{"id":14202,"date":"2016-05-13T12:25:13","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T16:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=14202"},"modified":"2016-05-13T12:25:13","modified_gmt":"2016-05-13T16:25:13","slug":"revamped-pipes-drums-centre-pays-tribute-to-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/revamped-pipes-drums-centre-pays-tribute-to-teacher\/","title":{"rendered":"Revamped Pipes & Drums Centre pays tribute to teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t every day you can go to work and walk through the doors of a building bearing your name.<\/p>\n

But, it is an honour Jim McGillivray experiences every day as he walks through the doors of the Petracheck-McGillivray Pipes & Drums Centre at St. Andrew\u2019s College.<\/p>\n

The Centre, which is the headquarters of the school\u2019s vivid pipe corps, was formally dedicated prior to the school\u2019s 111th annual Cadet Inspection.
\n\u201cAs far as I know, I am the only living teacher here who has their name on a building,\u201d says Mr. McGillivray. \u201cI thought it was a very special thing that they decided to recognize what they felt was an influential person at the school rather than just have their name on the building.\u201d<\/p>\n

The space was retrofitted thanks to a donation to the school from the Petracheck family whose son, Zachary, once served as SAC\u2019s pipe major. It was within the pipes and drums program that Mr. McGillivray says Zachary really found his niche and when his parents started looking at ways to give back to the school, Zachary knew just the ticket.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur building has been here since the 1960s and it was housing for support staff,\u201d says Mr. McGillivray. \u201cWhen I first came to the school in 1998, there were people actually living in the building. Our piping and drumming program was actually situated in the basement of one of the buildings in what was once the cadets\u2019 rifle range, which isn\u2019t the greatest place to teach loud instruments like pipes and drums.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eventually, the building they now call home became vacant and, once they moved in, Mr. McGillivray says he found it to be a very \u201cfunctional\u201d teaching space. But, some \u201cserious work\u201d was required to bring it up to snuff. Now, the building is properly sound proofed, is fully equipped, and can now accommodate what has grown to be something of a \u201cvisual educational museum\u201d for pipers and drummers featuring some of the school\u2019s collection of historic prints, portraits of pipers, and watercolours of highland regiments.<\/p>\n

Mr. McGillivray grew up in Kitchener which has a decidedly more Germanic than Scots heritage. Nevertheless, his parents had a certain fondness for the bag pipes and steered him in that direction once he decided he wanted to play a musical instrument and the accordion a door-to-door salesman tried to hawk to the family was the last thing his parents wanted to hear. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is quite a difficult instrument to learn and what usually captivates people about piping is the sound of the instrument when it is played well, and it is an easy instrument to hear played badly \u2013 frequently!\u201d he says with a laugh, noting he strives to make sure the band is always playing in tune. \u201cWhen the middle school boys hear us and they see us in full regalia, they are very impressed and want to be a part of that. It is one of the elite groups at the school and it is one of the most respected.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though we are a musical band, we are very much like a senior sports team in terms of the camaraderie, teamwork and the respect the band receives at school\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It isn\u2019t every day you can go to work and walk through the doors of a building bearing your name.<\/p>\n

But, it is an honour Jim McGillivray experiences every day as he walks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/2016-05-12-02.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3H4","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 11:51:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}