Jim Skelton

Jim came to the pipes later in life. Growing up in North Vancouver, he always wanted to take up a musical instrument, but it seemed that the opportunity never came. Bible College provided that opportunity and he decided to learn the oboe. Though he had no musical background, he advanced quickly and was playing in the school orchestra after only one year of lessons.

The oboe took a back seat after he left school, married, and travelled extensively in the US and Mexico, fulfilling an assignment with the Summer Institute of Linguistics as a linguist/translator for an indigenous people group in the deep South of Mexico.

After settling down with their 3 children in 1990, he picked up the oboe again and started playing for a small orchestra in Tucson, Arizona. That led to opportunities to play in a volunteer symphony orchestra, a chamber ensemble, a chamber orchestra, and eventually to playing professionaly with the Sierra Vista Symphony.

Upon moving back to Canada in 2003, Jim decided to take a boating course and per chance ran into another student of the Powell River School of Piping, who cordially invited him to sit in on a class. Jim saw this as an opportunity to do something very different from what he has done before musically--memorizing tunes, marching, and playing in forums he's never played in before.

After studying with the practice chanter in the last half of 2004, he moved to the pipes in early 2005 and marched in his first parade in Cumberland that spring. He looks forward to the many opportunities to contribute to the festive atmosphere of community events.