Sutherland, Harold, of Westville. Born in 1918, Harold’s first love was the guitar, but his father, Victor Sutherland, had different plans for his son. At the age of ten, Harold began to take chanter lessons from John White of Westville, and at twelve he was enrolled as a boy piper with the Pictou Highlanders under the direction of Pipe Major Fraser Holmes. At 13, he was acclaimed in the newspapers as “Canada’s Champion Boy Piper”, the recipient of the Colonel Walter Scott Trophy and gold medal, and was featured on national radio.

In 1932, Harold was invited to travel to New York with Mayor Ritchie of Halifax to promote Nova Scotia’s capital city as a destination for cruise passengers of the Red Star Line. Upon his arrival in the Big Apple, he was immediately whisked away to Station WGBS where he became the first piper in North America to be broadcast live on television. The technology was in its earliest stages at that time, and while the picture was broadcast on television, the sound was transmitted separately by radio. Later that same evening, he became the first Canadian piper to ever perform on stage on Broadway. His performance at the famous Palace Theatre was greeted by loud and sustained applause and headlines in the newspapers the next day.

Harold never forgot that his first love was the guitar. In 1935, he was awarded second place in a continent-wide Country and Western Song Writing Contest. Three years later, at age 19, he toured the United States for three months with the Bert Anstice Mountain Boys and performed in Chicago with the National Barndance Jamboree Band as a guitarist. The piping wasn’t neglected, however, and the following summer, in 1939, he placed 2nd in the Amateur Strathspey and Reel at the Antigonish Highland Games.

During the war years, Harold served overseas in Britain and North Western Europe with the Pictou Highlanders. He was sent on a training course with Pipe Major Willie Ross at Edinburgh and later to Stirling Castle for a course in band instruction techniques. While in Edinburgh, he participated in a march through the city by seventy pipe bands. More than half a million spectators crowded the sidewalks on Princes Street, spilling over onto the famous thoroughfare and blocking the paths of many of the bands. At times, the beleaguered musicians had to shoulder their instruments and squeeze through the crowds to reform on the other side before they could resume playing.

After the war, Harold started a Boy Scout Pipe Band in Westville, which went on to win the Eastern Canadian Pipe Band Championship in 1948 as the Westville Boys Pipe Band. In 1946, he placed 3rd in the March and 2nd in the Strathspey and Reel at the Antigonish Highland Games. In 1950, however, with employment opportunities unavailable, he had to leave home and travel to Vermont in search of work. There, he worked in the rock quarries in Barre, but found time to start teaching piping to the local boys. They took their music seriously, and a band was soon formed. In fact, they made their first public appearance six months after their first lesson!

Harold returned home for the summer of 1951 and found himself honoured by current and former members of his Westville Boys Pipe Band. More than 70 performers took part in this musical tribute to their founding pipe major. Harold travelled to the Gaelic College that summer where he won the Justice J. Keiller MacKay Trophy as Nova Scotia’s Senior Piping Champion. Back in Vermont, he performed with Highland dancer and fellow piper, Miss Frances Grieve of Beebe, Quebec. Frances had been to the Gaelic Mod that summer as well, and had placed first in the 16 and Over Girls Piping event. They would later marry and raise three children, all pipers.

Harold left Vermont for good in 1954 and that summer once again won the piping at the Gaelic Mod, where he was named the Grand Champion. In 1955, he was awarded permanent possession of the Hon. Dougald MacKinnon Trophy for senior piping at the games sponsored by PEI’s Caledonia Club. In 1957, he placed second in the Professional Strathspey and Reel at the Antigonish Games and placed first in the Open March event at the games held in Charlottetown, PEI, where he also won the Best Dressed Gentleman award. In 1958 he was hired to play at the ferry terminal in Yarmouth and travelled to Boston to play at Fenway Park as the Premier of Nova Scotia paid tribute to native son Dick Gernert of Kentville who was a first baseman with the Red Sox. For a time in the late 1950s, Harold taught the Balmoral Girls’ Pipe Band of Stellarton. The band was still under his direction when they released an album in 1960.

In 1960, Harold placed third in the Men’s Professional March, Strathspey and Reel event at the Antigonish Highland Games. By 1962, Harold had become somewhat of a regular on CBC’s Don Messer Show, performing on special occasions such as Burns’ Night and St. Andrew’s Night. In 1963, he began to teach young girls in Pictou, who later became the Heatherbell Girls’ Pipe Band. In 1964, he represented Canada at the 17th Annual International Festival in Wilmington, Ohio, and later he travelled on to play at Nashville, Tennessee, becoming the first piper to play at the Grand Ole Opry. In 1967, the Heatherbells won the D. C. Sinclair County Championship and travelled to New England where they won the Sandy MacFarlane Trophy as Junior Pipe Band Champions.

In 1968, Harold and his wife, Frances opened The Scotia Highland House in Alma which became the largest Scottish import business in North America. That year also, Harold was invited to be the Official Piper for Canada’s Olympic Team, performing in many venues in Mexico City from October 9-29th. He took the Heatherbell Girls’ Pipe Band to New York and New Jersey and later to Mexico. In 1973, the girls cut a recording, which sold across the continent due to his many piping contacts. Health problems were beginning to surface, however, and Harold had to severely curtail his activities. He died on August 23rd, 1977.