1934

Jim McCulluck finds himself down at General Gordon having received entry into the Kitsilano Boys Band by Arthur. Norie discovers Jim’s secret. Jim really has no aspirations to join but his mother is in seventh heaven while his father has to shell out 25 cents twice weekly from his one hundred dollar a month paycheck. A musical instrument becomes an object of fear and curiosity, a sought after commodity by the boys of Vancouver as it might be their ticket out of town if they are any good. Jim’s smug sense of superiority is shared by many boys in the band. Jack Read becomes a tolerant mentor who despite his age and experience seems content to play third trombone, year after year.

Phoebe asks Gordon to accompany her downtown so she won’t be alone. She thinks it’s a date but Gordon is more interested in telling her about his trip with the band to Victoria to play at Clem Davies Ministry as part of the send the band to England fund in the summer of ’34. He suggests they should have brought Joan along.

When the band arrives in Swift Current on their way to their first trip to England, the girls of the town challenge them to a soft ball game. The boys see signs advertising the game on the main street and hear the girls cleaned up on their last challengers, Captain McCullough thinks maybe they should have had two practices. Pearson of the Redshirts leads off with a three bagger. The girls are visibly discouraged as Pete Watt’s pitching brings in run after run. The score is 11-0. It is the same in the second inning. McCullough is looking pleased. Then, in a sudden turn of events Pete Watt deserts the Redshirts and pitches for the Prairie Chickens. What a man, the girls declare and the boys eventually lose baffled by Pete’s superhuman pitching.

In London, Jack and Dal get into the Kit Kat Club by slipping the head waiter a tip but they don’t get to meet Joe Loss, the bandleader who is doing his first BBC broadcast. They tell Stocky their manager about it the next day. Stocky tells them he books Joe Loss and if he had known he could have arranged for them to meet. Stocky is surprised they were not thrown out until they tell him they do it all the time.

Dal decides to dive off a high diving board in Shanklin on the pier. They have a week of engagements. The tower looks incredibly high. Nonchalantly, he climbs up and dives into the sea. That night a funny looking little man wearing a bathing suit and goggles approaches Mr. D while they are giving a concert on the pier. He is upset because Dal showed him up this was his act. Mr. D doesn’t let anyone berate his boys and tells him so and he runs off never to be seen again.

Quotes from Ambassadors of Empire Season 1, Episode 3:

Newspaper: “When Frank Wright, the noted adjudicator, steps from the train the setting, glowing under the rays of a glorious sun, is in itself complete compensation for the tedium of his all night journey from Lancashire. It is Bugle’s Gala Day, for the West of England band championships are to be decided during the afternoon. One can feel the enthusiasm and vitality in the atmosphere. Bandsmen in their gaily colored uniforms are everywhere, and one can gather from the snatches of conversation that the one topic is: “WHO WILL WIN?”  (The Cornwall Guardian, July 26, 1934)

Newspaper reporter: “Arthur’s boys however, do not seem to mind the heat. They go about in two’s and three’s, eating innumerable ices and resting in whatever shade they can find, before and after their playing. After all they are world champions in their class, gaining their world championship at the mammoth brass band contest in Chicago. That they have come to Bugle to compete in the only British contest they have ever entered is due to the perspicacity of Mr. FJP Richards, the zealous honorary secretary of the Festival, the presiding genius of the occasion as one might well describe him, who, when he heard earlier in the year that the Boys were coming to England, snapped them up for his Festival. It is the first time that any overseas band had competed at the West of England Festival and naturally Bugle and the four thousand people who get to hear them give the Kitsilano Boys a rousing Cornish welcome.”

Ignorant of school holiday arrangements in Canada, a reporter asks a group of the Boys how their younger fellows in the band manage for education while in England: “Holidays,” one of them says laconically.

     “Oh, your school holidays are on now?” I enquire.

     “Yes, we begin school holidays at the end of June,”one of them says, a dark smiling lad who sprawls on his back on the shady grass.

     “You’ve been all over Canada?”

     “Yes, and to the United States.”

    “Is it your first visit to England?” I ask. “What do you think of our country?”

      At first the spokesman of the group is a little hesitant. Then, as though anxious to be polite, he says,         

     “We like it pretty well. It’s very small. We don’t like your cities,” (why he doesn’t say), but presumably adds,“But we like your country. It’s like a park.” Almost every Canadian, accustomed to the wide open spaces, says that of England.

    “Your fields are so small, cut up by hedges,”says this Kitsilano boy.

Handel Parker: “In my opinion any band who can play a hymn tune as this one has done is of the highest caliber.”

Jack Benstead: “This has got to be the biggest publicity stunt ever attempted.”      

Landlady: “What time do you want to get knocked up?”

Landlady: “The knocker up man will be around at eight in the morning.”

Boy: “The station masters wore top hats and full morning dress.”

Garry: “In Dunfermline the boys are drawing crowds of 2,000 to 4,000 per concert and have sold 2,000 postcards and had to send down to London for more. The boys are swamped for autographs wherever they go.”

Fred Woodcock: “At the concert yesterday afternoon we had a crowd of about 2,000, and at the evening performance there were more than 3,000 people at the park to hear us. Of course the concerts were free. Too bad we have run out of postcards.”

Mr. D: “What reverence.”

Mayor Louis D. Taylor: “You have brought great honor to yourselves and to your city. You have set an example for Vancouver and have created an incentive for other boys’ and girls’ bands.”

Mr. D: “You must remember there are no junior bands in English competitions. So the boys had to compete against 21 other bands composed of grown men. I was tremendously elated when it was announced we had taken first place in the hymn, second place in the selection; first place in deportment and first place in the aggregate. It was a splendid achievement.”

Gordy McCullough: “They couldn’t believe how good we were.”

Mr. D: “Come on you fellas do your practicing at home.”

Herb Melton: “My, Torquay sure is a swell place. I would like to have stayed there for a while. At Plymouth we played on the Hoe, or sea front, right near where Drake was bowling when the Spanish Armada came up the Channel.”

Stu Ross: “The girls in England are hard to meet, but when you meet them everything is okay, so you see I’m having a pretty good time in that way.”

Stu Ross: “Gosh, I don’t see it at all. The ones I’ve seen are all stones. I went up to a relative’s place for a week and had a swell time. For the first two days I stayed at their place and played tennis and had some golf in the park nearby and had a swell time. Then I motored 150 miles north and stayed with some people up there with two boys about my own age for the remainder of the week. They had a tennis court and gosh did we have a swell time! We also went out to their swimming hole and had some swims and boy, it was swell fun! The band was not making enough money to pay for its hotel bills, so we had to sell a lot of postcards. We sold practically all the ten thousand we had brought, so we had to order some more.” While staying with his relatives, Stu was taken to see the Flying Scotsman go through,  ”It was going at  a good speed,” he said.

Ron Atkinson: “All the kids are counting the days, pretty soon it will be hours. Talking about hours – coming across we lost an hour’s sleep every night and now going back we’ll gain an hour – Gee, that’ll be swell.”

Englishman: “Having been a bit of a musician myself, a professional bandmaster in fact, I cannot speak too highly of the performance by the Vancouver Boys’ Band. I have endeavored to train full-grown musicians and the result this man gets from his boys is a great credit to him. Having earned my living at the game, I am naturally a little more critical than the average and I could not find a solitary fault with these boys.”