About ten years ago, the Dortmund Concert Hall in Germany came up with a brilliant idea. Dortmund, a city in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia region is smack dab in the middle of an a large dairy-producing region. While Dortmund’s concert hall boasts impressive acoustics and features world-class artists, they were having trouble attracting audiences. Much of the population in the surrounding countryside weren’t fans of classical music… or didn’t think they were. So Konzerthaus Dortmund set out to change their minds.
Their starting point was that scientists have proven classical music makes cows produce more milk. They then convinced a number of influential farmers to let their cows listen to the music of artists selected from the new concert season. The milk these cows produced was then sold throughout the region in specially marked ‘Dortmund Concert Milk’ bottles. The campaign was a huge success and attracted a whole new audience with no previous interest in classical music. It was a brilliant idea, expertly executed.
What has this got to do with Dunvegan? Well, like Dortmund, the small fan base in this region that enjoys classical music would love to attract a wider audience. This would increase the likelihood of existing classical music lovers being able to attend concerts hosted by Dunvegan’s Glengarry Pioneer Museum, rather than having to head to the big city for their musical fix.
Obviously, the museum doesn’t have the funding to underwrite a Dortmund-style campaign. Nevertheless, it would like to see its “Music Under the Stars” concert series continue to grow. So this year it’s taking a more whimsical approach and has renamed the event: “Moosic Under the Stars.” The poster will feature a tail coat-clad cow playing a piano, and the evening’s program will feature works with a pastoral or agricultural theme by Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms. The evening’s solo performer will be pianist Nicholas Deek from Ottawa. Nicholas holds a Bachelor and Master of Music degree in Piano Performance. In addition to teaching, Nicholas has a very active performance schedule and frequently collaborates with other musicians and vocalists. The “Moosic Under the Stars” event will be held, rain or shine, on Thursday, August 5th. I’m not sure about the start time yet, or whether you’ll have to purchase tickets in advance or simply drop the suggested donation of $15 per person in the hat during intermission time.
By the way, there’s a great micro-documentary video on the story behind Dortmund Concert Hall’s innovative campaign that you might want to watch. It’s just over two minutes long. Simply search for “Konzerthaus Dortmund: Konzertmilch” on YouTube.
Evel Knievels
The Saturday before last, I took the long way home from Alexandria. I had some printing to deliver to the museum in Dunvegan, so I was driving along the 6th towards Greenfield Road around two o’clock. As I motored along, two headlights of a fast-moving car appeared in the distance. Weirdly though, the headlights moved side to side individually and, even more strangely, up and down. It wasn’t until the headlights got a bit closer that I could see that I wasn’t having a 1960s flashback. It was actually two young men on motorized dirt bikes speeding east along the 6th doing wheelies. Extreme wheelies… where the bikes were fully vertical. That’s 90º. Just a fraction of a degree more and the bikes and riders would have rotated backwards and hit the deck.
I know that some young men thrive on risky behaviour and acknowledge that what they do on their own land is strictly between them and their life insurance companies. However, this was a very narrow public road with no shoulders. If the situation had gone south, there is a good chance the fallen bike and rider would have slid across the road into the path of my oncoming car. And the accident would have been my fault. Worse yet, the tragedy would have haunted me the rest of my days.
I immediately slowed down as they screamed by and, thankfully, nothing untoward happened. However, I thought that parents of young lads who could have been on Concession Road 6 at that time might want to know.
Happy belated July 12th
As loyal reader Ken McEwen of Blackburn Hamlet pointed out in a recent email, July 12th (or 12th-ish) used to be a huge celebration in Dunvegan for close to 100 years. It was the day the entire community turned out for the annual Orange Day Parade to mark the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland. In case you’re a little shaky on 17th century European history, this is when, in 1690, the forces of King William of Orange, a Dutch-born Protestant, defeated the forces of King James II of England, an ardent Catholic.
The first Orange Walk in Dunvegan was held in 1866 in a grove on the farm of the late Donald MacNaughton. More recently, the farm was owned by the late Alistair Campbell and is now home to Ryan MacLeod. Ninety-three years later, the very last Orange Walk held in Dunvegan took place on Saturday, July 11, 1959 in what, at the time, was Neil MacRae’s grove west of the crossroads.
Needless to say, this past weekend, the streets of Dunvegan and environs were completely devoid of Orange Day celebrants. For, if one tried to hold an Orange Day parade today, the assumption would be that it’s in support of the NDP. Not cool in a staunch Grit riding. And the white horse that traditionally led the Orange Day procession would be disqualified for having an excess of privilege.
The ‘S’ bend illusion
As one travels south from Dunvegan on County Road 30, there is an ‘S’ bend that crosses over the Scotch River, just before the road reaches Concession Road 8. On the northeast corner, nestled in a bend in the Scotch, lies the home of Denis Comier and Dorice DesBiens. As the plot of land on which it sits is on the east side of Greenfield Road, I always thought of it as being a part of the southern end of the Cy and Louise Walker’s old farm on Lot 24, Concession 8, now owned by the Raymonds. But it’s not. It’s all an optical illusion.
I only discovered this while searching the Ontario’s online historical property records. Before Denis’ and Dorice’s house was built, a young man who worked for us owned the lot. What puzzled me, though, was the fact the records showed he and his wife had purchased the small piece of land from David Michaels, not the Walkers. The late David Michaels and his wife Pat had lived on Lot 25 Concession 8. In other words, the farm on the west side of CR 30.
If I had bothered to look at a map, it would have been obvious. Greenfield Road used to go straight down to a ‘T’ junction with the 8th Concession Road. To continue on to Greenfield, you’d have to turn right on to the 8th and then take a sharp left to re-join County Road 30. At some point after Dave Michaels bought his farm in 1970, the Roads Department decided to eliminate these two sharp corners and build an ‘S’ curve through the Michael’s farm. It was this modification that gave me the impression that a piece of Dave’s land had jumped from Lot 25 to Lot 24. This modification was not made to create great curves through which motorists could pretend to be Grand Prix drivers. I was told the real reason was that school buses were getting bigger and the drivers found it increasingly hard to navigate the two sharp turns, especially when the road was icy.
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