40805: Malcolm Roderick MacCrimmon

At the outbreak of the Second World War, a young Malcolm Roderick MacCrimmon (born 1918) of Edmonton signed up with the Calgary Highlanders. His Uncle Art had told young Malcolm of the great pipers who had gone before him. A piper since the age of eight, Malcolm was immediately made a member of the pipe band.

George Poulter, a student of the MacCrimmon history and member of the Clan MacCrimmon Society of London lived in Surrey, not far from Camp Aldershot. Malcolm’s uncle Arthur MacCrimmon arranged for Poulter to meet with young Malcolm. Years of painstaking genealogical research assured Mr. Poulter that the young Canadian soldier was indeed from the blood of Donald Ruadh.

In 1942 Malcolm ventured north to Dunvegan Castle to meet Dame Flora MacLeod of MacLeod and effectively re-instated the line. This was a verbal agreement, which established Malcolm R. MacCrimmon as the 9th Hereditary Piper to the Chief of the Clan MacLeod.

As a Calgary Highlander, he studied at the Army School of Piping under Sir Willie Ross. Malcolm was later transferred to the famed Scots Guards and again was entitled to attend the piping school located at Edinburgh Castle. As it was a rare thing for a Canadian to be given a transfer to a British regiment, the story was carried in newspapers all over the UK and Canada.

At the end of the war, Malcolm took a bride (Mary Chisholm) from Gravir on the Isle of Lewis and returned to Canada. They went into farming just north of Edmonton and Malcolm put his pipes away for a few years.