So Much to So Many

This chapter from Notes from a Musical Garden written by Brenda Porter (Cape Breton Press, 2005) is used with permission.

Between 1965 and 1975, school bands directed by teachers who were paid by the Province of Nova Scotia sprang up like toadstools after a rainstorm. In many communities, there previously had been town bands, militia bands, or school groups whose directors were paid by community organizations. Now, instrumental music was part of the school curriculum. In many cases, those new band directors (and I was one of them) had little experience with running a school-based program, but excitement filled our makeshift band rooms and our communities as we forged ahead. During those heady years Ron MacKay, with his fine bands and incredible parent organization, gave us something to aspire to. For us, Ron was also an invaluable advisor and friend. He always had time to answer our thousand-and-one questions. He always let us know that he was interested in what we were doing. It had been a couple of years since I had seen Ron when I arrived at Buckley’s Music on Quinpool Road in the summer of 2003. He practically bounded up the steps as he took me to the newly renovated second floor and the large rehearsal room, practise rooms and recording equipment. His enthusiasm was infectious as he talked about workshops that he was doing there with bands from around the province and about possibilities for the future. We chatted for more than two hours and it was not until I was leaving, that it dawned on me that Ron was 75 years old. Incredible. This was the same Ron MacKay who organized a Provincial Chapter of the Canadian Band Association and served as president for five years, who was president of the Canadian Band Association for two years, and who has received honorary memberships from the Nova Scotia Music Educators Association, the Nova Scotia Band Association and the Music Industry Association of Nova Scotia. He also was made an International Honourary Member of the Band Masters Fraternity Phi Beta Mu and, in 1997, was awarded the CBA National Band Award. This expert musician and teacher, who has meant so much to so many is still very much “in the business,” his gardening tools well cared for and still eager to share what he knows with younger colleagues. A horticulturalist for school band directors. His “story” ends this collection.
Ron in 1991 photo that appeared in Aviso magazine	RON MACKAY WAS BORN IN DUNNVILLE, Ontario in 1928. His school music consisted of classroom singing. When he was ten years old he joined the Dunnville Boys Band, one of the bands led by “roving” directors who travelled to communities in Ontario with the sponsorship of the Waterloo Music Company. He played trombone in that group and at the age of seventeen, after the Second World War was over, he came to Halifax where he was based with the navy at Shearwater. Ron played alto horn for a bit, but after having a chance to try a classic 1896 Boosey and Hawkes Imperial single F horn, he switched to French horn. He stayed with the Stadacona band for almost twenty years, along the way doing some conducting and eventually doing all the work for a commissioned officer – a band director. Approximately 100 kilometers away was the hub town of Truro, where a town band had been in existence since the late 1800s. There was a school band consisting mainly of brass instruments started by Chalmers Doane before he left for Boston. The town band actually paid the Mount Allison Summer Camp tuition for woodwind students who agreed to play with the band. As has been noted earlier, Truro also had a number of excellent private piano teachers. Paul Barrett, one of Chalmers’ brass students who became Ron’s student, colleague and successor, explains that “Truro was ready. Ron was the guy.” One of the Stadacona band directors was conducting the Truro Concert Band. But he was to be posted out of Nova Scotia. Ron remembers:
I had no intention of teaching music in school because I was still in the military. This guy said that he wanted me to take over the Truro band, that it would give me another conducting experience. He explained that “they don’t know everything like the pros here and they are going to ask questions. You will learn how to rehearse. I go down to Truro every Tuesday night.” So I started working with these guys. I was paid $15 a week, primarily to pay my gas. Some of the kids from the school were playing in the band and the principal asked me if I would go to the school and do their band – just come a bit earlier and do an hour or so with the band every Tuesday afternoon. The conductor they had hired was sick. I said “Okay.” “We’ll pay you $15.” “That’s fine.” So I got $15 from each. That was in1964. I was doing