RBANA - Halton Peel Event
A FRESH APPROACH TO THE CELEBRATION
OF BURNS' BIRTHDAY

The Halton Peel Burns Club and the Robert Burns Society of Doon, in Canada,
ventured forth this year with a different format to celebrate our Bard.
The joint committee, formed to mount the 2009 RBANA conference at the end of May 2009,
decided to take a fresh look at the January celebration.
Burns Suppers are mounted throughout the area from the grand Scottish Studies event in Toronto,
to church hall ceilidhs. People get a bit “Burns Suppered-out”!.
Finally we selected a venue with strong appeal and ambience, The Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington.
As we told everyone, “this was not a Burns Supper”.
We chose to hold an afternoon concert starting at 2:30 pm on Sunday 27th January.
The program was entirely based on the works and music of Burns,
to be followed in the early evening by a dinner in the Scottish style.
However apart from the Address to the Haggis by John Paterson'
there were to be none of the usual speeches.
In the beautiful glass Atrium outside the ballroom we provided live music
both vocal & instrumental, as the people were arriving and during the intermissions.
The dinner was over by 7:30 pm.
The theme of the concert was the “Man & His Muse”, which was designed to both entertain and inform,
since a great proportion of our audience were Canadians with tenuous Scottish heritage.
Former Federation President John Paterson was our guest speaker and he delivered an Immortal Memory
during the first portion of the concert.
The highlight of the second session was the dramatic recitation of ‘Tam O’ Shanter’ by Ronnie O’ Byrne,-
a member of the Halton Peel Club. Ronnie reprised his winning performance
from the 2005 ‘Tam O: Shanter’ competition in Dumfries.
He also delivered a rousing performance of ‘Scots Wha Hae’ to a dramatic musical accompaniment.
The whole program was complimented by a backdrop of slides, appropriate to each performance,
projected on a screen behind the stage.
The feedback from the audience of 151 was most heartening
and there was an enthusiastic acclamation to do this again next year.
John Paterson commented that he had "never been to anything like this before -
and would be worth consideration by all Burns groups!”