Don Groom has long been an influential figure in Prince Edward Island’s tourism industry. 

In 1984, he was presented with the Silver Medallion Canadian Tourism award for contributions to the Tourism Industry by the Canadian Minister of Tourism. In 1989, he was the recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Excellence in Prince Edward Island Tourism. He is a past vice president of the Summerside Regional Development Corporation and Summerside and Area Tourism Association, a past director of the Tourism and Industry Association of Canada, past chairperson of the Summerside Tourism Committee of the Chamber of Commerce and the founding chairman of the Culinary Institute of Canada. He currently leads a steering committee for sustainable tourism development in the Summerside area and is a director of Tourism Summerside Ltd. 

And he was the driving force behind the revival of piping in Summerside. 

“Some of us got involved in the mid-80s in starting another band in association with the Prince County Caledonian Club —an organisation that held an annual dinner in recognition of St. Andrew’s Day. 

“All the instruments, uniforms and equipment were here from the ’60s and that gave us a little impetus to get the Caledonia Pipe Band going. We started teaching piping and drumming and dancing and, as we moved along, the feeling was that the only way this would work long-term was if we institutionalised it. 

“We —a local committee, it was a community project —bought a two-bedroom bungalow on Water Street and had part-time instructors who, for the most part, volunteered their time but we knew we needed to have some good full-time instruction year-round in order to launch a school. 

In 1990, we recruited Scott MacAulay from Ontario as the founding director of what was about to become The College of Piping, Summerside. Scott in turn recruited a drumming instructor, a dance instructor, some retail, marketing and administrative staff and we embarked on establishing The College of Piping and Celtic Performing Arts of Canada, Inc., a non-profit corporation, and registered Canadian charity, with a board of 10 directors recruited by portfolio on the basis of their expertise. 

“The vision of the College was kind of always there,”said Don Groom. “The inspiration perhaps came from the Gaelic College at St Ann’s in Cape Breton. The defining difference being that their focus is primarily on a summer camp experience with faculty being parachuted in from far and wide, whereas, The College of Piping’s focus is on year-round instruction with faculty who all live and teach year-round in Prince Edward Island. You just kind of do what you know sometimes, and that’s what we did. I think we’re on track.”

In summer, The College of Piping and Celtic Performing Arts of Canada is a phenomenally busy place. In fact, The College of Piping is now the number one tourist destination in Summerside, Prince Edward Island.
Prince Edward Island attracts more than a million tourists, and most of them arrive between June and October.
Through the whole height of the tourist season —24 June-26 October this year —in addition to teaching piping, drumming, Highland dance and Prince Edward Island step dance, and operating The College of Piping Pipe Band (formerly the Caledonia band). The College mounts three daytime stage shows —starting at 11.30 a.m., 1.30 p.m. and 3.30 p.m. —every day, Monday-Friday, and evening concerts every night of the week: a programme of some 240 performances that constitute the annual College of Piping Celtic Festival. 

It begins in late June with a three-day Highland Gathering on the campus of The College of Piping and concludes with a mainstage Gala Performance of “Come To The Ceilidh”at the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, the province’s capital city. The College of Piping’s Festival Field can accommodate up to 10,000 people. The daily concerts at The College’s domed Mary Ellen Burns Amphitheatre, can seat audiences of up to 600. 

There is plenty of competition for audiences: through the summer, the Island heaves with festivals.
But in 2003, when Festivals and Events P.E.I. —a non-profit federation of event organisations on the island —launched a new recognition programme, it declared The College of Piping Celtic Festival the province’s top festival. “It was a real tribute to the commitment of our volunteers, students and faculty to create a winning product,”said The College’s director, Scott MacAulay. 

Attractions Canada, the national tourism booster, has billed The College of Piping Celtic Festival as the top cultural attraction of national or international significance on Prince Edward Island, and The College has made it onto the Washington-based American Bus Association’s ‘Top 100 Events’list for five of the past 10 years
“These bits of recognition have brought a lot more people to our door and motor coaches are continuing as a growth segment in our tourism market,”said Scott MacAulay. 

Running a successful cultural tourism business is essential —but secondary to The College’s role as an educational institution. 