that: driving back and forth. Then the guy – still on sick leave – marched with the artillery band in the Santa Claus Parade. He was out. The principal asked if I would continue until the end of the year. I told him that he was going to have to do something better than this. So I decided to do classes on Saturday mornings as well. Mark Cuming was one of Ron’s first students. He had watched the Truro Concert Band parades and had wanted to play with them, fascinated with their “fancy uniforms and things.” He realized that this school band was really going to go places. As he says, “I was hooked right away.” Ron wasted no time getting going. He started with about 35 students. In September there were another 100 who wanted to join the band. The principal asked him to continue the program, and he kept it going for the year. Paul suggests that “Ron had an ace in the hole – there wasn’t a whole lot going on in Truro at that time. The band was a brand new thing. It was very popular.” Another favourable circumstance, according to Ron, was that “when the parents found that these kids were interested, they thought that if I would continue this after school business, it would be a good way to get a lot of their kids off the streets.” On the professional front, there was no opportunity for Ron to direct at Stadacona. “I didn’t want to stay in the navy and push pencils until I was 50 years old and go die somewhere. So I got out. I was 38 years old at the time.” Ron went straight into the Truro school system. At first he taught general music for part of each day, and students were pulled out of classes for instrumental instruction. He insisted that band practises be held after school so that he “wouldn’t have any interferences.” Over the first few years the population of the bands exploded. Ron explains that “I wanted to put the best kids together so I set up a program where you had to pass particular levels. If you were in grade six and you could play as well as a kid in the top band, I didn’t care how old you were. If you passed those tests, you were in.” Paul, who was then in his second year of playing, remembers the system. “He put people in positions according to how well they could play rather than their social status in the community. I had a great deal of respect for him, just for that alone.” Ron continues: So there were the beginners, Junior Band and Prep Band (because they were being prepared for the Concert Band). I was just flying by the seat of my pants. I thought, “How will I do it?” I used to sit and read books – all those band books from the States. Every time I would see one I would buy it. From almost the first, Ron had a parent organization working with him. He explains how it got started. I wanted to buy an instrument – I think it was a bassoon – and we didn’t have an auxiliary. So I decided that we would have a cookie sale at the grocery store on Saturday morning. We might have made $50. All of a sudden I got this call from a parent, “What are you doing selling cookies and stuff?” I said, “Why? Don’t you want me to do that?” “No, no. We’ll do that. We’ll organize a meeting just for that.” The following week all the parents were there and they asked me what I thought about a parent auxiliary. I said, “I’d love to have one, but there’s just one thing. I’m in charge of the music. And I’m in charge of the students.” That would have been 1965 or ’66. In 1967 they raised all the money for our trip to Expo. Over the years the band parents raised funds for instruments such as bassoons and tubas, music and band trips – there was minimal funding from the board or the school. Ron also established a system that had a parent at each band rehearsal who looked after photocopying, attendance, merits, etc. The system still exists. In addition, the organizational support that the parents provided was amazing. They thought that I already did enough work. They said, “We are an auxiliary. If we can help you, you just tell us what to do.” Not one of them ever said to me, “I don’t like the music you’re playing.” Ever. The parents did everything for me. That’s the way it was. But that’s the military, eh? Certain people being in charge of certain things. The parents would ask me for a floor plan for chairs and stands. Three or four girls would come in and hand out all the parts to everybody. One of the parents would go over the order of the music that I was going to do before I went on stage. They would check before I went on. “Okay, I’m ready.” I would walk on and the kids all stood up. My baton went up and Bam! Play the concert, close my folder, the parents would get the kids to put the all the folders in the boxes, the kids would get up and leave. That parent auxiliary was a great, great thing to have.
