President's Report - March 2025

Malkie Bow, President, PPBSO.

Your Board of Directors have been busy over the past several months preparing the Society for another amazing season.

Firstly, the feedback has be extremely positive regarding the reduction of membership dues for under 16 year-olds.  We are committed to encouraging more young people to become involved in the art and our newly formed Youth Development Committee will be working on more ways to encourage youth to take up and enjoy piping & drumming.

2025 Competition Rule Book

Our Governance Committee in conjunction with the Music Committee has just completed a full update and re-work of our 2025 PPBSO Contest Rule Book. This has now been approved by the Board and is available on our website.  Over the past year we have completely re-vamped all of our governance documents to bring them into compliance with new Provincial legislation but also to modernize them. They can all be found on the Society website.

Thanks must go to members Tracy Porter, Graeme Ogilvie, Grant Bunston and Brad Davidson for completing this monumental task.

New contest added to the Schedule

In addition to the usual schedule of Highland Games this season the PPBSO has taken on a pilot project to run one of our own competitions to be held on Saturday June 7th.  This will be a smaller gathering with a band competition similar in size to Embro HG and will include amateur solo piping & drumming events as well as grade 3, 4 & 5 bands.  There will be a limit of 10 bands based on grade and receipt of entry date and time. (Master entry forms available now HERE.)

The Scottish Rite grounds, Hamilton, Ontario

This will be a fun and unique event and not like your typical highland games.  The solo and band contests will be held on the treed grounds of the Scottish Rite located near downtown Hamilton with the event spreading through the local neighbourhood and into the wonderful Hess Village entertainment area with its many restaurants and pubs.

As an inner-city event, there will be limited on-site parking with various public parking within 4-10 minutes walk from the site.  One vehicle per band will be allowed to park on-site.

We are excited to offer this unique competition as a chance to get the cobwebs out before the first main contest of the year, Georgetown Highland Games, the following weekend.

Changes on the Board of Directors

The Board of Directors are pleased to announce the addition of three new interim board members, appointed by the board to fill vacancies left by the resignations of Andrew Giles, Michele Curtis and Kevin Shand.

The new Directors at Large, are: Tyler Bridge, Brian Phillip and Greg Bowen.  Current Director at Large, Brad Davidson, was appointed by the Board to the Vice President position.

P/M Richard Parkes MBE P/M Ian Duncan

RSPBA Judges for Maxville

Finally, we are also pleased to announce that RSPBA judges P/M Richard Parkes MBE and P/M Ian Duncan will be judging this year at Maxville Highland Games.