“The reason the government here has been so willing to become partners with us is that they see the very positive return on their investment in terms of out of pocket expenditures made by tourists, off-island students and visitors who are taking in our festivals, events and living and learning packages”said Scott MacAulay. 

“What we’ve established and built on is a quality continuum. It starts with having a quality educational product. That attracts quality students. If you have quality students, that resources a quality cultural product and, with this quality cultural product, you are able to produce quality concerts ... and, through quality concerts, we get quality clientele coming to The College who are able to help provide quality support for education —it comes right back to education.” 

Often, tourism and education meet. 

“Many people want to roll up their sleeves and learn how to do what they see on stage,”said Scott MacAulay. “So study abroad programmes and ‘living and learning’vacation packages have become an increasing priority. “More than 70 per cent of the people here have Scottish(45%) or Irish(25%) ancestry, so Celtic culture is undeniably the dominant indigenous culture in this region. Prince Edward Island has its own fiddle tradition and, although piping was not as strong, through the establishment of The College, there has been a revival of piping and of all things Celtic. Because bagpiping is so closely identified as being symbolic of Celtic culture, it is the kind of experience people coming here as tourists seek.” 

“The style of step dancing is also unique to this region, a local expression, and it complements the Highland dancing, the piping, the drumming and the fiddling ... it’s a great thing, that under one roof, we teach all of those disciplines.” 

“Having the full package of Celtic performing arts —music song and dance —is an important part of the success of the stage shows which contribute a good amount of income,”he said. “Moreover, one of the best ways to teach a piper to properly play a strathspey, for example, is to bring a Highland dancer into the room and have her dance the Highland fling. When you see it expressed through the movement of dance, you can immediately understand the contrasting weight of the pulses. It makes people more well-rounded in their appreciation, artistic ability, musicality and rhythm.” 

And The College’s multi-disciplinary approach holds other benefits for its young local students. “Through piping, drumming and dancing, we’ve been able to give local youngsters the experience, excitement and wonders of travel that performing for large audiences in big venues can bring,”said Scott MacAulay. 

“We’ve had three sold out shows at Toronto’s 2,800 seat Roy Thomson Hall (the city’s leading performing arts venue), and we took a group of 60 to Orlando, Florida to perform in the Magic Kingdom at Disneyworld —opportunities that local children would never have had without the establishment of a place like The College.”
The College is proud of its successful local and international alumni and displays their pictures and biographies in its main hall —people like 1998 YTV Young Canadian instrumentalist of the Year, John MacPhee, who pipes with Cape Breton’s Slainte Mhath band; Scottish gold medallist, Ian Speirs and his brother Gregor, Summerside-born Michael Linkletter, 1994 North American Amateur Champion who is now completing a PhD at Harvard University in Celtic Studies; silver medallist Matt MacIsaac who has been travelling the world as piper, banjo player and flautist with Natalie MacMaster’s touring act; Braemar gold medallist Rob Crabtree and Ottawa’s Andrew Hayes as well as professional Gaelic singer Patricia Murray from Summerside. 

James Beaumont, from Bo’ness, Scotland is currently in Summerside, taking master classes in piobaireachd and light music and assistant teaching students enrolled in the scholarship programme. “The study programme for James includes three ninety-minute private lessons per week working on prescribed tunes and some of the classic tunes that he’ll be able to submit throughout his competitive career. He is on a career path of being a world-class player and he too may prove to be an important ambassador for The College in Summerside.”
Customer service has been a huge priority in running the Summerside College. You never know who will be coming through your front door. “You have to treat everyone with respect and give each person the best attention and service you can.” 

“One couple, Doug Hall and his wife, Debbie, who have become major financial supporters, first arrived as a family of learners. Doug came along a few years ago for a week of bagpiping lessons; his son took drumming and his two daughters took Highland dancing. 

“He was an unassuming fellow in blue jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. He gave no outward impression that he had the ability to become a major financial benefactor. At the end of the week, he said they‘d had such a great experience he wanted to do something to support our College so he and his wife Debbie made a $5,000 donation. They followed that up with a $50,000 donation the following year in order to create an Endowment Fund. But that was just the start.” 