Newspaper clipping re Truro-Middleton exchange	In the first year or two Ron’s bands did a lot of local performances – their first trip was to Graham Creighton Junior High in Dartmouth. By 1967 both Doug and Kenny, Ron’s sons, were playing – Doug on percussion and Kenny on clarinet. (Doug now teaches and plays professionally. Kenny also plays professionally and teaches music at Astral Drive Junior High in Cole Harbour). It was that year that the band won the right to represent Nova Scotia at Expo ‘67 and, as Mark explains, “the big metamorphosis happened.” The Truro Concert Band, in which many of the students also played, went as well. Mark, Paul and Kenny remember that trip well, especially one particular incident. Ron, dressed in a white dinner coat and black pants, was conducting the Truro Concert Band. During the first march, the long fibreglass baton went right up his nose and he began bleeding profusely. Kenny says, “He cupped his nose, finished the next couple minutes of the song, took a bow, went off stage and all the blood poured out. But he never got a drop on the jacket. How that must have hurt.” Paul smiles too. “I was there when Ron did the old baton-up-thenose routine. It’s a memorable one.” Needless to say, when the bands returned to Truro they were the pride of the town. A warm professional and personal relationship soon developed between Ron and Wilf Harvey. They were both “semi-military” and theirs were the bands to which everyone in the province was looking. They organized a number of exchanges that always included performances by both groups. The two men had enormous respect for one another and, though their bands had very different sounds and played different repertoires, “the quality was there.” Ron and Harve had something else in common – neither of them had the required qualifications for teaching in the Province of Nova Scotia and both were being paid a pittance for their work. They enrolled in the block program held at Dalhousie in order to get their teaching license. Ron laughs:
Wilf and I were in same class. Which was not very good. We were guys in our 40s and 50s and we had to take elementary education. We had to participate. One day they were all dancing around and it came our turn. We got up there and gee we felt foolish. So the next day I said, “Wilf, how about you being a butterfly today? I was the kangaroo yesterday.” He said, “No, no. I want to be an elephant.” We said this out loud. This is what we would be doing in classes! It was bad. And we did this choral thing with poor Paul Murray where he would get up and conduct. Somebody would play the piano, there would be about 100 teachers, and we would sing repertoire. All the men would be in the back row. Wilf and I would be putting in different words, making up little songs and stories and giggling a bit. It was like we were two fifteen-year-olds. Bad! But he got his teaching licence. And the word of what was happening in Truro spread. For a few years Ron started his band students in Grade 4. When his Grade 5 and 6 students entered the music festival in a junior high class, some of the clarinet players had to put their feet on the cases so that they could sit straight. He recalls that they won the class and that folks couldn’t believe it. He even had a Grade 6 woodwind quintet. So, as he says, “I had this program that went from Grade four to Grade twelve. I did it all by myself, except for some help at junior high after 1976.” An average of 325 students were involved each year – at one time there were more than 400. His workload was enormous. Junior high students had classes during the school day for one year only. Ron emphasizes how excellent those thirty students were: Some of them were incredible players. Many became professional players or teachers. Jack Brownell, Mark Cuming, John Cuming, Karen Conrad, Joanne Abraham. Eighty-five per cent of the material played during class hours was technical – scales, history, ear training. Band was after school. They were playing “Candide,” “Pineapple Poll.” Those thirty kids could play anything. And the school board cancelled the class after that one year. At the new high school that opened in 1970, Ron developed a curricular program at Grades 10, 11 and 12 that involved theory, ear training, history and performance. Students did not have to be in the band to take the course, but they had to have a performance component such as guitar, voice or piano. Everyone had to meet the requirements for a conservatory Grade 4, 6 and 8. And Ron explains that even if they took private piano lessons from the best teacher in town I still had to hear them. If their teacher gave them a 92, I would say, “I want to hear a 92 performance.” I would test them. So we had a lot of good pianists, singers, guitarists. One of the guitarists who took the high school program was Jamie Gatti (now a well-known bassist). He and three other friends who were in a rock band came to Ron, wanting to join the music course. Ron needed a bass guitarist desperately, so Jamie signed up. He subsequently learned string bass and classical guitar and, when still in