The Martlet

At the top of Beacon Hill Park, waves lap against the seawall as the bagpiper gnaws gently on the haft of his tenor drone pipe. Every joint in the pipes is wound with hemp twine, acting as a seal between the ports in the bag — called the stocks — and the pipes themselves.

“My pipes here have been poorly maintained,” Nathan Roberts says. “They’re slipping, so I’ll bite the hemp to make it catch.”

He sticks out the end of the pipe, letting me feel the tightly bound string. “This is frowned upon,” he adds about the biting. “Don’t touch the reed!”

Not quite a family tradition

Born in 1972, Roberts was the youngest in a family of seven kids. His family still lives in Victoria, and Roberts occasionally plays the pipes at family gatherings.

“I’m put up with,” he says.

When he’s busking in the Inner Harbour, the first thing people ask Roberts is if he’s of Scottish ancestry.

“I tell them I’m Albanian or Turkish,” he says wryly.

Although his family emigrated from Scotland before the First World War, the family never retained much of a cultural connection. Nobody wore kilts or played the pipes. So when a teenage Roberts decided to learn the instrument, his family just shrugged and paid little attention. In other families, going to competitions and seeing famous pipers play was a ritual, but Roberts never got that encouragement.

“It wasn’t passed down from father to son or anything,” he says.

“A lot of people think these sort of traditional things have to be almost genetic or something, but it’s not. For me it’s simply that I like the music; I was fascinated with it, I wanted to do it, and I do. I wasn’t forced into it, in other words. Which can be a good thing.”

The cultural and complex lure of bagpipes

Bagpipes are a complex instrument. The length of different drone pipes determines pitch. Depending on external conditions, including humidity and air pressure, Roberts sometimes has to tune them by pulling them apart a little.

While bagpipes are generally thought of in terms of the Scottish, they owe their global spread to the British Army’s Scottish Highlander regiment. Bagpipes are a cultural instrument in countries as far flung as South Africa and the Middle East.

“In France they play about as many types of pipes as there are kinds of cheese,” Roberts says.

When most people imagine bagpipes, they’re thinking about the Great Highland Bagpipes, the traditional Scottish instrument.

As Roberts talks, his pipes rest under his arm like a bloated fowl: one pipe hangs down in the front like a limp goose neck, and the tall drones lie like peacock feathers on his left shoulder.

“They’re very loud and obnoxious and anti-social, but people seem to like it anyway,” he says, grinning like a mischievous kid with a fistful of firecrackers.

“If you want to play with other instruments, it isn’t easy, you can’t just jump into a session at a pub and say ‘hey guys, let’s play some pipe tunes,’ because it’s set in an unusual key.”

The key in question, B flat, is “really hard for fiddlers and guitarists and mandolin players to adjust to,” says Roberts.

“It’s great for bursting into the pub with a bunch of pipers and coming in and being loud and noisy and maybe getting a beer or two though.”

The Piper's march to freedom

Roberts readies his pipes and stands well back from the picnic tables where we’ve been sitting. After a couple of rough test scales, a long, soaring note pierces the quiet. Roberts’ fingers seize the chanter, the recorder-like melody pipe, and the unmistakable voice of the northern United Kingdom climbs into the air.

The pipes sing out “Dark Highlands” and Roberts paces slowly across the grass as he plays, choosing each step carefully without looking.

At age 13, Roberts enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Cadets.

“I was just thrilled to bits to have on a crisp, cool-looking uniform,” he says.

He had wanted to learn about aviation and learn to fly. At the time he joined, the Air Cadet Squadron in Sidney had a proud pipe band tradition with drummers and “the whole shebang,” and Roberts began to study with them on a practice chanter. “I even marched in a couple parades around Sidney with the pipes corked off so they wouldn’t make a sound,” he says. “I just wiggled my fingers so as to appear like I was really playing.”

Later that year, many of the best pipers in the band turned 18 and left the cadet program. The band collapsed, and Roberts went back to playing clarinet in the brass and reed marching band. That summer he went off to band camp for six weeks of training.

The turning point came for Roberts in 1988, at his first day in band camp. “Someone got up on a dais and shouted, “everyone here for Brass and Reed band come closer to this building here, and everyone for Pipes and Drums walk over to that building there!”  In an instant, I knew what to do:  I went to that building.”

After six weeks of intense practice, Roberts was proud to play the pipes in the camp closing ceremonies and returned to Sidney to face the music.

“When I got back to the Air Cadet squadron they were rather not pleased with myself and my ‘insubordination,’” says Roberts.

He made the call to “defect” from the Air Cadets to the army and joined the Canadian Scottish Regimental Cadet Corp.

Roberts avoided typical duty in the cadets (“almost like Klinger avoided the army stuff in MAS*H”) and focused instead on his playing.

Two years later, he joined the Canadian Scottish Regiment, a decorated infantry reserve unit with battle honours from Passchendaele and the Normandy Landings. He advanced to the rank of Master Corporal and became Pipe Sergeant, second in command of the regimental band.