“He and his wife now fund the Doug and Debbie Hall Scholarship Programme which gives free piping and drumming tuition to any Island child between the ages of 8-18.” 

" That programme has sponsored as many as 200 young pipers and drummers at a time —our programme quadrupled overnight. The basis of all of their support was with having a quality educational product and providing good customer service. If you’re good at your core business it will lead to good things in other sectors of your business!” 

" We’ve had a number of other people who have made very substantial contributions and given significant future financial commitments through the establishment of ‘Trust Agreements’because they have had a pleasant experience and believe in The College’s mission ... ’Inspiring excellence in Celtic performing arts through quality educational programming.’ 

Scott MacAulay, a leading international solo competitor and clinician when he was appointed to The College 15 years ago, puts a love of teaching ahead of playing achievements when he is hiring instructors. 

“It’s part of creating a positive, friendly environment in which people can flourish,”he said. 

He discovered his own love of teaching when, in growing demand as an instructor as his solo successes mounted, he was invited to teach at the Delco Workshop —a big winter workshop held at the Holiday Inn hotel in the unlikely sounding community of King of Prussia near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 

“Pipers from all over North America descended on the Holiday Inn in King of Prussia for a great weekend of teaching with leading international instructors —and, for me, teaching 30-40 people in a class for an hour at a time and then flipping over with a whole new class coming in ... seeing and feeling that powerful, instant feedback and the energy from students was very addictive and gave me the teaching bug.
“That led to my travelling, playing and teaching all over Northern America and New Zealand ... and to my coming to Prince Edward Island,”he said. 

He still devotes as much of his time as he can to teaching. 

“A tremendous administrative workload is involved in keeping a place like this going,”he said, “but I think it’s recognised that students want to see me in the classroom because that’s really where my passion is.” 

“The more you teach, travel and judge, the more you keep in touch with what’s going on out there, the more effectively you can keep current in things like the new technology of reeds and bags and the exchange of ideas as people are looking to you for advice.” 

Scott MacAulay grew up in Hamilton, Ontario. His Highland-born father, a fluent Gaelic speaker and singer, ensured the family home was alive with Gaelic music and Gaelic culture. 

He took his first piping lessons with the local pipe band, from its pipe major, Jock MacFarlane. He also studied under Alan Munn. “But the person most involved in lighting the fire in me for piping, and encouraging me to focus on excelling as a player was Sandy Keith, who now lives in Florida,”he said. “Going to him was a career inspiration.” 

In 1977, Scott MacAulay played with the famous grade 1 Muirhead and Sons Pipe Band under Robert Hardie —“and that was the most inspirational year of study in my life. Bob Hardie was a musical genious and he was amazingly generous when it came to sharing his gift.”Every single band practice under Bob Hardie offered at least one musically enlightening nugget!” 

“I’ve had some great teachers —Sandy Keith, Bob Hardie, Jimmy MacIntosh, Murray Henderson, Pipe Major Angus MacDonald and Tom Speirs. They have all contributed in one way or another in helping inspire me to a higher level of knowledge. “More recently I’ve felt that the best lesson you can have is the last good tune that you’ve heard. ”Great players have a knack for laying out their tunes in a fluent, logical, musically coherent manner that can serve as an object lesson for both teachers and students. The pursuit of knowledge continues to be a lifelong journey!” 

When he was approached by a New York-based head-hunter to direct a programme of piping in Prince Edward Island, it came as something of a surprise. 

“Prince Edward Island wasn’t on my mental map at all, certainly not in relation to piping, but even as a holiday destination,”he said. “I hadn’t even contemplated visiting P.E.I. never mind moving there!” 

“Initially, I thought I might come and assess the situation and offer some recommendations on how they might best proceed but, when I came here, I was struck by the passion of the people involved and the incredible interest they had in making this happen.” 

“I’d been travelling all over the world for five years or so, teaching summer schools and leading workshops, and I thought it might be a good idea to have people come to me instead of my going to them ... and to make a home for it. And it really has been a great thing.” 

