent doom that is overtaking the illegals in front of us who are trying to enter our country. We cross, with only a little bit of the usual “so let me get this right, you drove all the way from Connecticut yesterday, for a pipe band practice, and now you’re going back?” from our friendly countryman/border guard.

Back to 48A. My truck is still there, and not up on blocks with no wheels. Re-pack our stuff and say our farewells, and I’m homeward bound and only, um, er, 6 hours away from my bed. Sweet. Tom gets home about 30 minutes later. Bastard.

Double-vision

11pm. That is the “Connecticut Welcomes You” sign, typical when entering states. My camera phone captures it, blurrily, with striking similarity to how I’m actually seeing it at this late hour.

Home at 11:59pm. Record time. Work is only a few short hours away. I contemplate quitting the band.

The end.

Alex Robertson,
snare drummer,
Toronto Police Pipe Band (Grade 1)
resident of Connecticut, USA.

Here’s your inspirational photo of the hour (taken while walking along Cowcaddens Road, towards The National Piping Centre, Glasgow, [August 2008] with TPPB alumnus, Derek Midgley).

The photo may just be a roadside box of City sand for icy roads, but, I say, it still has a certain charm, and symbolism. Maybe even a metaphor for Glasgow:

A lot of practice and a little grit and you'll be on your way!

Michael Grey
Toronto Police Pipe Band

Having attended or played at many a Burns dinner, the most we had on our mind was the yearly dusting off of “A Man’s a Man for a’ That”. Little did we know things were about to take an unbelievable twist.

The evening was going extremely well: our pipes were humming and spot-on together, we had a warm and receptive crowd and the gentleman who gave the Address to the Haggis was fabulous. Colin and I both agreed afterwards that it was the best ode we ever heard. All in the room toasted “To the Haggis”, and threw back our scotch (Drambuie for me, thanks) as is customary.

Then in a moment which I can only describe as surreal, the gentleman who gave The Address, fell backward, stiff as a board, and struck his head on the floor.

As you can imagine, the crowd reacted with shock and disbelief.
Afterwards several people said they thought his collapse was a Pratt fall as that was just his kind of humour. All I remember hearing was Colin say, “Kelly, he’s down!” That was enough to jar me back to reality as we both threw our pipes and ran to his side.

From my 12 years experience as an Registered Nurse he appeared to me to be having a seizure. He was unresponsive and his face, arms and legs were rigid. Colin, who is a trained First Responder through work, called for people to move back and give us some space. I believe he also shouted, “It’s okay, she’s a nurse and she knows what she is doing!” I was really hoping I did, but you never know how you will react until you are in the moment. R.N. or not, I would be glad when EMS arrived.

When the gentleman stopped seizing, it was evident that he was having difficulty breathing and his pulse was weak. I put him in recovery position and then tried to re-acquire his pulse. A few seconds later Colin said “his face is turning blue” and I replied “I can’t get a pulse”. We quickly flipped him on his back and started CPR: Colin doing the chest compressions and me doing the breathing.

The compressions actually brought a pinkish hue back to his face but we both knew that CPR only keeps blood circulating until EMS arrives with the defibrillator. CPR doesn’t usually get the heart beating again, the defibrillator does. CPR buys the victim some time: seconds and minutes count.

By now someone across the room started shouting instructions from the 911 operator. The first thing they said was “Stop doing CPR, check to see if he is choking”. Colin and I looked at each other stunned, not quite understanding what we heard. I shouted back “We are so beyond that! He’s not choking, he isn’t breathing and has no pulse!” They I shouted back “keep doing CPR, until EMS gets there. Do 600 compressions”. We weren’t about to count compressions but there was no way we were stopping.

In critical situations, the perception of time is warped and expanded and it seemed like forever before Toronto Fire and EMS arrived. Someone told us later that it was only seven minutes until EMS arrived and 9 before he was defibrillated.

