2025 ScotFestBC

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June 20 & 21, 2025

In Coquitlam, BC

ScotFestBC: The 128^th British Columbia Highland Games will be held in Coquitlam on June 20 & 21, 2025. This is the largest Scottish gathering in the Lower Mainland of BC, attracting up to 10,000 people for the piping, drumming, heavy events, highland dancing and Celtic music.

The event is the home-games of the SFU Pipe Band, along with several other local competitive and performance bands. The Games are sanctioned by the BC Pipers’ Assn. and the BC Highland Dancing Assn. and hosts The City of Vancouver Championship & Premier National Highland Dancing competition and a provincial heavy weight championship on the Lew Ross Field. The Open Piobaireachd competition is held on Friday evening, along with a whisky/food event and live Celtic music in the Big Tent with local and international (Scottish) performers.

The Games also attracts food and merchandise vendors, artisans, non-profits and clan societies and holds a static British car and bicycle display and a cultural education workshop tent. Tickets go on sale in mid-February and registrations for piping, drumming, pipe bands and highland dancing will open in early spring.

Adjudicators

Bob Worrall

Bob Worrall is one of North America’s leading teachers, adjudicators and performers. Bob is a respected composer, having published three successful collections of bagpipe music. He is featured on three solo piping recordings and was a member of the folk group “Scantily Plaid”.

After a piping career with a number of Ontario’s leading pipe bands, including the City of Toronto Pipe Band and the General Motors Pipe Band, Bob retired from competitive piping in 1983. His solo accomplishments were extensive, both in North America and Scotland. He won the North American Professional Championship an unprecedented 7 times and the Ontario Professional Championship Supreme title for 12 of his 13 years in the professional class. He was also the 1977 winner of the March and Strathspey/Reel events in Inverness. He was a pupil of Bill Millar, Willie Connell and the late John Wilson.

A member of North American and the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association’s judging panels, Bob has been selected to judge the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow on seventeen occasions. For the last 19 years he has been the colour commentator for the BBC’s broadcast of the World Pipe Band Championships. He is a member of the Piobaireachd Society’s Senior Judges list and has adjudicated major competitions throughout the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Brittany and South Africa.
Bob’s recent overseas piping ventures have included teaching and performing engagements in Zimbabwe, Australia and Italy. His M.C. skills have been called upon by the Field Marshal Montgomery, Simon Fraser University, Scottish Power, Inveraray and District, Toronto Police Pipe Bands, and most recently, the annual Winter Storm concert.

Bob was the senior instructor at the Gaelic College in Cape Breton for 15 years. Other recent piping camps have included Kingston (Ontario), the Ohio Scottish Arts School, Lake Diefenbaker (Saskatchewan), Washington State and Oregon, Vancouver Island, Uruguay, Australia and South Africa. Weekend workshops, adjudicating and recitals provide him with a schedule that has taken him to virtually
all of the Canadian provinces and 36 U.S. States.