Grade 12, he was recruited by the RCMP band. At senior high, as at the other levels, rehearsals were always held outside school hours. Wednesday and Sunday evenings for Symphonic Band. Stage Band and sectionals after school. Beginners on Friday after school. I hated that bell. I would just be getting my point across and it would go. So band was after school. Always. Because I was a professional musician first, one of the main things that we talked about was endurance. What happens when a band has forty-five minute classes? You give a two-hour concert and get forty-five minutes of band well done and another 45 minutes where they are dragging their butts by the time you hit the final pieces. So that’s what I did. And it kept them off the streets. Those rehearsals were intense. He went “straight ahead,” as Paul says. “He would get totally carried away in rehearsal. So into what he was doing. It was very positive.” Ron smiles as he explains how he arrived at the Sunday evening rehearsal time slot. It previously was Saturday afternoon rehearsals and many students were missing. When he asked where they were, he was told that they had gone to Wentworth skiing, that it was a tradition in Truro for families to go. He found out that folks usually returned late on Sunday afternoon, so he announced, “Starting next week, rehearsal will be at 6:00 on Sunday night. I’m sure you’ll all be back.” That time slot still exists. Ron found a way to deal with transportation problems as well. Parents would say that their kids couldn’t come to band because there wasn’t a bus. I would ask whether they had any kids in hockey. “Yes.” “You drive the kids to play hockey?” “Yes.” “What time do you do that?” “5:00 or 6:00 in the morning.” “Well, couldn’t you drive them to band? I don’t see any difference.” “Oh.” Another early highlight, after the Expo success, was two trips that the Concert Band made to Bermuda, the first of which was in 1970. One of those provided this anecdote that Ron obviously relishes. We were going to play “The Echo Song” in which ten instruments played the echo. One of the kids said, “Where do you want the echo?” “I don’t care. Go someplace. Just so that you can see the stick. Don’t worry. I just have to hear you.” So we started. I could hear the echo. But I said to myself, “Where the hell are they?” I couldn’t find them. I didn’t know where they were. Later I asked them, “How did you guys do that?’ They said that there was one up in a tree, one behind the tree, one up on the balcony. They were all over the place in St. George’s Square. They had put one over on me. I said, “Next time I want to be able to see you – just a little bit.”
CEC Symphonic Band, Ron at far left, back row
Ron also took this huge concert band to England three times. In 1988 they were special guests at a “Youth Makes Music” concert at Royal Festival Hall in London. The highlight of the 1977 trip was their performance at the Harrogate International Band and Orchestra Festival. A flu epidemic had been raging and as many as thirty of the band members had been ill on any given day, but finally all were recovered and, as Ron puts it “we were up to bat.” There were bands from Austria, Israel, Norway, Italy, USA and Germany. A Canadian orchestra and a band from Ontario played and they were awful. I said to the kids, “You heard that orchestra?” “Yes, they were bad, Mr. McKay.” “You heard that band?” “They were terrible.” “We are going to go up there and show them what a band from Canada should really sound like. I want the very best from all 92 of you.” We filled the stage. You could only play for thirty minutes. No encores were allowed. I opened up with “Star Wars.” Then we played “Newfoundland Rhapsody.” The kids went through them, bam, bam, bam, like the Stadacona Band on a good day. We turned around and the whole bloody place stood up. The Austrians were pounding the chairs. They went on for 10 minutes. Finally a guy got up and said, “This band is so fine that we would like them to play one more selection.” So I decided to do selections from Paul Anka. I knew that he was popular in England. It happened again. We put them twenty minutes overtime with performances. That experience and the feeling that all of a sudden we had brought Canada to the top – it was like going to the Olympics and winning gold. The kids were very proud of that. It was the most outstanding performance we ever had. The Truro bands played throughout Nova Scotia as well. They did school concerts, parades, university grad dances. As Ron’s daughter, Karen, says, “We did them all back then. We constantly worked.” All the money from grad dances and such went toward trips. She also recalls We played at all the football games to cheer on our high school. One time at Queen Elizabeth High (our biggest rival), someone stole our band flag during the game. Dad just took off after that person. The football game was still in progress, and everyone was cheering for Ron as he went down the field. He wanted to get that flag back. Which he proceeded to do. The flag is still in the band room. The whole program was mammoth. Ron did