Brenda MacAdam Chisholm – 2025 Hall of Fame Inductee
A Highland Games Family Affair
The MacAdam family of Braemore Avenue was a Highland Games powerhouse. Most of Evelyn and Alex’s nine children competed in either Highland Dancing or track or both. Kevin and Donna were stars of Frank McGibbon’s track team and Brenda, Patsy, Nancy and Donna won a slew of medals and trophies on the dancing stage.
Brenda ‘s dancing career started in elementary school when Florence MacMillan began instructing her at Florence’s home on Hillcrest Street. Later Brenda later took lessons at the parish centre with other students. She recalls Florence teaching the girls about stage presentation, posture, precise hand and leg-feet positions, dress code and how to dance with exact timing to the bagpipe music. Features of Florence’s precision instruction would stay with Brenda through life.
At Brenda’s first Highland Games she danced the Highland Fling. By her second year she had added the Seann Triubhas and Sword Dance to her repertoire and soon began to travel to other Games in Nova Scotia, eventually competing in all four Atlantic provinces, Maxville, Ontario, and Quincy, Massachusetts. Her parents were very involved in their daughters dancing, keeping them up with the ever-changing dress codes and driving them to competitions and concerts.
“I enjoyed all the Highland dances as well as the Flora MacDonald’s Fancy which was held at the Antigonish Games, the winner receiving the Florence MacMillan Trophy. Occasionally, the Irish Jig and Sailors Hornpipe dances were held in some competitions which was always fun. As well, a highlight of my career was going to dancing school when I was 15 and 16 for two weeks at St. Ann’s Gaelic College where top-notch instructors from Scotland were present.”
“I enjoyed all the competitions, and a highlight was our own Antigonish Highland Games where it seems that so many dancers came from other towns and cities. There was much excitement with the dancing, track and piping as well as heavyweight competitions, all going on for three days.”
Brenda won her first Highland Games trophy in 1965, taking a first in the Sword Dance, a second in the Seann Triubhas and a third in the Fling. She was named the overall winner in of the juvenile (age 10 and 11) class. Three years later she took home the Filmore Trophy, awarded to the top dancer in the intermediate age group, and two years after that, Brenda won the Angus R. MacDonald Trophy as top senior dancer at the Games. This rare trifecta of trophies had only been accomplished twice in the past, and both of those dancers, Phyllis MacDonald and Sandra MacDonald were part of the inaugural class of inductees in the Highland Games Hall of Fame.
Concerts were also part of Brenda’s dancing career. “The Concerts Under the Stars at Columbus Field and at St. F.X. were a lot of fun where it was more relaxing knowing it was not competition. A highlight memory over the years was when some dancers from Antigonish went to Quebec for weekend concerts and travelled by train with my mom as one of the chaperones.”
Brenda finished her dancing career while she was in university. “That’s when I began teaching a few students, one being Clare Kiely who also is being inducted this year. I continued teaching until I had to balance my time with children, work and a working husband coaching cross-country as well. My friends who also taught dancing were more than willing to take my students on for which I was so grateful. It was a difficult decision, but I knew it was the right one.”
Being inducted into the Antigonish Highland Games Hall of Fame, Brenda joins her father Alex as the only father and daughter duo to be selected for the honour. She also joins her husband, Bernie, who is being inducted this year, making them the first married couple to be inducted. For the MacAdams, the Highland Games were always a family affair and that tradition seems to be continuing!