Appreciating their roots
Highland dance ‘all about tradition,’ says organizer of championship
Nicole Boutilier would like to see more people come out to support Highland dancing.
“It’s all about tradition,” said the organizer of the third annual Ship Hector Scottish Heritage Championship, a competition that took place over the weekend at Pictou Elementary School.
“There are a lot of people who still appreciate their Celtic, Scottish roots.”
The weekend competition attracted 225 dancers, many of them Pictou County residents who learn their craft under local instructors Brenda MacKay and Holly MacDonald-Bent.
Emma Hines has been dancing she was four years old.
Now 17 and a student at Northumberland Regional High School, she plans on attending Dalhousie University next September to study science, but would also like to coach and judge the sport someday.
“Hopefully, if I go away (from the sport for a time), I end up finding my way back,” said the Durham resident, who added she likes the fact that Highland dancing is an individual sport.
On Saturday, Hines captured the Jeana English Memorial Award, named after the 13-year-old Pictou resident and Highland dancer who died of cancer in 2015.
Boutilier’s 12-year-old daugh- ter Annika Murray is also carrying on the tradition.
“My mother was a Highland dancer and I was a Highland dancer,” Boutilier said, “so it’s kind of three generations.” Murray won the Debbie Robson Memorial Award on Saturday, given in memory of Robson, a well-known Highland dance instructor in Pictou County who died in a car accident in 1978.
She said the sport is in a healthy place in this part of the country.
“We have good numbers in Nova Scotia – high-caliber dancing in the Maritimes.”