BC Pipers Association To Hold Adjudicators Development Seminar

The British Columbia Pipers Association (BCPA) is holding a two-day seminar for adjudicators and prospective judges on March 8 and 9, bringing in a guest “key instructor” from the Pipers & Pipe Band Society of Ontario (PPBSO) to provide an external perspective.

Jim McGillivray of Aurora, Ontario, is being imported for the event, and BCPA president Rob MacNeil states that the seminar has “resulted in nearly 30 pre-registrants, making it the most well-attended of the BCPA adjudicators seminar series that started three years ago.”

McGillivray will also be one of the piping judges at the BCPA’s Professional Piping & Drumming Knockout finals, held in conjunction with the organization’s annual dinner on Saturday evening. The event will feature finalists Alan Bevan, Andrew Bonar, James P. Troy, and Danielle Millar.

“The BCPA has made a significant commitment to advancing the quality of adjudication and providing adjudicators with increasingly informative professional development opportunities,” MacNeil said. “Jim McGillivray’s seminar is the first in a program of bringing in peers from outside the BCPA jurisdiction to add to ongoing programs delivered by senior BCPA adjudicators.”

Several North American piping and pipe band associations have taken to holding “professional development” sessions for panel judges, including the PPBSO and the Eastern United States Pipe Band Association (EUSPBA). The EUSPBA requires its judges to attend at least one seminar every two years, even taking a hard line to drop those who miss the sessions from its panel.

The EUSPBA has been the centre of debate over its recent decision to ask its sanctioned contests to pay a fee of US$50 for every non-EUSPBA judge it brings in to an event.

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