BARRY EWEN
Piper
Antigonish Highland Games Hall of Fame
Inducted: July 11, 2019
Barry was born in Lanarkshire, Scotland. He took his first bagpipe lessons from Jim Moffat when he was nine years old. He was later taught by Pipe Major Tom Anderson of the highly-respected Grade 1 Renfrew Pipe Band of Scotland. Barry joined the band and eventually became Pipe Sergeant. He also started competing in solo piping contests and won the Scottish Amateur Championships twice, while still a teenager.
In 1968, Barry left Scotland to become director of Bagpipe Music at St. Ann’s Gaelic College in Cape Breton. For the next fourteen years he worked diligently to raise the standard of piping in Nova Scotia. He influenced many Nova Scotian pipers, some who went on to become leading piping teachers in the province.
The first competitions he attended in Canada were the Antigonish Highland Games. He initially won the professional jig competition and in the years that followed, was awarded numerous other prizes, showing his all-round skill by being named Open Piper of the Antigonish Highland Games on four occasions.
Under Barry’s tutelage the Gaelic College Pipe Band quickly began to improve. This in turn pushed other bands to improve, as piping and drumming were very competitive. One such band was the Antigonish Legion Pipe Band and in 1974, Barry was invited to take over as its pipe major. The band, which was comprised mostly of teenagers, had already won two North American championships in Grade 3, but Barry would take them to a level unimaginable. One piper said, “Barry never made us feel like we were from a small town far from the centre of the piping world. He made us all feel like we could compete on a high level, and even compete in Scotland.” And this is exactly what the band did.
In 1975, after winning top honours at the Antigonish Highland Games, the young band travelled to Toronto where they placed first in the Grade 2 Intercontinental Pipe Band Championships. Barry pronounced the band ready to challenge for the Grade 2 World Championship. The next year, playing in the world championships in Hawick, Scotland, the Antigonish band was awarded first in piping and third overall in Grade 2. They were also named the Best Overseas Band. These were incredible accomplishments for a band whose average age was 21 years old and nearly half of its members were female. Very few women played with top bands at that time, but Barry acknowledged their talent and supported their involvement.
Since those days, Barry has continued to be very active in the world of piping. He led the Scotia Legion Pipe Band, the first Nova Scotia pipe band to compete in Grade 1 in Ontario, and later taught or played with several great bands in Ontario, including the 78th Fraser Highlanders when they won the World Pipe Band Championship in 1987. In 1999 he brought his Grade 1 Windsor Police Pipe band to the Antigonish Highland Games.
Barry is now retired from active piping, but still attends highland games in Ontario, where he currently resides. He has an active on-line presence where he shares his vast collection of recordings, videos and pictures of the bands and people he met during his stellar playing career, for which many of his followers are very appreciative.
On a personal note, Barry, thank you for your friendship, for sharing your expertise and patience, and for giving me the opportunity to compete at a level that was predominantly male, almost unthinkable for a young female piper in the early eighties.
In recognizing you for your many contributions, the people of Antigonish want to thank you for helping to make the Antigonish Highland Games an event that world class players want to attend, but especially for believing in a group of teenagers, and teaching them how to compete with the best, taking them to the very heights of success in the piping world.
For his proficiency as a piper, his success at our Games as a solo competitor and a pipe major, and for his diligent work to raise the standard of piping in Nova Scotia, Pipe Major Barry Ewen is inducted into the Antigonish Highland Games Hall of Fame.