Military bands of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are organised within its Music Branch, and is composed of six full-time professional Regular Force bands, 15 Regular Force voluntary bands, and 53 part-time Primary Reserve bands. Bands of the Music Branch are often badged with the unit or Canadian Forces base insignia that they support.
Regular Force musicians are selected nationally by competitive audition prior to enlisting. Members of these bands often come from prestigious conservatories and schools of music. Reserve force musicians are hired and trained at the discretion of the local unit to which they apply. Prior to 1994, the Canadian Forces School of Music trained all recruits, regardless of musical level, to performance standard with Regular Force bands, but this practice was halted due to defense budget cuts.
History
The earliest known activity of a Canadian military band performing during the Trooping of the Colour at the Champ de Mars in Montreal on 18 July 1867, over two weeks after the Confederation of Canada. The first full-time Canadian military band was formed in 1899 with the Royal Canadian Garrison Artillery in Quebec with Joseph Vézina as its bandmaster. In 1909, an order by Minister of Militia and Defence, Frederick William Borden, provided the basis that Canadian bands were to never be unionized, during which a violation of this would result in the prolonging of outside engagements with the American Federation of Musicians. Bands were spread across the country for most of the early to mid-20th century, with units such as the Canadian Military Engineers and the Canadian Guards maintaining regimental bands. The band of the latter unit was the basis for the establishment of the Band of the Ceremonial Guard in the modern Canadian Forces.
During the Second World War, the RCAF Overseas Headquarters Band became the first Canadian military band to be based outside the country on a permanent basis. In 1941, Captain Frank Coleman became the first Inspector of Bands for Canada, during which he standardized the musical requirements for members in Canadian bands. Captain Robert Farnon led the overseas-based Canadian Band of the Allied Expeditionary Force as its conductor/arranger, being the equivalent of the American Band of the AEF led by Major Glenn Miller. Alfred Edward Zealley, a Naval officer who was considered to be the "Father of the Royal Canadian Navy bands", became director of music of the RCN in 1939 after her created a permanent music band at no cost to the Naval Service of Canada. Over the course of 4 years, he organized 19 navy bands for active service and oversaw the RCN School of Music in Toronto.
During the Korean War there was a large expansion of the army, and the size and number of bands increased. In 1954, a school of music was established in Esquimalt, originally for musicians of the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN), but now for all Canadian Forces musicians to receive training, being the Canadian equivalent of the United States Armed Forces School of Music and the Royal Military School of Music. The largest gathering of Canadian military bands took place in 1967 during the Canadian Armed Forces Tattoo 1967 for the Canadian centenary.*"Canadian Armed Forces Tattoo" Montreal Gazette, 20 June 1967 In 1974, Lynn Hong became the first woman to join a military band in Canada. Until the early 21st century the Music Branch also had drum and bugle corps and corps of drums within all branches of the CAF (the former formation is now only present in a few bands of the reserve formations). In 1994, the federal budget of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien resulted in the disbanding of five of the nine regular force bands. In June 1997, Art Eggleton, Minister of National Defence announced a restructuring of the Music Branch to included the creation of a new band in Victoria and another one in Edmonton,Andre E. Sallown, "CFWA's New RCA Band Forms up in Edmonton," The Ram, April 1998: 15 acting a full-time regular force naval band in the West. It is preferable to replace this with a high-quality source per WP:SCHOLARSHIP.
Pipes and drums Following the defeat of the Jacobite Army, which drew its main strength from Highland clans, in the Battle of Culloden in 1746, the British placed a ban on Highland influences such as bagpipes. As a result, many Scottish pipers immigrated to North America, often settling the bagpipe culture on the eastern coast in what is now Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. During the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution, the British government employed Scottish pipers.Stewart, Tim, , "The Pipes Play On: Canadian Pipers at War, 1914–1918 An Inspired Tradition," The Journal of Military History, Pg. 58. The great Highland bagpipe was a popular type of bagpipe used by Canadian pipe bands during the First World War.Allen, Greg Dawson, "Pipes and Pipers: Bagpipes in War," The North Eastern Folklore Archive. During this period, Canadian regiments often had pipe bands who played during battle alongside their units. The most notable among these bands was the Pipe Band of the 16th Battalion (Canadian Scottish), CEF, which was called in to escort the unit in the war.
By the time the Second World War ended, there was no full-time pipe band in the Canadian Army. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, a pipe band was authorized in the 27th Canadian Infantry Brigade known as the 1st Canadian Highland Battalion. It later became the Canadian Guards Pipe Band. In 1951, there were 24 reserve pipe bands. By 1965, there were 30 pipe bands divided into the following military commands and areas: 2 (Eastern Command), 1 (Quebec Command), 4 (Eastern Ontario Area), 8 (Central Ontario Area), 4 (Western Ontario Area), 2 (Manitoba Area), 3 (Saskatchewan Area), 3 (Alberta Area), 3 (British Columbia Area).
