Mr. Speaker, I am thankful to have this moment to speak to the bill, which I am very pleased to support.
I am a fiddler—perhaps not a very good one, but I have a good time with my violin. I have a lovely violin, thanks to the generosity of my mom and dad, who gave me a beautiful instrument some years ago. My aspiration is to do that instrument justice at some point in my life.
Although I went on with my music and did my degree in piano, violin was always my first love. Whether it is a concerto of Tchaikowsky or Mendelssohn or whether it is the strathspeys, the jigs, or the laments that we have in our Celtic music today, I have a deep passion for the music of the fiddle, the violin, and how it can stir the emotions of the heart.
We have had wonderful cultural experiences here in Canada. Visiting Prince Edward Island, in the same village one can go from a cèilidh one night where one experiences the music of Ireland or Scotland over to a house party where the same instrument is participating in the music of the Acadian people with their step dancing and the wonderful emotion that evokes.
When I was in Newfoundland, I took my fiddle with me. I was on a concert tour in Newfoundland in the summer of 2008 and had the opportunity to go to George Street, where people just pull up a chair in a music circle. People come and go from that music circle all evening with a variety of instruments, but there are a lot of fiddles.
When I was in Cape Breton, I had the opportunity to attend the Celtic college and do some fiddle classes there. I experienced some of the other music that was being played in Cape Breton. We have so much wonderful music that can be played on that instrument.
I have a daughter who decided to take up the fiddle. She loves the music of eastern Europe and plays that music, as opposed to the Celtic music.
What I really want to do tonight is to pay tribute to the wonderful instructors that we have here in Canada, and we have some remarkable musicians. I think of people like Natalie MacMaster, who comes from the east coast and whose name has not been mentioned here tonight. She is one of the people who in the 1990s brought back the wonderful love for fiddle music.
When I was in Prince Edward Island, I visited the Summerside school of piping and spent some time with the gentleman there who was making the fiddles for the Rankin Family, another group that came out of Cape Breton and provided Canada with a remarkable position in the world of Celtic music. Fabulous fiddling came from that group.
However, I really want to pay tribute to those people who have undertaken to instruct young people in the art of fiddling, because so often they do not get the recognition they deserve.
There are teachers who start with very young students and apprise them of the fingering, as my colleague for Timmins—James Bay was saying. The DGAE fingering is seemingly so simple on the fiddle, but it needs accuracy in the position of the fingering. These instructors are the ones who painstakingly take the time to inform young students, first of all, of the mechanics of the instrument itself. Second, they introduce them to the wealth of music that they can speak through into a variety of cultures.
I would like to pay tribute tonight to several people in my life.
There is Phil Howes, an instructor from Markham with whom I had the opportunity to study. Phil is a remarkable musician himself. He is a regular adjudicator at fiddle competitions across Canada. He and his wife recorded a number of CDs, and I would recommend them to my colleagues if they are looking for some good music. Phil is a remarkable fiddler and a delight to listen to.
I would also like to pay tribute to Bob and Ginny Arbuckle, constituents of mine in Newmarket—Aurora. Bob is a remarkable fiddler as well, and a gentleman who has poured his life into instructing young people in the art of music. Sadly, Ginny has passed, but we had many nights at my house when Bob would bring his fiddle and I would get out my fiddle and Ginny would play the piano and we would do lots of wonderful Celtic music.
I would like to offer my thanks to those people who have become instructors, many of them remarkable musicians in their own right. They have poured their lives into the lives of others so that they too can learn the fiddle and learn to appreciate so much of the wonderful cultural experience that we have to offer in this great country of ours.