Canada 150: the 15 Greatest Canadian Pipers & Drummers (deceased)
#13: Jack Dunbar
Another Scottish immigrant to Canada, Jack Dunbar proved that making Highland bagpipes is not the sole domain of the Scots. He set up his bagpipe-manufacturing firm in St. Catharines, Ontario, and soon was creating instruments that were on the level of the best in the world. Although he didn’t quite crack the world pipe band chanter market in a significant way, he also proved that the stranglehold on chanters in the 1980s by Sinclair and Shepherd was indeed unlockable, perhaps opening the door wider to current dominant makers like Hardie, McCallum and G1.
Nice work! John Wilson published 3 collections of pipe music, the third being the Canadian Centenial collection…all three of which I continue to use and teach my students today…
Mike Baker
It is interesting that none of the excellent 15 selected musicians appear to be players who played predominantly for dancing. Today, we seem to be band players, solo competitors or piobaireachd pipers. Would there be any interest in a list of 150 ceilidh/dance pipers.