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The College of Piping in Summerside is a young school, founded in 1990, but it is quickly establishing itself as an Island institution. Last summer, the College achieved what seems to be a necessary goal for any Atlantic Canadian to gain respect locally: significant recognition by someone from away. In this case, that recognition was the creation of a major scholarship fund by an American philanthropist and top-level business guru.

My first visit to the College, officially known as the College of Piping and Celtic Performing Arts of Canada, came shortly before this landmark announcement and all its inherent publicity, so I wasn't sure what to expect. While I do feel a strong affinity for Scottish culture-the sound of bagpipes while travelling abroad never fails to make me homesick-I have also experienced more than enough kitschy tartanism, cheap attempts to flog culture to tourists, and Amazing Grace played too many times.

I stepped in the front door and looked around. To my right, there was hardwood trim and a display recognizing the benefactors of the College. To my left, was the gift shop, selling its books, tartan ties, and souvenirs of Celtic motif. There was a certain weight to this entry, despite its newness. The shop-more cloth, paper and pewter than plastic-resembled one you might see in a museum, and the tribute to benefactors was tasteful. Further along was the main hall: a large room, almost the size of a tennis court, with mirrors all along one wall for dance training. It was grand, but what impressed me most is what I felt underfoot. I bounced a little to confirm it-a sprung hardwood floor-absolutely essential to any serious dance training. This room is part of a 1995 expansion, when the original school-a two-bedroom bungalow-was bulldozed. The new building is three storeys, stretches well back from the road, and is extended further by a 600-seat amphitheatre with a retractable awning for inclement weather. Beyond it is a large field where Highland Games are held every June.

Downstairs I found further evidence of the professionalism of the school. Soundproof rooms for piping practice, special flooring in a dance studio for tap training-this place had been put together without cutting any corners. Add in international-award-winning instructors and it is obvious that this is no cheap and kitschy attempt to take advantage of Island tourists.

It was this commitment to quality that attracted Doug Hall. Hall, who makes his living in Cincinnati, running brainstorming workshops for major corporations like Disney, Coors and Chiquita, was summering on the Island in the mid-1990s when he and his three children took courses at the College. Hall took piping, his son drumming, and his daughters dance. Hall was impressed, and asked to meet with School Director Scott MacAulay at the end of the summer. He has been acting as an adviser to the school ever since. Last summer, he announced the creation of the Doug and Debbie Hall Pipe Band Scholarship Fund. Hall's scholarship will pay for weekly lessons in pipes or drums for any PEI child between the ages of 8 and 18. There is no upper limit on the number of scholarships. Two hundred students took up the offer in September at a cost of $500 each. Another 137 are already signed up to start in January.

This is all wonderful news. One of only three year-round Celtic arts schools in the world, and the only one in North America, it's another sign that this school is thriving. But it does make you wonder. How did this world-class school, a school that is now attracting students even from Scotland, end up in Summerside, PEI?

The idea for the school itself goes back to the late 1980s and the Prince County Caledonia Club, which at the time was doing little more than organizing an annual St. Andrew's Day dinner and a small pipe band. The idea to start a Celtic arts school was there, but members of the club weren't too sure exactly what it would look like or even what it would teach. With this vague concept they went looking for a school director, and found Scott MacAulay.

MacAulay is a veteran bagpiper with a number of recordings to his credit, recordings which now grace the walls of his office much the way degrees and diplomas might hang on the walls of other school directors. He developed an international reputation as a player and was called upon to teach, judge and review at international events. The bagpipe became his passport to the world. At the time he was offered the job in Summerside, the Hamilton, ON native was leading one pipe band in Ottawa and teaching another. But MacAulay was becoming travel weary, and the idea of settling down and having students come to him was appealing.

"I was given a blank canvas," MacAulay says of the job offer. "There was no job description when I was hired. There was no business plan. But if a business plan had to be written to launch the College it would never have been launched, because when it came down to it, it really didn't make any sense."

MacAulay knew within months of the launch that the original plan for the school simply wasn't going to work. Even operating out of a two-bedroom house, there was no way the tuition being charged for courses in piping, drumming and Celtic dance could keep the College running. Other sources of revenue had to be found and MacAulay was not willing to sacrifice the essential quality of the school.

He found the answer to his problem in what he believes to be an essential aspect of Celtic art-performance. Performance was already part of the curriculum, but MacAulay now decided it was going to have to become more than that. It would have to become a central part of the school's survival. Students began to hold weekly Ceilidhs, charging admission. The unexpected happened. The importance of these Ceilidhs expanded beyond the revenues they were bringing in at the gate. People enjoyed the concerts, really enjoyed them. People began believing that the College of Piping was doing important work in preserving Celtic culture and they were willing to support that work beyond the price of admission to the Ceilidh. Chequebooks were being opened, and the College began to develop the secret of success of any private school-a healthy endowment fund.

