By Dave Babbitt – Special to the Sydenham Current
When I started thinking about the potential for future retirement in about 2010, I decided to attend a retirement workshop presented by the OSSTF.
The most important piece of advice that I took away from that workshop was that to maximize the quality of one’s retirement years, THE most important thing was to figure out beforehand what you were going to retire to.
Despite what many people may think, I have a very wide range of interests beyond music.
I planned to start a couple of small business enterprises such as the digitizing of VHS tapes, audio tapes, film conversion etc, an audio-visual support business as I had been involved in that for many years, a consulting business for planning the music for weddings, but I also wanted to pursue my love of woodworking, travel more, and most importantly, return to my passion of snowmobiling.
Notice that none of that involved helping around the house. (insert smiley face here)
September the 2nd of 2014 was the first day back to school and I recall coming home at the end of the day and saying to Clare, “this is the year, I’m going to retire”, so on June 26th, 2015, I walked out of WDSS for the final time and at that point, almost all of my retirement plans quickly went out the window!
I started a band,
That was definitely not in my plans.
Fast forward to 2026 and this most incredible band of 60 members is consuming most of my time.
The success of the Wallaceburg Concert Band has been unfathomable, and to be clear, it’s not because of me, but rather despite me.
With this success however, I have some serious concerns.
Currently, we’ve largely tapped out the supply of wind musicians in the immediate Wallaceburg area.
Fortunately, our band has earned a reputation for high musical standards, fun, and a family-like atmosphere which has attracted a significant number of high-quality musicians from other bands outside of Wallaceburg.
We’re incredibly fortunate to have these musicians join us BUT, I fear for the long-term survival of our band.
There is currently no feeder system that is developing the next generation of wind musicians locally.
We are riding high right now, celebrating our 10th Anniversary, but I wonder “where will we be in another ten years?”
I’m hoping that the WCB isn’t another footnote in our musical history.
When I started the WCB, I also started both “Learn-to-Play” and “Get back to Playing” programs.
In the early days, those programs were well attended but have slowly faded away.
This year, we put a pause on our Learn-to-Play program as it wasn’t providing dividends.
Largely, parents were sending young people to the program but we have not reaped the reward of one single young person sticking with it.
Learning to play an instrument takes time, effort, individual practice, focus, a certain level of academic ability, and very importantly, parents who will ensure their children put in time between rehearsals.
One cannot come for an hour and a half session once a week, put no time in between sessions, and find satisfying success.
“Kids” would attend when it was convenient, but as soon as hockey, baseball, basketball or “whatever” season started up, they were gone.
We were then left holding expensive instruments that we invested in for them to play, that were then left sitting on a shelf.
