CLOVERDALE — They say strange things happen out in the country. Crazed moonshiners. Bizarre rituals. Crop circles. Livestock cloning experiments gone hideously wrong. The Dukes of Hazzard.
It is in the country - Surrey's version of it anyway, up yonder near Highway 1 - where you'll find the home of Jack Lee.
Lee's spread is like any other in the neighbourhood. Rural, lots of naturallytreed land, a solid house with a wraparound porch. It's a vision of old school normalcy. Surely there's nothing unusual going on in these here parts, right? Right?
Wrong. Listen and you will hear it. Quiet at first, it will gather steam like a runaway chainsaw. It's curiously out of place and at first a bit frightening. Yet, like Poltergeist's closet light, it's also beautiful and somehow comforting.
Suddenly it dawns on you. As weird as it seems out here in Green Acres, this is most definitely the sound of...bagpipes.
Not any old bagpipes either, but pitchperfect, magically manipulated bagpipes. Indeed, if Eddie Van Halen were a piper, that might be him you see standing in the backyard of the house with the wraparound porch.
But it isn't. It's Jack Lee. Welcome to the unique world of a man widely considered to be one of the very best pipers in the world.
Born 56 years ago in Manitoba and raised from the age of two in B.C., Lee is a proud Canuck and a lover of the off-thebeaten-path lifestyle he's always known. His carpentry skills played a big role in the home he shares with his wife and family. But deep inside burns a fire that catapulted him onto the world stage more than 30 years ago and keeps him there today.
"It (piping) has been in the family since I was a kid," he says, freely admitting that it's crazily unusual for a young boy two generations removed from Scotland to become so entrenched in such a Scotcentric tradition.
Lee credits his great grandfather for bringing piping across the sea when he immigrated so many years ago, and his grandmother for keeping the faith even though she grew up in an era when it "wasn't cool" for a woman to be a piper.
"I took an immediate love for the bagpipes when I was young, and I always wanted to be a piper. Probably what's kept
me going all these years is that I've never, ever lost the love for the instrument and the music."
Lee started playing at the age of four, blowing the heck out of a mini bagpipe (a tiny instrument that looks like a flute), and hasn't stopped since. Give him a spare moment, and chances are he'd find his way to the bagpipes.
As a young man, he was already internationally recognized. In his mid-20s, he was competing at the top levels of the game. And 30 years ago, he won the prestigious Gold Medal at a competition in Inverness, Scotland.
That, explains Lee, opened the door to the numerous titles and awards he's claimed since. Competitive piping is not unlike UK soccer with its various divisions.
"It's very hierarchal, and there are lots of levels. You have to win your way up."
With the Gold Medal in his grasp, Lee was where he needed to be. Twice he's won the Gold Clasp. Twice he's won the Senior Piobaireachd. He's taken the Gillies Cup, the Masters Invitational, and the Glenfiddich Overall Championship. The list goes on and on.
Most recently - in November - he won his third Bratach Gorm (the highest prize given by the Scottish Piping Society of London), competing most often against much younger players.
He does, however, have a secret weapon. Lee owns a dozen sets of pipes, but reserves his tweaked "MacDougalls," originally built in 1880, for the big time competitions.
"It's all about the wood," he explains. Along the way, Lee, along with brother Terry, found time to establish the SFU Pipe Band, which has gone on to win six world championships and record eleven CDs.
He's also an accomplished instructor, flying out the day after our interview for a session in Las Vegas and planning trips to New Zealand, Kansas City and Hawaii in January.
That his three sons (Andrew, Colin and John) also teach piping, and that the four of them run a business designing and manufacturing custom bagpipe parts somehow does not come as a surprise.
"I consider myself to be one of the most fortunate people in the world, making a living playing and teaching the bagpipes."