"THE main love of my life - after, of course, my wife, Mary - is playing the piano," says Nigel Grant. "It has been a central part of my life."
Music contributed to Nigel's presence in the world, which began in Dundee, Scotland in 1935.
"My mother, an amateur opera singer, was to give a recital at the Grand Hotel in Blackpool near the end of World War One," he says.
"It was announced that the accompanist was ill and the recital would have to be cancelled. My father, on leave from the medical corps and a good pianist in his own right, was in the audience. He offered to fill the role and that is how they got together!"
Piano lessons began for Nigel at the age of five and led to his own public performances when he was about 10 years old. At Dundee Royal Infirmary, where his father was a radiologist and his brother a surgical resident, he played for the wounded war veterans. Nigel remembers the veterans in bright blue flannel suits, white shirts and red ties, still wearing a sort of uniform.
Though his upbringing and education (Dundee High School, established in 1239 and Fettes College) were traditional, a career in medicine and a life in Scotland were not for Nigel. Instead, like one of his cousins, he would study engineering.
In 1955, Nigel graduated from St. Andrew's University as a civil engineer. Two years later, aged 22, he immigrated to Vancouver, following in the footsteps of that globetrotting cousin, who believed that Vancouver and Cape Town were the world's two most beautiful cities. Vancouver had the advantage of a family connection, with whom Nigel stayed until he found lodgings of his own in Kitsilano.
In the late 1950s, the expansion of natural resource exploration and development made Canada a mecca for engineers. Nigel joined Crippen-Wright Engineering and was posted to the Kootenays to explore potential power transmission routes that would result from the forthcoming Columbia River Treaty.
It was, as Nigel remembers, "a wonderful job for a newcomer to the country, like being a tourist, only paying more attention." Weekends at Radium Hot Springs in the heart of the Rocky Mountains were a long way from family vacations at the hydropathic hotel in Peebles.
Back in Vancouver, Nigel socialized at the YMCA and at St. Andrew's-Wesley Church fellowship programs. He enrolled in the Vancouver Sun Free Ski School, where he met Mary Brayne, a nurse at St. Paul's Hospital. They married in 1958 and moved to West Vancouver in 1962.
At work, Nigel used his lunch hours to practise his music. During his years with BC Hydro, Nigel was able to borrow the piano at St.
Andrew's-Wesley Church just across from head office on Burrard Street. "Can you imagine the wonderful uplift after playing for an hour in the sanctuary with the sun streaming through the stained glass windows?"
Nigel made a leap from the sacred to the sublime with his discovery of Music Minus One. In this CD series, an orchestral piece is recorded minus one instrument, to be contributed by the musician - in Nigel's case, the piano.
Over the years, with Music Minus One as his musical accompanist and a Grotrian-Steinweg grand piano, a
legacy from a musical aunt, at his fingertips, Nigel's proficiency improved but his confidence did not keep pace. Not, that is, until he faced down his stage fright at his retirement party in 1996, his first public performance since playing for the veterans as a boy in Scotland.
Since then, Nigel performs and talks about music for seniors at churches, residences and community centres across the North Shore. He's preparing a concert series for the fall at the West Vancouver Seniors' Activity Centre. Nigel is an ardent volunteer, a Fit Fella and founded the centre's Flight Simulator Club.
Music and medicine play on in Nigel and Mary's children and grandchildren. Daughter Mandy is an award-winning palliative care clinician and Cindy, a kinesiologist, has represented Canada in running competitions. Son Murray, a teacher, is a musician and composer whose daughters study dance and the piano.
"That pleases me," says Nigel. "The genes are carrying on."
Laura Anderson works with and for seniors on the North Shore. Contact her at 778-279-2275 or email her at [email protected].
