‘CAN’T FORGET TRADITION’
Legacy lives on at Highland Games
Kevin Fast leans on the fence at the Maxville fairgrounds grandstand on Friday morning and watches as his son, Matthew, warms up. Bagpipes and drummers can be heard in the near distance as a 20-pound rock thrown by Matthew thuds into the ground.
Matthew is a bit taller than his dad and weighs a little less than the 300 pounds the old man packs on his 5-9 frame. Matthew also started throwing the cabers, rocks, sheafs and whatnot — the instruments of the seven kiltwearing, grunt-inducing events that make up the quintessentially Scottish heavyweight competitions — at an earlier age than his dad did, so there’s no telling whether his future successes will rival his father’s.
“I’m not as competitive as him,” Matthew says, a point in Kevin’s favour.
Still, Matthew and his brother, Jacob, had already taken one record away from their dad when they pulled three fire trucks 100 feet in 40.59 seconds, beating dad’s record of 1:21, which he set with the help of Discovery Channel host Andrew Younghusband.
But on this Friday, Kevin, 55, still has 30 world records to his name, some Highland Gamesrelated, others not. And on this day, at least, the first of the Glengarry Highland Games, it’s Kevin who’s wearing the Guinness World Records ball cap. How their legacies ultimately play out remains to be seen, although Matthew would finish fourth in Friday’s amateur heavyweight competition, while his father was fourth in the masters division.
That morning, the front gates had opened at 8, only a few minutes before Matthew began to warm up, so the spectators who’ve gathered to watch him and others compete in the amateur heavyweight division are few. Most of the early arrivals on the grounds appear to be Games board directors, volunteers, concession workers, merchandise and information booth operators, competitors and their families — much of the available floor space in the already stifling indoor arena, for example, has been staked out by parents and siblings of young Highland dance competitors, claiming their clannish camps with lawn chairs, coolers and thin foam mats.
But the weather forecast bodes well, and organizers say they expect attendance to reach about 25,000 or more, a number they seem to consistently hit.
“This is the social event for a lot of Glengarry people, even the ones who have moved away,” says Games past-president Dona Cruikshank. “They say they’ll miss Thanksgiving, they’ll miss Christmas, but they won’t miss the Highland Games. They come back from all over the States and Canada, from everywhere.”
According to Cruikshank, Celtic Life magazine recently surveyed organizers of Highland Games across North America. “A lot of them are struggling because older people — the people that are your base — are passing away and the younger base isn’t there.
“But in Glengarry County, it’s different. This is where the Scots came and settled, and there’s always been a strong base. It’s not just a two-day thing every year. It’s the way we do things. We have schools of piping, schools of dancing, schools of fiddling, and so the young kids are growing up with it.”
North Glengarry Mayor Chris McDonell, 75, has missed just one of the 71 Games, stretching back to 1948 when he was just a four-year-old and a few Maxville businessmen started the Games to help ensure the health of Scottish heritage in the area.
“You can’t forget tradition,” says McDonell, “and Glengarry has a lot of traditions. Maybe more than Scotland.”
And new traditions, too, such as the haggis poutine available, perhaps a nod to the numerous Franco- Ontarians in the area. There’s also haggis pizza, although the more traditional can stick with the steak-andkidney pies and mushy peas, as they peruse the booths of swords, daggers, kilts, family coats of arms, shortbread, Celtic pottery, jewelry and ironwork.
At 5-9 and 300 pounds, Kevin Fast admits he’s hardly your typical Highland heavyweight poster child. The events, he says, favour taller athletes with longer arms. (That said, he admits he also doesn’t have the typical build for a minister, which is what he does at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Cobourg, Ont.)
Either way, the life of strength captivated him from his earliest memories. When he was a oneyear-old growing in St. Catharines, according to his mother, a neighbour would pay him a nickel just to watch him run, his calves were so big.
“But I’ve never known a day when I wasn’t interested in strength,” he adds. “How many chin-ups I could do, or whether I could lift a rock. Just a real curiosity — can I do that? That’s still the thrill I get today.”
His record-setting ways began when he saw some feat or other on television, and subsequently phoned his local fire station to ask of he could borrow a truck, an 18-ton behemoth, that he pulled for 100 feet to claim a Guinness World Record.
“And then it snowballed,” he says, as others broke his records, forcing him to win them back. A 40-ton house followed, and a 208-ton cargo plane. He carried 11 people on his shoulders.
“And if somebody beat my record, it was only a couple of weeks before I got it back,” he adds. “That’s the way I was.”
Four years ago, he set a cabertossing record — 14 successful throws in three minutes — and just last year set three more records when he pulled three aerial fire trucks weighing 109 tons, and pulled AND pushed a 12-ton dump truck.
“I’ve been given a gift of strength,” he says, “and I’m going to use it as long as I have it.”
In a nearby open area about the size of a soccer field, a dozen tables are set up along the perimeter, at which the pipers compete. They could, by happenstance, all be playing at the same time, but each station has a judge sitting directly in front of the piper. Additionally, numerous other pipers dot the landscape, each in their own quasi-private area (even if only mentally) in which to practise. It all lends an effect not unlike cicadas, with the sound of bagpipes seeming to emanate from everywhere — perhaps that’s part of the draw for the Mcs and
Macs who descend on the area en masse each year.
Gillecriosd (“Call me Gil”) Mason, 64, has been a bagpipe competitor every year since 1976 or ’77, save for one year when bad weather kept him at his home in upstate New York.
His father, who first heard bagpipes while serving overseas with British troops in Germany following the war, subsequently played bagpipe records at home. “So I wanted to learn to play,” says Mason, “but it wasn’t until I was 19 when I found a teacher.”
In competitions these days, he says, he typically faces pipers young enough to be his children or grandchildren, but is rarely daunted.
“It’s the journey that matters,” he says. “I’m probably in the twilight years now, but I’ve still got some music in me.”
Kevin Fast was also a late starter to the Highland Games. He attended his first one in Cobourg when he was 30 and, when the public address announcer asked if anyone from the audience wanted to take part, surprised even himself by coming forward. His name was drawn first for the caber toss (the thing that looks like a telephone pole), and he had to pass his first try because he had no idea what to do. He nailed his next two attempts, though, and won the event. A 25-year career in Highland Games heavyweight competitions followed.
But two weeks ago, Nova Scotian and former Toronto Argonaut Danny Frame, who competes Saturday in Maxville, successfully tossed 16 cabers in three minutes, and it’s expected that the Guinness people will verify his record in a couple of months.
Kevin says he’s not going to try to get that one back.
“I like to win, but I’m 55 now and slowing down every year. And the people that are challenging my records, I only wish the best for them, because it’s no longer my time. It’s their time.”
The Glengarry Highland Games continues all day Saturday. Visit glengarryhighlandgames.com for more.