David Danskin, 1927-2022

Long-time supporter of the Glengarry Highland Games and piping and drumming in the Maxville, Ontario, region, David Danskin died on April 15, 2022, a few weeks short of his ninety-fifth birthday.

Born on April 26, 1927, in Edinburgh, he was recruited by John T. Mackenzie in Scotland in the early 1950s to emigrate to Canada to join the Royal Canadian Air Force, and served in the Royal Army Medical Corps in Egypt, RCAF in Europe and Canada, and worked with the Montfort Hospital in Ottawa and then the laboratory of Glengarry Memorial Hospital for 23 years.

Danskin and Mackenzie were instrumental in building the strong piping and drumming community in the Glengarry, Ontario, farming community. The Danskin family owned and operated Danskin Scottish Gifts for many years, and David Danskin was inducted into the local Glengarry Celtic Music Hall of Fame.

“When I arrived in Maxville in 1986 and took on the teaching job for Stormont Dundas and Glengarry Counties School board, I was made most welcome by Dave and Julia Danskin,” said Colin MacLellan, who lived and taught piping in the Maxville area for many years before returning to his native Edinburgh. “I’d known them a little before hand, but it quickly became apparently to me that my job was going to be made a lot easier than I had thought due to the teaching already done at the Glengarry School by David Danskin. Almost all of the pupils that I inherited in the band had been through his capable hands and they were all good players. He must have taught hundreds through that school. We were both from Edinburgh and we chatted away about that often. In later years when I was over, I’d always seek him out  at the Glengarry Games – he was always in his sunchair at the same spot, he wasn’t hard to find. It became an annual chat. Sometimes it was between bands and if I was judging he’d let me know in forthright terms how he thought it was going, and he was never far off the mark. Glengarry piping to this day owes David Danskin a whole lot and I’m sad to hear that he has passed on.”

Our condolences go to David Danskin’s family and friends at this sad time.