I Went to a Canadian Highland Games. Here's what I thought

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]Hello, it's Bruce Fumi here. Right now, I'm prepping to head off to tour my live show, Scotland Made the World Across Canada in June and July. And it reminded me of the last time I was there and my visit to my first ever Canadian Highland Games. So, I thought I would give you a reminder of what I found when I was there. Please share this with every Canadian Highland Games goer or Scotland lover over there and we'll see you there. Here's the video.

[00:00:31]I'm Bruce Fumi and today I'm going to do something that I've never done before.

[00:00:38]That's right. I'm going to Highland Games with all the sights and sounds and experiences. Now, obviously, I've been at a Highland Games before, but I've never been to one in Canada.

[00:00:55]Now, I'm no plastic Canadian jock.

[00:00:59]You can imagine how well that line went down in Cape Breton. Anyway, I've been to many Highland games in my wee village back home in Perthar, but I thought we'd come to a big Highland Games in Ontario, Canada to find out the difference. So, if you're interested in the people, places, and events in Scottish history, then click the subscribe button at the bottom right of the screen, and give me a thumbs up at the end if you've enjoyed the video. That's what tells YouTube to get other people watching. In the meantime, let me tell you a story.

[00:01:35]Back home in my village in Persia, the Highland Games is the biggest event of the annual calendar. Oh, people come from miles around. Folk have barbecues and invite friends into the village.

[00:01:48]People from neighboring villages come round to meet each other and all that kind of thing. The pubs The one pub that's left is full. And of course, from time to time, the young team will have a fight with a neighboring village. It's the way things are done. Anyway, it starts with a chieftain marching through in front of a pipe band up the village street, the main street of the village, and then into the games park. And in there obviously they have THE BIG GUYS THROWING and lifting things, the we lasses doing a dance and you'll have people running and competing. Sometimes there's a big event like you'll have like the army coming down in parachutes or for that matter once there was a guy a sprinter who RACED A CAR. WHAT are the chances? ALL THAT STUFF happens in the oval in the middle and generally speaking we walk around the outside.

[00:02:44]Obviously, the people that are there to support the competitors will be sitting on the outside, but the other locals will walk around the outside. You'll meet up with folk that you might have not seen for a while from neighboring villages. You might not have seen them for months or whatever. And of course, you have to have a chat cuz you'll be fighting with them later. And it all makes for a fantastic afternoon.

[00:03:07]I thought, let's see what it's like in Ontario. Is it any different? I'll be honest. Back home, I spend the afternoon in the beer tent. Let's see how that goes here.

[00:03:24]Here, there's no chieftain marching in front of a pipe band up the village main street, but there are loads more pipe bands, 28 and all. That's mental compared to our we village, and it makes for quite a spectacle.

[00:03:40]and the weight of a tug-of-war team pulling in the heartstrings as you hear the pipes calling in the opening and closing ceremonies.

[00:03:50]Of course, Chieft George Cette did give an introduction in the opening ceremony as did some local politicians and heed bummers. And of course, a we thank you for the workers who do all the background heavy lifting.

[00:04:05]Another tick in the checklist of similarities to home were the cutest we bears in their highland dancing.

[00:04:14]As she approaches retal my MS tells me about when she was a we lassie in Fraser she tour the competitions dancing island games back in the day and I just love to see that across the water there's still another generation continuing those traditions an ocean away.

[00:04:33]So, were the friendly hellos and how are you as I wandered around the park?

[00:04:40]Yes, in fact, probably more than back home.

[00:04:46]But then again, I did have the excuse of being the honorary chieftain.

[00:04:52]Please welcome TO THE FIELD YOUR HONORARY CHIEFTAIN, BRUCE BUM.

[00:05:01]UM, I'll be honest. The only reason I turned up was because they told me that the Minister for Employment, Immigration, Training, and Skills was going to be here. And I was looking for a job. E. Um, two more minutes. I can do 30 seconds without swearing. How about that? Right.

[00:05:25]No, I was saying Scots built the modern world. WE DID CUZ SCOTS INVENTED EVERYTHING, didn't it? Scots gave the world the telephone. And I know you Canadians try to nick it, but we gave the world the telephone. We gave the world the television, tarmac roads. We gave the world penicellin.

[00:05:47]Okay, we gave them beneial disease in the first place, but that's not the point.

[00:05:52]every development science and engineering. It was a Scotsman that did it. Let me tell you, it's a delight to be here in the Hope place. Was it >> Port Hope?

[00:06:07]>> Port Hope. It's a delight to be here in Port Hope. And I hope you get rid of your nuclear disaster soon. All right.

[00:06:17]Come and say hello during the day. Thank you very much.

[00:06:23]So it was me who declared the Highland Games >> OPEN to the beer tent.

[00:06:34]>> I don't know if they thought I was offering free drinks, but loads of folks did come and chat. Canadians are the friendliest people that I've come across, and indeed some of them were from back home in Perthshshire.

[00:06:50]For all the competitions and pageantry, I think the real heart of Highland Games, whether in my we village or across an ocean, is the connections and friendly chat with folks that make you feel like home, even if they moved overseas long ago.