When EMS arrived they relieved Colin and I and began to work on him. As we stood watching all I could think was, “I hope he doesn’t die here in front of his wife and all his friends.” Looking around the room, I saw many grave and pale faces. People had their arms around each other and many people were saying silent prayers. I was relieved to see that several people were comforting the gentleman’s wife.

The few minutes before the defibrillator was ready felt like forever. The device itself actually speaks and we could hear it giving directions…”charging, clear, clear, clear, all hands off, beep, beep”…Wham-mo (well that’s my word for it).

After a while we could hear the firemen and EMS say we’ve got a heartbeat…he’s starting to breath on his own. The 100 or so people in the room collectively sighed, hugged each other and cried. When they transported him to hospital, he remained unconscious but his heart was beating and he was breathing on his own.

A week later, messages from his family inform us that he remains in hospital and is conscious and stable. He apparently suffered a massive heart attack but brain scans reveal that there was no damage due to anoxia. Whew!

Upon reflection, I learned a few things about people and myself. I learned that the positive outcome was a testament to what CPR training can do. I learned that it is difficult and strange to accept praise and thanks for these kind of actions because if you have the ability, you just react and don’t consciously choose. I learned about my friend Colin and how his innate qualities of being a man-of-action and natural-born leader, make him a good guy to have beside you in a crunch. On a personal level, I learned that I can function calmly in a crisis and although I may not have acted perfectly, it was good enough.

Kelly Crowe & Colin MacPherson
Toronto Police Pipe Band

So, you thought my Sunday, January 9th, 15-hour bus trip from Cincinnati to Toronto Police Pipe Band practice was wild. It ended up being nothing compared to my trip home…

I got on the bus from Toronto to Buffalo okay and had zero problems at customs – which was nice. However, others took a little longer to get through than I did and the bus ended up arriving in Buffalo, NY at midnight instead of 1145 pm. No call was ever made to the station to tell them to hold the connecting busses for other passengers and my bus to Cleveland left at 1145 pm as scheduled. The only problem was: I wasn’t on that bus. So I asked the desk guy what the deal was and he told me that the next bus to Cleveland left at 7:00 am the next morning and that “he’s sorry, but you’ll just have to fill out a complaint form”. That was the best he could do. So I did.

I sat around and waited…and waited…and waited some more. I had no food, no transportation, no American money, and the only places that would have taken a credit card were shut down for the night. So I resigned myself to sleeping on the bus station floor (God only knows what germs I picked up) using my new kilt as my blanket and my pipe case as my pillow.

The next morning, the bus came on time, and took me to Cleveland where I was then informed that the next bus to Cincinnati didn’t leave until 3:45 pm (we would arrive in Cleveland at 10:45am). At least their restaurant was open so I could get something to eat. When I got on the bus to Cincinnati, I couldn’t help feeling relieved that I was going home at last and that this simple excursion to band practice was finally over. Wrong. The bus driver should never have gotten her license…

By the time we made it to the first stop on the way to Cincy, we were nearly side-swiped by semi-tractor-trailers trying to get on the highway twice. She wouldn’t move over for them – or slow down to let them on the highway — and she was on her cell phone. Then for some reason we stopped at West Salem, Ohio, which is a little Amish town with approximately one paved road — and it was covered in snow.

The “bus stop” was an Amish convenience store up an unpaved hill covered in snow and just wide enough for the bus to drive up. There was no place to turn around. One side of the fence was lined with horses and buggies and the other with rusted and dead farm equipment. I saw a real Amish guy, too. I’ve only seen them on TV, and for once, TV was accurate…

When the driver sat back down to back us out you could see that she had realized that she hadn’t planned out her arrival very well. First, we got stuck in the snow bank. Once free of the snow bank, instead of backing out, she lost control of the bus and we ended up sliding down the embankment sideways and backwards. We’re lucky the bus didn’t roll over.

Then it was on to Cincinnati. It took me 26 hours to get home. I am now boycotting the bus system.

I have a feeling I am going to have more stories to follow.

Reil Becker, Piper
Toronto Police Pipe Band (Grade One)