It was only in 1915 with the creation of the 110th Irish Regiment that an Irish-type pipe band was created following the example of the Scottish regiments of infantry, but this band was later disbanded.
Corps of drums
The earliest example of a Canadian corps of drums are found through the Fort Henry Guard and the Fort York Guard, historical group who both sport corps of drums that include fifes and are led by a drum major and a drum sergeant. During the Second World War, many regiments maintained small corps of drums that were stationed at all major bases. While most of them were staffed by active duty troops, others were volunteer corps of drums (and later drum and bugle corps) staffed by reservists and professional civilian percussionists. Corps of drums have been historically been based on the front-rank tradition of the Royal Marines Band Service. In the late 1940s, the Naval Band Service of the RCN and the HMCS Naden School of Music, alongside bands from several line infantry regiments of the Primary Reserve, continued this tradition. With the unification of the CAF in 1968, corps of drums in both the RCN and the regular army withered away as various bands were merged. While the navy recovered from this particularly in the mid-1980s within naval reserve bands, most of the army bands never recovered.
The sole corps of drums in service today within the Canadian Army is assigned to Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, and is modelled on the Corps of Drums of the British Army Royal Logistic Corps. Members are not professionally trained nor educated in music and are instead active soldiers who have chosen to participate in the corps. In July 2013, a five-sailor corps of drums in the Naden Band made a return to the public at the Victoria Day Parade.
Drum and bugle corps The tradition of the drum and bugle corps of Canada's armed forces began in 1860 with the Second Battalion Volunteer Militia Rifles of Canada (later named The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada, a regiment of the Army Primary Reserve), which raised the first true military DBC in the country. Francis Clark was the bandmaster and bugle major of this pioneer formation. Charles Swift succeeded him when he died in 1876, and when the regimental bugle corps began touring US cities, it helped usher the era of military and civilian drum and bugle corps all over the world, not just in North America. Their influence was also a factor in the formation of the American and Canadian marching band culture, co-shared with the British tradition already in place. The traditions of the regimental bugle corps of The Queen's Own Rifles, in later decades of the 20th century, formed the basis of the Canadian military and civilian drum and bugle corps tradition.
The Queen's Own Rifles were not alone in forming the drum and bugle corps tradition in Canada. In the 1880s, they were followed by another, La Musique des Voltigeurs de Québec, of another Primary Reserve regiment, Quebec City's Les Voltigeurs de Québec. Their drum and bugle corps closely followed the traditions of the Queen's Own Rifles combined with the by now active fanfare band traditions of the French Army line and light infantry during the period in France. It too toured the country, most especially in French-speaking Quebec. Today, the historic traditions of these two regimental drum and bugle corps continue.
The drum and bugle corps of these two regiments spawned countless other bugle bands around Canada and the northern United States, both military and civil, and several of these corps are active today in Canada, either as affiliated ensembles, or as part of the Canadian Cadet Organizations.
Bands based on demographics In the mid-1910s, a band was raised in the No. 2 Construction Company, which was the first all-black unit in the Canadian military. The band was created to perform at civic gatherings and in black churches. In 1917, it performed at the Dominion Day festivities, with a war diary noting that their performance "greatly assisted in entertaining the crowd and making the holiday a success." At the time of World War Two, various all-female bands were formed throughout the services. In the RCAF, the female band unit was the RCAF Women's Division Band (notably led by Maurice Dunmall from 1943 to 1944), while in the army the women's unit was known as the Canadian Women's Army Corps Pipe/Brass Band.
Band characteristics The Canadian Armed Forces mandate the existence of 2 distinct band types. Military bands are typically structured as brass and reed bands, or pipe and drum bands.Canadian Forces Military Bands and Marches Volume 1 Band Instructions A-PD-202-001/FP-000 (Ottawa, National Defence, 1992) These statuses, as defined in Queen's Regulations and Orders Chapter 32 and the Canadian Forces Band Instructions, requires that the bands follow all of the applicable Department of National Defence and Canadian Forces regulations concerning military bands and the provision of musical support. When two bands perform together, they are referred to as Combined Bands. When more than two bands are on parade, they are referred to as Massed Bands. Formerly, 2 more band types existed, corps of drums and drum and bugle corps.
Brass and reeds bands are performing ensembles consisting of several members of the woodwind instrument family, brass instrument family, and percussion instrument family.
Pipe and drum bands are performing ensembles consisting of bagpipes, and a drum corps composed of a bass drum, scottish tenor drums and snare drums.
Reserve corps of drums, active in a few regiments, are performing ensembles consisting of a percussion section made up of a bass drum, clash cymbals, tenor drums and snare drums (plus the optional glockenspiel/s) and a woodwind section of fifes and flutes. Bugles may also be carried by the woodwind section in keeping with British practice.