Without considering it in advance, MacAulay had laid in place a foundation of quality that led to the ultimate success of the school through what he now calls the "quality continuum." MacAulay wanted the school to produce serious musicians, and gathered around him a team of award-winning talent to be the school's faculty. This produced quality students, who were able to put on quality shows, which attracted a quality of clientele who had the means to support the school in the way it most needed. People like Doug Hall. And as impressive as Hall's monetary contribution has been, he is not the school's largest benefactor, a distinction which falls to Summerside's Wyatt Foundation.

Hall was a central adviser in setting up the endowment fund, and there have been many large contributions. Despite the importance of these contributions, he credits MacAulay with the success of the College. "It is rare to find a situation where you've got someone like Scott MacAulay, who is both a world-class performer, with the artistic and emotional dimensions, but at the same time incredibly intelligent and incredibly logical," says Hall. "It is rare to get that combination of sheer intelligence and artistic spirit."

MacAulay is insistent that "education is at the core," but acknowledges that "tourism pays the bills."  He is able to succeed in both areas, as evidenced by the wall of trophies won by students in one room, and the simple fact that the College is thriving fiscally.

In hindsight, the quality continuum seems a simple enough formula. But the world is full of talented people who work hard to achieve worthy goals, yet because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time their dreams are never fulfilled. So what was it about Prince Edward Island in the early 1990s that made the College of Piping work?

One factor may be that the immigration that changed the face of Canada in the 20th century never really came to Prince Edward Island. The founding cultures of Canada-the Celts, the French and the Aboriginals-are still the only prominent cultures here. Seventy per cent of Islanders are of Celtic descent, more than in any other jurisdiction in North America. This helps explain the place.

Then there is the question of the time. A brief look will show that the success of the College of Piping was not an isolated phenomenon. The years following the founding of the College of Piping were the same years that saw the Barra MacNeils, Ashley MacIsaac, Natalie MacMaster and the Rankin Family rise to fame. Enrolments at the Celtic Studies course at St. Francis Xavier University have doubled in the last 10 years. Sam MacPhee, Executive Director of the Gaelic College of Celtic Arts and Crafts in St. Anne, Cape Breton, says enrolment at his school is up 150 per cent through the 1990s, exceeding 600 last summer. The school's students, who used to be mostly from the region, now come from as far away as Japan and Australia. In 1996 a new school, the Ceilidh Trail School of Celtic Music, began instruction of about 100 students per summer.

But this still doesn't explain why people are so interested. Michael Linkletter was a student at the College of Piping, and has been there on and off since its early days. As a summer job, he actually helped to build it. He grew up in Linkletter, PEI, just outside of Summerside in a musical family and has become an accomplished piper himself, but his interest in things Celtic goes beyond the music. He completed the Celtic Studies program at St. Francis Xavier, and is now in his fifth year of his PhD in the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures at Harvard. Linkletter's main area of interest is Celtic culture in modern times. If anyone can answer my question, it has to be him.

"Young people are dissatisfied with pop culture," he says. "There's no depth to it. They're suddenly asking, 'What is this culture my grandfather talks about?' It seemed to skip a generation."

When Linkletter looks back to his grandparents' generation, he can see a time when people had to take responsibility for their own entertainment. Then, after the Second World War, came what Islanders refer to as the break, when industrialization came to PEI. With it came a whole slew of entertainment forums laid out for the taking-radio, television, music recordings. It was all new, and for a long time indisputably cool. But Linkletter believes mass media is losing some of its cachet. He points out that not only is interest in the College of Piping a part of a resurgence of Celtic culture, but this resurgence itself is part of a growing interest in all minority cultures. Just as a MacNaughton may develop an interest in Indian cuisine, so a Takahashi may take up the bagpipes.

At the Gaelic College in Cape Breton, Sam MacPhee develops this idea further. He draws a connection between the interest in Celtic arts and the growing interest in genealogy, and so pulls an older generation into the mix as well. His school sees many students from the Elderhostel program, an association that facilitates travel and education for senior citizens. "It's amazing the number of people who come looking for roots, looking for family ties."

The College of Piping has thrived in Summerside for good reason-a combination of luck and hard work. It has succeeded because (and this is particularly heartening), despite all the temptations, it has put the welfare of its students and their learning first.

"Traditionally when there's been a marriage of culture and tourism it's been a shotgun marriage," says Scott MacAulay, "where the cultural purveyor sees tourism as the potential prostitution of the culture. It's worked for us because we've maintained the integrity of the culture. We are the caretakers of this culture in our lifetimes. We have a responsibility to pass it on in pure form."

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