Marching to the beat of your own drum

There is something about going to a football game, the lights beaming down on the players, the crowd surrounding the field, cheering for their team, but in Northern Ontario, there was something missing about the whole experience that bothered Brian Overholt, who himself is a big fan of the football experience.

What he thought was missing was a full marching band.

“I’ve always been a big fan of US college football, particular Notre Dame Fighting Irish,” Brian explained. “The atmosphere that a band brings to a football game or to a parade is always something I’ve felt to be important to our city.”

So he made the pitch a decade ago when he first started teaching at St. Joseph Scollard Hall, initially pitching the idea to the football coach and getting the initial approval needed to start organizing the band.

“I remember after our first staff meeting when I started teaching here, I wrote a note to our football coach and asked if the team ever played with marching bands at games and he said ‘no’ but loved the idea and wanted to make it happen,” he recalled. “Everyone was fairly supportive at first and I did get a few snickers at first ‘this young guy's started out teaching at 24 wanted to start a marching band’ but they came back after seeing that first performance saying it was a great thing that happened.”

But the marching band didn’t always have their formal green and gold uniforms, Brian said. Originally, for the first couple performances, they donned yellow hardhats, green jackets, and bright yellow rain pants while waiting for their official uniforms to arrive.

“It’s hilarious because that first performance during alumni day, the uniforms we wear today weren’t here and didn’t exist yet,” Brian said. “I found a closet full of old Scollard’s green blazers and I went out and bought rain suits and they wore the pants and we ordered hardhats and put the decals on there.”

But after throwing everything together in time for the event, despite not having their proper uniforms, the first year was a resounding success, with members of the community excited about the idea of having a marching band in town.

Thankfully, they wouldn’t have to wait long. Luck would have it there was a marching band for a high school in the U.S. that was retiring their old uniforms and had identical colours to the Bears at Scollard—green and gold.

“I found a website in the U.S. that had uniforms for sale from school marching bands,” he explained. The culture in the States is very much focused on marching and school athletics. There was a school band that happened to have the same colours as us and I ended up getting each uniform for $20 each. We customised them for us and the rest is history!”

Brian remembered getting together with family once they arrived, seam ripping the old names and iconography from the gear before replacing it with Scollard’s signature bear.  And when the uniforms finally arrived it made everything that much more official—teachers and students alike.

“All it took was a couple of leader students to pull them out of the boxes, talking about how cool, official and epic it was and the rest were pulled in,” he said. “It was all very exciting. We felt really official after that.”

But starting a marching band is a huge undertaking.

Currently, after 10 years, they average around 55 to 60 students in the band with a solid mix of percussion, wind, and brass instruments, uniforms, and reputation. And despite the community showing excitement in their first year, it was still a lot of work for Brian to build the program from the ground up.

“In 2008 I began teaching music here,” he said. “I grew up playing in high school here in bands saxophone and drums and then I joined the 22 Wing band in North Bay and played with them for about 12 years. I got my teaching qualifications later on and my teacher was retiring the year that I finished so my idea was to keep the program going because I had a great experience here.”

At the time, Brian had never really been in a marching band—only knew the culture behind and wanted to push the idea at Scollard. He said it really took pushing the first group out of their comfort zone, strapping drums to them in uniform and marching them out onto the field to entertain and pump up the crowd.

“We had most of the instruments, but had a lot of help from a lot of people getting what we needed,” he said. “It was a very heavy drum line at first—which was a big appeal to a lot of percussionists at the school.  We had just over 20 students that first year and we’ve really grown since then.”

And over the years, their routines became refined, their marching commands learned and practiced and are now a solid part of both Scollard’s identity and pride of the community when traveling to march in parades.

From local sports games and events, like the Santa parade and the Downtown Christmas Walk, to high profile events in at Disney in Florida or the Christmas Parade in Toronto, it’s never a dull moment for members of the band.

“When we play somewhere, everyone cheers,” Brian said. “When we play in Toronto, we’re playing for over a million people and every time we round a corner its thousands more watching and cheering us on. We’re honoured to be able to do things because of the reputation we have.”

See: Local band entertains thousands at Toronto's Santa Parade

Brian said there was just something about a marching band that helped make events feel legitimate, official and he was honoured to help bring that to the community over the years.

“I’m very proud.” He said. “You hear in the north a lot of people say and compare the gaps between what we have here compared to what’s available in the south. My feeling is ‘why can’t we have that?’ We’re worthy.”