arrange for some of his navy band contacts to work with his students whenever possible. The parent auxiliary helped pay for instruction for oboists and bassoonists. And visiting performers such as Moe Kaufmann did workshops with bands. Ron wanted his students to see how hard professional musicians worked. Not surprisingly, a schedule that included major band trips each year, festivals, workshops, the town band and countless local performances, took its toll. In 1976 he suffered a major heart attack. Kenny took over the program for a year – he was Karen’s teacher during that time – and when Ron returned, the school administration insisted that someone else do the junior high. Both Ken Henderson, who is still teaching music in Truro and Jim Ford, a colleague and friend from Stadacona days, looked after that level of the program. Later Paul Barrett took over the junior high work and then the senior high jazz bands and choirs as well. Ron still did the beginners – he loved working with them, the senior high program and symphonic band. The high standard of the Truro bands did not change, countless gold awards were collected, and Ron unassumingly became one of the “deans” of school band music in the Maritimes. The symphonic band was so accomplished that Ron would only choose festival pieces a couple of rehearsals in advance. Mark Cuming affirms that no task was out of reach. With the transcriptions in particular. Shostakovitch “Festive Overture.” Barber of Seville. Last movement of the New World Symphony. Not watered down at all. And no dragging the tempo to make it easier. It was just expected that you would play this and the bands always did. Somehow he could make it happen. It was absolutely remarkable. The school bands also became a part of the fabric of the community. The 1,000 seat CEC auditorium was filled for concerts. Parents of band members were solidly behind Ron – even if there was a conflict between a hockey game and a band concert. Townspeople lobbied to have Ron’s salary raised before he had his teaching licence. Paul explains that Ron was also good at getting the support of key people in the community. Often their children were involved in the program. But the band supported the community as well. They appeared anywhere they were needed. The Rotary Club sponsored a marching band, providing blue polyester uniforms with fluffy yellow feathers stuck in the hats. Karen recalls that “Dad couldn’t get anybody to march and the blue uniforms were so funky that he made it into a clown band. It didn’t matter whether you marched properly or not.” Kids played all summer. Ron was entertainment director for the Nova Scotia Provincial Exhibition held there each year, so the full jazz band played for the Miss Nova Scotia Pageant. A small group dressed up as clowns played around the exhibition grounds, including on the ferris wheel and the scrambler. Band members signed up for the “Bong Show” (one of Ron’s many zany ideas) and some of the girls in the band who provided information around the grounds wore “Miss Information” sashes (another of Ron’s brainwaves). Mark puts it so clearly: Ron made the band as much part of Truro as Victoria Park or Walker’s Hardware Store, institutions that had been there for years. He made the school band an integral part of the community. To such a degree that people expected that it would always be there and it was. He worked at this twelve months a year. Karen says that “it was like a life to me.” Kenny agrees. For me and a lot of the other students I started with, it was everything. That’s what we did. Play in the band. We played anything, anywhere we could. And the people in my life were all music people. Ron MacKay obviously was “the guy.” What was it about him that made it work so brilliantly? Folks mention his fairness. As an example, when he auditioned students he placed them behind a curtain, so that he couldn’t see who was playing. Ron also was able to make all band members feel a valued part of the team. Kenny explains that “if you were the last 3rd clarinet you still had the same feeling as the person on lead clarinet.” Another key ingredient in Ron’s formula was a unique ability to both challenge and inspire his students to make music a part of their lives, as professionals do. Mark explains A lot of people inspire by example, by the way they perform personally. Ron inspired by anecdotes about what it was like to be a professional musician. “The big guys always do it this way.” “ When we were in the navy, we did this....” We always got this idea that you had to be professional and have those kind of goals. Anything less and you were a failure. The kids that played in the band seemed to have a sense of responsibility that you don’t often see. The drop-out rate was almost nil – people stuck with it. Even those who didn’t seem to have a musical bone in their bodies managed to rise to the occasion. Consequently, I could never understand why anybody would ever want to quit a band. Ron also related very well to his students. They say that that was one of his biggest assets. They seemed to gravitate to him