They haven\u0027t missed a Leafs season opener since 1931, but the 48th Highlanders of Canada don\u0027t want to be forgotten.
They’ve been lost amid laser beams, curtailed by COVID-19 and have had their set list scissored, while a couple of their best players hit the ice hard with only their kilts as padding.Highlanders of Canada keep on piping, 50-strong for the season opener on Wednesday.
Falls are inevitable, especially in those days when the band came out nearer game time, right after a fresh ice flood. One Highlander went out feet first, prompting much media mirth. Colleague Scott Morrison, in his best Mike Myers’ movie brogue, announced to the press box “there’s a piper down! I repeat we have a piper down!”After that mishap, members started fastening Canadian Tire ‘Ice Creepers’ to their boots, elastic bands with small cleats for traction.
“We’re on the clock,” said Reesor, who has participated since 1988 and was Drum Major 14 years before promotion took him out of the mix. “We have to be on a bus, dropped off at the rink and very conscious that we’re working on the television network’s schedule. If given seven minutes or 5:40 to play, we have to make it tight, then be back on the bus.”
Reesor was with Yamaha Music for 18 years as a product marketing manager for bands and orchestras and now does contract work as a part-time soldier in the Canadian Forces. “Shack being Shack, he was running around on the ice trying to lift the kilts of our male pipers, but one guy told him ‘Eddie, if you’re going up there, it better be to sign something for me.’”
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