[00:07:07]Sometimes all it takes is to overhear an accent that sounds familiar to strike up a conversation.

[00:07:15]Others I had a connection with because they watched this channel and it was wonderful to get the chance to chat. In particular, what a treat to bump into one of my Patreon members, Ryan Kierney, who was competing in the piping. I had a really good chat with him. Now, in case you didn't know, my reason for traveling to Canada back in 2024 was to tour my standup show. And in June and July of 2026, I'm coming back with a new show called Scotland Made the World. I'll be back here in Port Hope doing my show on the 20th of June, but I'll be traveling the whole country from Sydney and Cape Breton on the 5th of June through to Victoria, BC in the 26th of July and every province in between. Go to my website www.brfumi.co.uk for venues, dates, and tickets. And please share this with everyone you know in Canada who's interested in things Scottish and I'll see them at one of my shows. Now back to the Highland Games.

[00:08:21]I said that back home in Blackford the games have lots of folks from the village and surrounds. But here folks have come from far and wide across Ontario.

[00:08:32]Whether it's folks with stalls or vendors or visitors in general, it feels like folks have congregated from the more dispersed diaspora Scots and descendants from across Ontario.

[00:08:45]Less a geographical community than a community of Scottish interests coming together.

[00:08:52]Anyway, there were loads of friendly folks around.

[00:08:56]Did I ever tell you how friendly Canadians were?

[00:08:59]They're a bit like Laswegians, but without the flick knives.

[00:09:04]Spoiler alert, there was no fight in the pub later.

[00:09:09]The other thing they didn't have was a tug of war. Where's the tug of war between the two groups of BS from the village? That's a staple our Highland Games.

[00:09:20]What they did have here that I haven't noticed at my home Highland Games was piping competitions between the 28 bands gathered together for ferocious puffing and furious fingering contests, drone checking and team practice.

[00:09:36]It's one thing that a bigger festival like this has over a smaller community event, but there was something exotic to come.

[00:09:48]Now, here's another thing that's different about the Highland Games here in Ontario compared to the Highland Games that I go to in my village back home.

[00:09:58]I'm wearing a coat.

[00:10:02]You'd never see that back home. Now, here's another thing that you would never see back home in my village Highland Games. A clan alley. You've got a whole alley of different clans and stuff. Now, what the hell's going on here? to find out. I'm going to introduce you to William Petri. Come and see. Come and meet him. Right. Come and meet William here.

[00:10:25]>> How you doing, William?

[00:10:26]>> Very good, Bruce.

[00:10:27]>> Nice to meet you.

[00:10:28]>> Pleasure, too.

[00:10:29]>> Now, he this this is a new thing for me.

[00:10:31]It's a new experience for me. Tell me, what are you doing here? What's going on?

[00:10:36]>> Well, we are Clans and Scottish Societies of Canada. We've been around since about the late '7s. And for the most part, what we what we were doing was uh just letting the clans and family organizations get together. Uh but postcoid actually it started around uh 2019 when I began with it. What we did was we said let's let's get out and do much more in terms of representation for our members. And um so what we have is we have about 98 um organizations that we represent and we promote them at events like this. So, we put up large banners and you can see the crowd is just here picking up information.

[00:11:15]>> We got a QR code that they can take through.

[00:11:17]>> It is busy.

[00:11:18]>> Yeah, it is busy.

[00:11:19]>> Constantly constantly busy and people click through and they and and we get members for organizations or we let them find out about games. They know the things that are kind of things that are going on with them. And that's what we're doing because our mandate is to promote Scottish culture and history heritage anywhere in the world and especially here in Canada. Yeah, that's what we do.

[00:11:40]>> So, who did you get that mandate from?

[00:11:42]>> Well, that's that was our charter when we formed as a federally chartered nonprofit charity.

[00:11:47]>> So, we are a a national organization.

[00:11:51]Um, we are regulated in terms of being a charity, in terms of being a a charter and that and in terms of being a non charity and what we do is uh what um our our our stated objectives and mandate is in our bylaws. So you're putting Canadians back in touch with our Scottish heart.

[00:12:09]>> That is the whole point. Now, one of our big challenges is that we only represent organizations at this point.

[00:12:16]>> And I have a lot of people that have come through and I do their their research to look up their name and that and it turns out they're not associated with a client or a family. So, what we're doing is we're moving to accept individual and family memberships, grow our membership immensely, and have it so that everybody of Scottish car uh Scottish heritage can be part of our organizations. And we'll set them up in chapters and and and get them into these kind of organizations. And there's about 6 million Canadians of Scottish heritage.

[00:12:48]>> And as in Scotland, most of them are not in clans or families.

[00:12:53]>> Yeah. It's not a big thing. It's not that's it's not really a thing. That's the thing is you would never I don't remember seeing something like this back home. It is a North that whole clan thing feels like a North American thing.

[00:13:04]>> Well, it's it's and you know you know there's the basic beliefs the basic needs for it for for people. You want to belong. You want to be useful. You want to you want to have love and you want to have a hope for for some kind of future.

