Robbie Burns Day returns to SFU with bagpipes, haggis, rapping, and a poetry-reading marathon
Does listening to Scottish literature for four hours sound like your idea of an excellent way to celebrate Robbie Burns Day? On an appropriately clammy Vancouver day just such an affair took place. At the SFU Tech Gallery in Harbour Center on Wednesday, January the 25, a Robbie Burns Day poetry-reading marathon occurred with over 100 in attendance throughout the day.
The marathon beat a previous world record set in Hungary four years prior, which spanned an hour in length; SFU surpassed that record by going for four hours, nine minutes, and 24 seconds. Throughout the day, readers, who had to RSVP online, took turns reading from selected pieces by Scotland’s favourite son, each of which were five-minute portions of spoken literature.
The turnout was considerable with over 100 onlookers. “They had lots of different people reading poetry, singing, dancing, and snacking on Haggis,” observed one school administrator. “It was a nice change to have some festivities in the mezzanine between classes,” related Jeremy Ma, a student at the Harbour Centre campus. News of the record-setting event made Scottish news media as well as Canadian television broadcasts such as CityTV.
The event was packed with such notables as SFU president Andrew Petter, who kicked off the proceedings with Burns’ well-known poem “A Man’s a Man for A’ That”. Others in attendance included Vancouver Whitecaps president Bob Lenarduzzi, Bard On The Beach artistic director Christopher Gaze, and a distant relative of Burns himself, Teresa Margaret King. Students from the Centre for Robert Burns Studies at the University of Glasgow also took part in readings via Skype, reading their favourite excerpts virtually to the gallery.
SFU alumnus Todd Wong was another participant. Wong is known for the blending of Robbie Burns Day and Chinese New year in “Gung Haggis Fat Choy” celebrations of previous years. Wong participated by reading, as well as performing a Robbie Burns Day rap, which, upon conclusion, a spectator remarked: “You brought Burns into the 21st century”.
Concurrently, at SFU’s satellite campus in Surrey, a smaller celebration took place in the mezzanine area at 11:00 a.m., breaking into the scheduled Clubs Day agenda. “Some guy with a Scottish accent recited some poetry and then they gave out haggis around noon,” recounted Mikaela Osmak, a Surrey student.
Burns day is a mainstay at SFU as Scottish heritage is important to the university’s brand as well as the Canadian identity. The student institution of SFU has had a reputation for its radicalized activism, its left-leaning stance on social inequality, and its progressive standpoint on gender roles; all of which were subjects of Robert Burn’s compositions over 250 years prior. It is ingrained in the institution in the colours of the crest, which match the blue and red from the Fraser tartan to the group of sports teams designated as the Clan. Notables of Scottish-Canadian History include explorer Simon Fraser; first and second prime ministers of Canada, John A. MacDonald and Alexander McKenzie; first governor of British Columbia Sir James Douglas; and the first and current mayor of Vancouver, Malcolm McLean and Gregor Robertson, respectively.
The year previous, the university did not put on any Robbie Burns Day celebrations, citing budgetary restrictions. After a public outcry from the SFU community, measures of correction were made to ensure Burns Day would take place the following year. At a board of governor’s meeting last week, Petter stated that “it was a great morning and a really positive reaffirmation of the fact that we have strong connections, through our Scottish studies program, but also historically, to the Scottish community.”
“[Burns Day] is a part of culture and life at SFU, it’s very essential,” commented Wong, who created Gung Haggis Fat Choy as a Simon Fraser student in 1993. “It’s how I became Toddish McWong. I was a tour guide at SFU.”