“Piping is an international activity so, although I was coming to a place that wasn’t known for piping, I didn’t see it as a barrier. Prince Edward Island is very accessible and not too far removed geographically from the rest of North America. It is only a day’s drive away from Boston, New York and other major eastern seaboard localities. With that proximity to major markets, the opportunities for recruiting students and concert goers abound.” 

“Some of the real benefits of living in Prince Edward Island which I hadn’t even contemplated are the incredible lobster, scallops, mussels and other locally harvested seafood delights, the internationally ranked championship golf courses and a landscape, seascape and spirit of hospitality that is unrivalled. Once you get here ... you’ll understand.” 

“When I started, The College was a two-bedroom bungalow on a lot of about 85x300 feet. Now we have a multi-million dollar facility on 13 acres of land on Water Street - the busiest street in Summerside and the second-busiest street in the province.” 

The College has practice rooms, a dance studio, a boardroom, and offices. Recent renovations made room for a shop and new accommodation for students. The shop displays music recordings and a range of Highland supplies, music books, regalia, jewellery and souvenirs. 

Initially, the venture met with some local scepticism —“I’d say it was four or five years into our survival as a business before people really began to take us seriously and embrace us wholeheartedly,”said Scott MacAulay. 

“People don’t like to embrace a loser and we had to find our feet.” 

He recalls that one early challenge he faced was getting ice hockey-minded local boys into kilts. “But the growing popularity of Celtic culture in mainstream media —things like the Braveheart and Rob Roy movies out of Hollywood, Riverdance, groups like the Rankin Family and Barra MacNeills, and Lorena McKennitt —suddenly made it cool to be Celtic and piping, drumming and dancing, all of that, became attractive. 

As its potential became evident, The College benefited from a supportive community, supportive media and, not least, a supportive provincial government. 

“One of the great things about Prince Edward Island is that, although it has a population of only 140,000 people, it has the same political infrastructure as every other province in Canada,”said Scott MacAulay. “We have a premier who is one of the number of premiers who sit at the national table ... and I can truly pick up the telephone and talk with him directly, or have an audience with him, if not the same day, then within a day or two. In any other province in Canada, I’m not sure you could have that kind of access when it comes to discussing bagpiping or Celtic culture. It’s a great situation. And it’s that access to the decision makers that enables places like the College to make things happen.” 

Several years ago, The College of Piping and Celtic Performing Arts of Canada formed a partnership with the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown that makes it possible to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts in Music degree with a major in Highland bagpiping. This is the only degree programme for bagpiping in Canada and one of only three such programmes in the world.( The other two at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA and the RSAMD in Glasgow, Scotland) 

“So far, none of the people who’ve applied for the programme in Prince Edward Island have been able to meet both the academic requirements and the piping standard,”said Scott MacAulay. “We don’t want to be a diploma mill; we want to ensure that people going through the course are going to be great ambassadors for the instrument and the programme.” 

But the existence of that opportunity —and it will be taken up —is a “great thing”, he said. “It shows that the university recognises the bagpipe as a legitimate instrument and The College in some ways becomes a preparatory school for the degree programme. 

“The academic approach to piping is long overdue, and the more of us who do it ensures that there will be the more literate pipers worldwide.” 

“Piping has long had a tradition of learning over the kitchen table in the intimacy of one’s home. But an awareness has really leapt forward that we need to teach people how to read and write music. I’ve seen world-class players come through our doors who couldn’t read or write music and it was absolutely shocking. But it’s a very teachable, easily acquired skill, if you admit you can’t do it.” 

There is only a growing need for quality teaching, he said. 

“Down the road, although it seems that the two Colleges of Piping and the National Piping Centre are operating mostly independent of one another, there could be tremendous synergies and opportunities to do more things jointly: It’s a huge world market, there’s plenty of business for all of us and I feel that a collaborative approach would strengthen each and every independent entity.” 

“When I was young, there weren’t many prospects anywhere in the world to do what I am doing now full-time. Now there are three such places operating year-round and we’re all very, very busy. That can only be good for the future of piping.” 

“When you create places like this, and see the demand, there’s obviously going to be a growing need for more and more teachers. And I would like to think that the prerequisite for teachers in the future will be a degree in piping from any one of the three institutions where it is currently on offer.”