[00:13:18]Well, we're going to cover the belonging part and and maybe some of the hope for the future because there's going to be things for them and we're going to give the proper recognition to what is the what is the heritage that we brought to Canada. We built this country. You know that you've said that we built this nation and even though uh times when we've tried to do things, we've been told, well, we don't need to do help you anything because you were a founding nation. Well, no, that's not the case.

[00:13:42]Uh-huh.

[00:13:43]>> You know, we're we're just we're another culture and another thing that needs to have that people need to belong to that people need to be proud of >> and and that's what we're doing.

[00:13:52]>> And I'm glad you're here to do it.

[00:13:54]William, thank you very all the time that I preach the gospel in Scotland and Scotland history tours, there are evangelists like this in Canada. What a fantastic treat to meet him here at the Scots and Canada Clans and Societies of Canada uh tent. Let's see what else is going on.

[00:14:15]What else is going on is Sheena's shortbread tent.

[00:14:20]That's worth a stop. Followed by a chat with the good folks of the clan Farerson tent. Bumpering into more viewers of the channels like meeting up with an old friend.

[00:14:31]Only I didn't owe this block a tener from 1998. Of course, a thing that many are here to see are the heavyweights. Now, these guys have come from far and wide, including south of the border in the US of A from as far away as California and Colorado.

[00:14:51]This is the historical essence of the Highland Games.

[00:14:56]The individual events started last night with putting the stone and it was a belter of a stone stone lifts with an even bigger stone.

[00:15:07]He Okay, not this time.

[00:15:12]What about this time?

[00:15:15]No, it's a big stone.

[00:15:19]Can this bloke do it?

[00:15:22]DAMN IT.

[00:15:27]Now that is impressive.

[00:15:33]They've also got Atlas stones like it might look like a world's strongest man tournament whose reigning champion is a Scotsman by the way.

[00:15:46]But there's also lasses shown that they're not to be ignored. Oh, you want to see the feats that some of these we lasses get up to? Great competitors.

[00:15:56]Not just in the stone lifting, but in the farmer's walk.

[00:16:01]Well, maybe the farmer's wife's walk.

[00:16:04]And that pride and joy of a huge achievement. What a wonderful moment.

[00:16:12]Of course, on a big day, we had the more standard events you'll see in our Wii Highland games back home. the explosive strength to throw the weight over the bar. The more technical tossing the hammer where starting the movement then building up momentum is each turn our hero builds up a centripal force before launching the wooden shaft in the air in the wake of that 22lb hammer seeking the winning distance.

[00:16:42]But of course the crown jewel of any Highland games is the Kber toss. Now, in case you don't know, the idea is you lift the cable bar. Now, given that most of the weight's way above your head, that in itself's no easy feat. I had a go at this at the games in Australia last year, and let me tell you, it's murder polless. Then you build up a head of steam to get it to land at 12:00 after tossing it end over end or just letting it flop to the ground.

[00:17:16]The truth is the most common outcomes is failure.

[00:17:24]Sometimes is fumble and tumble and then failure again and then nearly and then one more time and damn it.

[00:17:40]Come on, you can do it. Lift balance steady now to try and get it moving.

[00:17:49]Can't afford to lose balance. KEEP YOUR BALANCE. WHOA. AND LAUNCH UP AND over at 12:00. YEAH. DANCER.

[00:17:59]Not quite 12:00, but definitely the winning throw of the day. There'll be prizes to be handed out.

[00:18:08]But of course, we've still got the closing ceremony in the parade park.

[00:18:14]And I'm going to let you enjoy that for just a second.

[00:18:30]What a sight to see the 28 competing groups of the day gathered together in the march of the mass bands.

[00:18:38]trophies to be handed out for the winning bands of the different classes as the hard work pays off. And these guys are going to compete against each other in other games throughout Ontario over the summer.

[00:18:51]But the piping's not quite finished for the day until we've had a celebratory impromptu in the beer tent afterwards.

[00:19:03]Of course, eventually the time comes to lay the pipes down and pick up a glass.

[00:19:13]I'm glad these boys are better at piping than they are at singing.

[00:19:19]Friendly Canadian chithat into the night.

[00:19:22]And here's a thing that's a little bit different from home. Kaye bands that not only mix in Irish with the Scottish music, but throw in a bit of country and western deboot.

[00:19:37]Was Johnny Cash Scottish?

[00:19:45]So, what have we learned at the Northland Highland Games? First of all, there's been an incredible pipe band competition that probably wouldn't have happened in my own village and some incredible pipe bands. Also, while the Highland Games in our village is a community that comes together locally, this event happens because the people of the wider Celtic interest community comes from much further a field in Ontario. Also, it has to be said that it keeps a little bit of Scottish culture alive if with a funny accent.

[00:20:27]And certainly the Canadian reputation for friendliness and hospitality hasn't been damaged at all today. And best of all, they've got a beer tent as well.

[00:20:42]Now, I've also been to Highland Games in Australia. And if you want to see that, there's a video coming up on screen now.

[00:20:50]Support the channel by clicking top right to become a Patreon member or buy me a coffee in the description below. In the meantime, in drasta.