Ontario’s Grade 2 St. Andrew’s College Association won’t compete in 2025

To focus on growth and allow Pipe-Major Matt MacIsaac to recover from a shoulder injury, Ontario’s Grade 2 St. Andrew’s College Association announced a hiatus to take “a proactive step toward long-term success . . . to focus on recruitment, community engagement, and development.”

MacIsaac hasn’t been able to lead practices recently. Pipe-Sergeant Henry Paluch has been running practices to maintain the band, hoping to participate in the 2025 Ontario competition season, which begins on June 7th with the new Hamilton Gathering in Hamilton, Ontario, and the first Grade 1 and Grade 2 competition at Georgetown, Ontario, on June 13th.

The band said MacIsaac’s recovery time left it in “limbo.” St. Andrew’s College Association plans to regroup and prepare for its return in 2026. The band will continue to practice over the summer.

“It became clear as the season approached that we would no longer be as competitive as we wanted to be,” said MacIsaac. “We’ve worked hard on new MSR and medley material, and it’s disappointing not to play it.”

The band was formed in 2019, but the pandemic meant that the group didn’t make its competition debut until 2022 as one of the smaller Grade 2 bands on the circuit.

“When we started in 2019, we weren’t necessarily aiming for Grade 2, and the jump to this level made the transition difficult for many,” MacIsaac added. “Numbers became a problem, and we ended up on the small side of the Grade 2 scene here in Ontario.”

St. Andrew’s College Association is affiliated with St. Andrew’s College, a prestigious private school in Aurora, Ontario, which has an extensive piping and drumming teaching program. The Association band’s original aim was to provide opportunities for interested alumni and current students of the school to play in a competition band. The school now fields a competing Grade 5 band.

Ontario has four competitively active Grade 2 bands: Guelph, Ottawa Highlanders, Peel Regional Police and Toronto Police.

A correction was made on June 1, 2025. An earlier version of this article stated that Ontario has five actively competing Grade 2 bands. There are four, following the demise of the Ottawa Police Service Pipe Band in February.

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