immediately. Paul mentions that, in addition to his musical ability, Ron’s being so easy to talk with is what he remembers most. During a year of study at St. Francis Xavier University (Ron had taken a sabbatical to upgrade his teaching licence), he roomed during the week with classmates who had been his students, preparing them breakfast and “putting the crock pot on” for the evening meal. Certainly, his sense of humour worked wonders as well. There’s no doubting that Kenny inherited more than a bit of that, and Ron laughs heartily as he tells about directing a transcription of Tschaikovsky’s 4th Symphony. I always looked at the first clarinet player at a certain point, to stress the beginning of a key passage. I looked down. Kenny’s got three hands. He had a rubber hand stuck in his sleeve and there he was sitting there, as serious as hell. You can imagine. He used to do that stuff to me all the time, and at a time that I couldn’t do anything about it! His particular combination of warmth, humour and a straightforward caring nature resulted in Ron helping many students who were having a difficult time. He thinks that “we saved a lot of kids. A lot of them had nothing to hold onto. They ended up being town councillors, etc. As tough a person as I could be, they always knew I had another side.” Karen adds a lovely dimension to this part of the story. He has helped many people. Race, colour, or disabilities didn’t matter. We practically had people live at our house sometimes. Band kids. He was that type of person. Dad would see students in the school who weren’t musical, who needed something to be involved in. I remember Manson Gloade who was from the Millbrook First Nation. He had a heart condition or something. I didn’t know that at the time. Dad made him the band manager. For probably three years Manson took all the attendance and got the work crews going. Another thing that everyone mentions is Ron, the “ideas man.” He always had a thousand ideas. “Hey, why don’t we do this?” His students never knew what he was going to try next. Once, in a Spike Jones kind of effort, he wrote music to feature a “phenorton” – a structure that he had someone build with horns, whistles, ratchets, and sirens all over it – and performed the piece in a concert. He started a Grade 6 Dixieland band and called them The Jazzettes. When Herb Alpert was all the rage he formed the Trurojuana Brass (that included both Jeff Goodspeed and John Cuming, among others). Fundraising ideas abounded as well. Band members sold albums door to door. They went to Stanfield’s, the underwear company in town, bought tons of rags, bagged them, and sold them as “tiger rags” for a dollar a bag. Kenny still has some in his cupboard. Ron’s commitment to the program goes without saying really. He was immersed in what he was doing, “24 hours a day almost,” according to Paul. Karen mentions that she didn’t think about how dedicated her father was until she started teaching music herself. - that, to this day, he can’t understand why all music teachers don’t do the same. He deserves a Governor General’s medal. He never stopped. He still hasn’t. I could never do what he did. I don’t think that there is anybody now who would. His whole life has been music. In fact, Ron’s home was really a part of the band. With five children and a dog, it was an open house, where band members could go at any time and simply hang out. Paul recalls that “you could just walk in, whether there was anybody home or not. Whatever happened, happened.” Kids might talk to Fran, Ron’s wife, or watch the TV that was always on. Ron also invited kids who were having problems to stay – Jamie Gatti, who couldn’t find transportation from Five Islands, stayed for months. Ron said, “Just come and live here.” Fran, who at one time played French horn herself in the community band and who was a fine singer, looked after them all, in addition to working outside the home for many of those years. As Karen says, “She let Dad do his thing. If she got him to go to Snooks SaveEasy for milk, he would go, talk with everybody, and come back two hours later with no milk. I remember going with him because I followed him around everywhere.” Opening section of 1991 Aviso article, written by Donna Hargreaves At home, Ron spent much of his time immersed in music. Sitting in his chair. Working on arrangements or studying scores. During those times he often didn’t respond when the kids said, “Dad” or “Ron.” One day Kenny called out, “Fred!” and Ron looked up. To see who Fred was. Later Ron wrote a tune for the band called Fred’s Frolic. He also used that chair for watching hockey games. Mark laughs. We would go to his house on Saturday night and he always watched the hockey game. He hated the Montreal Canadians and liked Toronto. At intermission he would go out to the kitchen and make a plate full of pieces of bread with cheese and tomato paste. Entire plates of them. He’d bring them back in and watch the rest of the game. And he drank Manishevitz wine. He used to mainline this stuff on Saturday nights. Always in one of those peanut butter glasses with the hearts