Page 53 - RSCDS Toronto Golden Jubilee Book

Connections
"McBooz" Family
Scottish Dance
It was easy for us to connect with Scottish Country Dancing. One Sunday at church, Betty Thompson asked me why my children weren’t coming to dance class, and I didn’t have a good answer. The following Saturday morn- ing I delivered Alison and David (Booz) to the church, dance shoes in hand. They enjoyed the dancing but after a couple of years they were finding Betty a bit strict, and they opted out.
Fast-forward twelve years to a Monday night in November 1983, when Alison turned up at Betty’s adult class and came home all smiles. Betty sent her to Summer School in August, where she met a lot of nice people and had
a wonderful time but not much sleep.
It took Alison another six months to entice me to class, and a little longer
– and a gift of ghillies – to lure David back. For a while people were congrat- ulating me for getting my adult children to dance. Well, no, it was the other way round.
Some years later Alison introduced David to Suzanne Dubeau and immedi- ately they discovered their shared inter- est in ballroom dancing. SCD followed shortly for Suzanne.
We four now have a long list of work- shops, Tartan Balls, Summer Schools, executive meetings and candidates’ classes behind us, and a huge store of wonderful memories such that we can’t imagine what life would have been like without Scottish Country Dancing.
It was even responsible for my mar- riage a year ago, sort of. Although Doug doesn’t dance, he does live near Shawnigan Lake, convenient for a visit before Summer School in 2005. Now we are settled in a new (to us) house in beautiful Qualicum Beach. At events in Victoria, Vancouver, Nanaimo and even in my local dance group I keep seeing people I have met dancing elsewhere. Maybe Scottish Country Dancing is a part of the glue that keeps Canada together: it works for our family.
. . . Barbara McNutt Eagles
Paddy Ann McHaffie The McHaffie family have been Scottish Country Dancers for years. Ian and Paddy Ann attend many Toronto Association events and Ian is also a teacher. Ian’s father, Gordon, danced into his nineties, for many years at Glenview and then, after retiring to the country, at Pretty River. For Gordon’s ninetieth birthday, Ian wrote a dance, The Pretty River Strathspey, and Stan Hamilton wrote the music which
Bobby Brown played. A framed, auto- graphed version is a prized possession. The dance was demonstrated at the Glenview Dance at the Royal Canadian Yacht Club.
At the dance, Gordon asked Paddy Ann to dance MacDonald of the Isles, which he felt he could manage. Unfortunately, he made some errors and was quite embarrassed and angry at himself that he had not achieved his usual standard. His comment was, "I'm never going to dance any of these new-fangled dances again!" And he hasn't.
Ian adds: "My father's first memory of Scottish Country Dancing was when he was six years old. He and his little six- year-old chums danced the Eightsome Reel to his mother’s piano playing in the dining room."
[Editor’s note: It was because of his parents dancing at Rosedale Presbyterian Church, taught by Professor Ronald Smith, that
Ian himself "caught the Scottish Country Dancing bug."]
Samantha Mepham Okay. . . so I started dancing when
I was about 3? Oh my, I can't even remember, probably because Scottish Country Dancing has been a part of my life for as long as my life and that's about 13 years. I started and plan to finish dancing at Rosedale.
My first teacher was Lorna Larmour, probably my favorite (but I loved them all). Lorna became more like family to me, always teasing me, but still keeping me and my footwork in line.
My next teacher was Fiona Philip, I love her to death. Fiona is the first ever to diagnose my disease of dancing too fast (don't worry that was only when I was younger). What was this disease you may ask? "Samanthaitis". Yes, any
child that danced too quickly and did not follow the music, was diagnosed with "Samanthaitis". Those years were always fun!
The teacher after that who still is the current teacher is the lovely Moira Korus. If you ask anyone in our group, they will tell you that poor Moira puts up with a lot on those early Saturday morning practices. Now we're not the devils incarnate, just a bunch of teen- agers awakened early on a Saturday morning is all. For me, though, the best part of Scottish Country Dancing isn't only all the classes and the great teach- ers. It's the social events where you get to meet other people younger or older who have the same interest as you – dancing. I've met great dancing friends who have shown me immense support outside of dancing.
Dancing has always given me peace of mind. Whether I have an exam the next day or I had a huge fight with my dad, when I'm dancing, I'm thinking about nothing else but dancing.
. . . Samantha Mepham
[Ed. note: Samantha turned 16 this sum- mer while enjoying her first trip to St. Andrews Summer School in Scotland. Her mother, Laurie, started Beginner Classes
in the fall and attended her first West End Ball. Laurie’s parents, John and Margaret McGibbon have been SCD for many years.]
A Family Affair
When one member of the family gets infected with SCD, it spreads to the entire family. Not just the current gen- eration or the immediate family, but down to future generations and to the extended family.
When I came to Canada from Scotland at the age of seven, my mother, Margaret Williamson, was determined that we were not going to lose our heri- tage. Every Saturday morning, we were dragged off to Scottish Country Dance lessons. My sister was a natural, but me, it wasn't two left feet I had, it was three! But persist I did, and soon it was me who was dancing all over the place and eventually ended up teaching.
I can clearly remember doing a dem- onstration at the Highland Games in Lindsay, with three generations of dancers in one set. The entire set was
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