When I heard that the Big Pond Concert, formerly the Big Pond Scottish Concert, was standing up and walking outside to a field this year, images of how it was forty-five or so years ago, when I was a young teenager, started to take shape in my mind.

Nostalgia.

I can see the long lines of cars on Route 4, waiting for a local volunteer, likely from the Big Pond Fire Department, to expertly wave them into the field where they would be directed to a grass parking space.

Rows of chairs and benches faced the wooden stage, with aisles of grass making it possible to walk to a seat. Little kids danced in these aisles when they heard a stirring tune. Toes tapped. When a fiddler got into a reel, a few in the crowd would make that yelping sound of appreciation you hear in Cape Breton.

People of all ages were everywhere. The concert had the vibe of a really good party. Rita MacNeil belted out Working Man on that wooden stage. A very young Ashley MacIsaac made his way from Creignish to sweep the crowd off its collective feet. Marie and Theresa MacLellan played for high-spirited square sets - lots of yelping then. The Rankins and so many more. 

The line-up was a reliable mix of the best music of The Island and beyond. And the occasional amateurs. I can’t sing now and couldn’t sing then but I was a part of The Harmony Nine, a Gaelic singing group led by Gaelic expert Josie MacNeil of Glen Albert Drive. (Yes, I too walked out on the wooden stage.)

There was a backstage area clearly marked “For Talent.” One year, I supposed that this meant me and so I walked up the wooden stairs, opened the door, and walked over to a sweets table and helped myself to a square. My uncle Jackie, without saying a word, placed his hand on my back and gently directed me back through the door. 

The lineage of the 2022 Big Pond Concert can be drawn directly back to the iconic concerts we knew in earlier years - it is in its fifty-eight year.

There is a symmetry to this year's concert being held on the field behind the Big Pond Firehall. The first Big Pond Scottish Concert was held a stone’s throw away, in what was known then as A.D.’s field - in 1964, the year of my birth, coincidentally.

On that first night, the power went out, leaving the crowd in darkness, and concert goers got their vehicles stuck in the wet field while trying to leave.

And they could not wait for the next year.

In recent years the Big Pond Concert was held in our acoustically fit firehall. Who knows what version of it we will see in another fifty-eight years? (Or rather, that those of you young enough to be here then will see.)

I hope it's still around. 

It is the younger people in Big Pond that have decided to take the concert back outside in 2022. Bravo. I look forward to sitting outside in beautiful Big Pond and taking in some Celtic music this Sunday, July 17, between 2 PM and 6 PM.

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