and the diamonds. He’d stick a couple of ice cubes in it and sip away. He was a big guy. It didn’t slow him down. In 1992, after twenty-six years of living and breathing the band program, Ron retired. The parents organized a retirement party that was held at the Agricultural College. Many former students were there. An alumni jazz band played. Karen Conrad sang with them for “Leader of the Band.” As Kenny says, “The lyrics just hit home for a lot of people. We all realized how much he meant to all of us. And I’m sure to a lot of people spread across Canada teaching and playing.” Those folks include his children Doug, Kenny, Karen and Jane, all of whom teach and play professionally. Paul, Mark, Susan Mantin, and Gene Hay teach in Nova Scotia schools. Professionals include Jeff Goodspeed, John Cuming, Leonore Zann, David Burton and Holly Shephard. Indeed, it is the fact that so many students went on to a career in music that makes Ron the most proud. He doesn’t hesitate about this. At one time we counted, and there were 350 kids who had gone into music. I never pushed them in that direction. The talent was there. I just gave them the opportunity. You don’t teach those people as far as I’m concerned. You just keep them busy at what they do very well. And tell them that they are doing it well. Mark Cuming for instance. He was writing arrangements when he was in Grade 12. Doing licks on television. What a kid! I saw a lot of those good kids. He certainly did. And those “kids” are quick to attest to the fact that he has influenced them in countless ways. Primarily, he instilled in his students a love of music and of performance. They learned the total commitment that was required in order to achieve. He motivated them to make music part of their lives. “It’s a legacy,” Mark explains. “As a teacher, I wish that I could do it as well as he did.” Ron also passed on the sense that the band was an important part of the school and the community. And Karen acknowledges that: “Everything that I learned about being a band director I learned from my father.” Ron’s colleagues speak volumes about his influence as well. He has been a friend and advisor who has inspired by example. Ken Foote, for whom Ron now works at Buckley’s Music, taught instrumental music for a number of years. I knew about the Ron MacKay mystique and myth. The first time I really met him in a professional way was teaching at a band camp in Woodstock, NB. We got talking a little bit. He was showing me these new books that he had just bought and some articles from The Instrumentalist. I was quite taken aback. I thought, “Ron MacKay is still reading books? Good God, this guy is a legend and his bands are exceptional. A guy like him is saying that he needs to learn more.” Professional development is something that you do 24/7. It was a really important lesson that I learned. Bob Rushton speaks for many of us as he describes the unique quality and breadth of Ron’s influence. He mentions how, at conferences, Ron always had a warm “How are you doing? How’s it going?” He recalls Ron enthusiastically assisting with choosing band repertoire, often running over and saying, “Have you tried this one?” Bob continues: Ron has been a kind of giant. He was a hugely successful director who we all looked to with great respect. He was a tremendous role model. He gave us all something to look up to and say, “There is hope, there is a place to go.” Yet he was just a humble, concerned guy who loved his students and loved to help people. After his retirement Ron and Fran moved to Cole Harbour. For a number of years he did a significant amount of substitution for band teachers in the metro area. He directs the community band at Dalhousie. He has continued to adjudicate at festivals and do band clinics throughout the Atlantic Provinces, passing on what he has learned about playing and teaching music. Still as full of ideas as ever, he works at Buckley’s – arranging tunes using computer software, leading band workshops, selecting music, helping school band directors in any way that he can. Ken Foote explains that “the more we use Ron, the healthier and stronger and happier he is. He is full of enthusiasm, he still loves it and he wants to share.” Ron savours a story about a recent festival that he adjudicated with his good friend, Howard Cable, the fine Canadian composer and conductor. Howard was doing the post performance clinic with one of the bands when one of the trumpet players asked Howard whether he was a musician. Howard replied that he was really more a conductor these days. Then the student asked whether Howard knew Ron MacKay. He replied, “Yes.” “He’s a musician,” stated the student. Now, each time that Howard phones Ron, as he often does, his first question is always: “Are you Ron MacKay, the musician?” The answer is doubtless. Ron MacKay – musician, band director and friend has left a huge legacy in Truro, throughout Nova Scotia, and in the many communities in North America where his students make music their lives. His gardens bloom profusely and continue to expand. Some wonderful things never change.