In 2001 Roberts left the reserves and struck out on his own, playing special events like weddings and funerals as a piper-for-hire.

Since then, he’s been enjoying the freedom, writing his own pieces and exploring the pipes as a solo instrument in a way that was difficult while part of a pipe and drum band.

A meeting of generations

Roberts spends his weekdays driving the carpet-cleaning van for his family-run business. But the music he loves is never too far from his mind. His iPhone ringtone is AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck” —played on the bagpipes, naturally.

Beacon Hill is bustling on a Wednesday afternoon as Roberts plays for a group of elderly men who have assembled around him. Their faces are chiseled busts softened with age. One man, in a long tan jacket and fedora, wears a proud grin beneath his white broom moustache.

When Roberts finishes his song, the man introduces himself as Alistair MacDuff, a former piper himself nearing his 93rd birthday. Roberts and MacDuff launch into a ping-pong volley of shoptalk: who has the best reeds in town, the quality of Roberts’s chanter, and the crowd at the Piper’s Club in Victoria’s Armory.

Most Canadian bagpipes are made from elk hide. Australian bagpipes are made from Kangaroo hide. Roberts talks of getting a sheep bag. “Nah, you’re fine with the elk,” says MacDuff.

“Will you play another?” he asks. “How about ‘Mist-Covered Mountains?’”

Roberts nods and hums the tune, rolling his eyes back to recall it from memory. He grabs the end of the blowpipe with his mouth, fingers the chanter, and plays. The wind up on the hill keeps the air cool on this warm fall day, and the sea glistens. The high throat of the pipes stirs the soul.

When he plays, Roberts stands straight-backed, his chest thrown out like a robin’s. His shoulders are wide and broad, and his arms bulge like a middle-aged Atlas. He sports a slight potbelly, the result of a few too many pints.

Though he says the military discipline of the Cadets never stayed with him, he still swims and lifts weights weekday mornings at 6 a.m. Wearing a blue polo, sneakers, and khaki shorts, Roberts looks like a man better suited for the formal Highland “Prince Charlie” jacket and kilt that he sports on his website.

The pipes don’t stop until the song is over, but when he takes a moment for a quick breath, the blowpipe lolls in the corner of this mouth and his lips split into a quiet grin. The man loves his work.

When Roberts finishes the tune, the small crowd gives him a ripple of spirited applause. With the public, Roberts is patient, friendly and quick to play requests. Everybody receives a grin and a nod, and goodwill flows out from him.

MacDuff thanks Roberts for playing and compliments him on his tone, inviting him to visit sometime; Roberts jots down his address, thanks him back, suggesting they get together for “a jam and a dram” in the future. He watches as Macduff strolls away.

“He is like the grandfather I never had,” he says, sounding more wistful then perhaps he meant.

“Since I got out [of the Cadets] I’ve really been enjoying not playing in bands so much,” he says. “I can play the music I wanna do and not have to worry about the eight or 12 other pipers, trying to get them to play together in unison, and it’s like herding cats, literally. It’s nice having the freedom.”

The unofficial ambassador

There may be no better city in B.C. for a piper to play in than Victoria. Every May, Victoria’s Scottish heritage is celebrated in full tartan glory. The Highland Games, the longest running cultural event in the city, have been around for nearly 150 years. In 2008 the city released its own tartan.

Even still, some months are better for pipers than others. During lean stretches for gigs, Roberts goes to the inner harbour and busks.

“What’s great about busking . . . is I’ll get a bunch of people up and I’ll get little kids who are four, five, or six, dancing away,” Roberts says. Getting people to dance is just one satisfying byproduct of his hobby. Reaching people who might not otherwise dig bagpipes is another mark of pride for Roberts.

“I’ll get some guy who’s listening to something on his headphones to stop, take his headphones off, some guy who’s 18 or 19, some Goth kid or something, with cutlery in his face, and he’ll stop and go ‘Oh crap, that’s some pretty good stuff!’”

Playing bagpipes has allowed Roberts to connect with people from all over the world. In his musical way, Roberts acts as an unofficial tourist ambassador, with bagpipes as a cross-cultural tool.

“I can play international music, I can play folk tunes and bring it in and play it my way and I get a big thrill out of doing that,” Roberts happily points out.

Roberts has packed up his pipes and practice equipment and loaded it all into a plastic toolbox covered in stickers. He waves to the onlookers and shakes my hand. Though I’m six feet tall and 230 lb., the size of his hand makes me feel like a kid. He apologizes for running, but work calls. “I have to meet a client,” he says.

As I walk down the road from the top of Beacon Hill, he passes me in his carpet cleaning van and waves. I put on my headphones and hear a snare roll the 78th Highlander Pipe Band fill my ears.

Then a chorus of pipes sings “The Atholl Highlanders March” and I smile, walking into the sunshine.