David Clyde, 1941-2026

David Clyde, whose contributions to piping in the Ottawa area have gone largely unrecognized, died on January 29, 2026, in his eighty-fifth year.

As an immigrant to Canada from his native Banbridge, Northern Ireland, in 1961, Clyde brought his passion for piping and settled in Almonte, Ontario.

Following his long membership in the Banbridge Pipe Band, he joined the Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa and was made pipe-sergeant. He would go on to play with short-lived but memorable Grade 1 Dunvegan under co-pipe-majors Scott MacAulay and Colin MacLellan, and then the  Grade 1 Metropolitan Toronto Police, under Pipe-Major Jake Watson.

Clyde founded the MacEóin-Ramsay Pipe Band in 1981, which for decades was populated by his piping pupils. After a several-year hiatus, largely due to Clyde’s battle with Parkinson’s, the band was resurrected in 2022 by several of Clyde’s students from the 1990s as a competing Grade 4 group, with Kris Bawden as pipe-major.

The re-minted band honoured their teacher and founder by creating a new uniform featuring kilts in the “David Clyde” tartan, which he designed in 2011 and is now on the official Scottish Register of Tartans.

Clyde was an avid composer of music for the Highland pipes and, in 2011, published the Heritage Collection.

Our sympathies are with David Clyde’s family and friends at this sad time.