The Trail Legion will be filled with music, dance, Scottish fare, and plenty of tartan on Saturday when the hall welcomes guests for a belated Robbie Burns night.
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A fire in early January forced postponement of the annual ode to the Scottish bard, originally slated for Jan. 26.
With the hall freshly painted and carpets replaced, the 260 birthday of Robbie Burns was weaved together with ‘Tartan Day’ which falls on April 6 in Scottish communities across Canada and the world.
And as tradition calls for at the East Trail hall, Trail bagpipe legend Gordon Titsworth will be serving up 60-or-so pounds of haggis prior to a roast beef dinner.
While many might be squeamish about eating haggis - sheep innards mixed with oats and spices - Titsworth says the savoury pudding is really quite a delicious delicacy.
“Sheep and cows are the vessel and the contents are the things they (Scotsmen) would grow locally,” he said. “And being Scottish,they don’t waste a lot,” Titsworth chuckled. “There would be offal and a mixture of other things, sometimes mutton. But more what we’ve come to flavour ours with, is beef.”
Tasting the meaty delicacy and choosing the final product is somewhat of an art. But for the Trail Pipe Band president, the practise is as sentimental as it is connoisseurial.
“I remember when I was a kid the band held the Burns night at the Local 480 Hall,” he recalled. “There was always haggis from somewhere, I don’t know where it came from back then, but ours is from Kaslo. Haggis is made differently depending upon who’s making it -but it’s always been a tradition.”
In addition to food and highland dancing, ‘Tartan Day’ will be part of the Robbie Burns celebration this year.
To promote Scottish heritage in Canada, ‘Tartan Day’ was proposed at a meeting of the Federation of Scottish Clans in Nova Scotia in 1986.
Jean Watson, President of Clan Lamont, petitioned provincial legislatures to recognize April 6 as Tartan Day.
The first such proclamation was by Nova Scotia in April 1987. In response to action initiated by the Clans and Scottish Societies of Canada, four years later the Ontario Legislature passed a resolution proclaiming April 6 as Tartan Day following the example of other Canadian provinces.
Tartan Day is a North American celebration of Scottish heritage on April 6, the date on which the Declaration of Arbroath was signed in 1320.
The Declaration of Arbroath is a declaration of Scottish independence, made in 1320.
It is in the form of a letter in Latin submitted to Pope John XXII, dated 6 April 1320, intended to confirm Scotland’s status as an independent, sovereign state and defending Scotland’s right to use military action when unjustly attacked.
Generally believed to have been written in the Arbroath Abbey by Bernard of Kilwinning, then Chancellor of Scotland and Abbot of Arbroath, and sealed by fifty-one magnates and nobles, the letter is the sole survivor of three created at the time. The others were a letter from the King of Scots, Robert I, and a letter from four Scottish bishops which all presumably made similar points.