I decided to attend because (1) I enjoyed square dancing (2) I already had a background in music and (3) it sounded like it could be fun! (nobody mentioned all the hard work !!)

Shortly after that session, John held a Clinic (4 sessions) with 9 prospective callers attending. It didn't cost a great deal but did give us an ‘idea’ of what being a caller was all about. Following this, one of our other Callers (Mel Wilkerson) took a vested interest in helping us develop our calling skills. His investment in time & energy (& some $) was totally his own with no request for compensation. After several months of helping us collectively & individually, he organized an open dance whereby 5 of the original 9 called to about 12 squares. The square dance community was totally supportive throughout this whole period volunteering numerous times to be available to ‘dance’ as we ‘learned’ to call.

We were now about a year after the Clinic. From that point, two of us (myself & Brian Crawford) decided to ‘get really serious’ about it & put ourselves totally in the hands of Mel and over a period of the next number of months, we really learned ‘tons’ and again the only ‘compensation’ requested was ‘ do it for someone else when the opportunity arises’ !

After all this was done, it was now the summer of 1998 and these two 'newbies' looked at each other & said… OK now what?

OK, so how do you become a REAL caller?    No club is likely to hire you because you have no experience, so what do you do?   The answer was ‘start your own club’ and so we did. Over some ‘guffaws’ about 2 callers not being able work together, we successfully launched a Basic & Mainstream Club, initially with 20 dancers. We called it the Town & Kountry Kickers!

However, we also decided that we’d do things just a little different from what was considered ‘the norm’ and thus the new Club was founded on the premise that the Dancers were there for FUN & FRIENDSHIP, to have a good time together and with any kind of luck, learn to square dance!

Amazingly, although Brian & I differ in age (by about 25yrs) our concept of what we wanted as Callers & what we wanted for our club & dancers were in perfect synch!  Unfortunately, our ‘partnership’ only lasted one year as caller vacancies at other clubs pulled him away, so I continued on with the new club to this day teaching both Basic and Mainstream.

We were totally successful and the Kickers club continues to flourish as a Caller-run club, celebrating  10th year in 2007-2008 and  dancing 5-6 squares each week.

Since launching the Kickers in 1998 I've done numerous One Night Stands for Church groups, private parties, weddings etc. As well, I've taught MWSD to both grade school & high school students. On trips to Scotland I've also had the opportunity to call a number of times in Scotland for the Aberdeen Kilt Kickers & the Cupar OK Square Dance Club, as well as for public & private events.  It was Great Fun !

Locally I've called at a number of Open Dances at Basic, Mainstream & Plus receiving very positive responses throughout. And  served 2+ years as the chair of our local Callers Association (Ottawa & Area Callers Association) which meets monthly during the dance season, which here runs from Sept to May.

In the fall of 2001, I was approached to call for another Basic & Mainstream Club as their Caller had been transferred away. I agreed & called for the The Bay Waves,  for the next 5 years.  At the start, this club was  2 years old but generally has 'younger' (35-45 yrs old) dancers with high energy !  We started at that time with 2-3 squares per night, growing over time to 5-6 squares per night when there's visitors. I considered my time there as a success, but decided that a change (for me) was necessary, primarily to reduce my weekly 'square dance' commitments in order to have more 'personal' time.

Following a period of teaching Plus to a single square of dancers I then ran a Plus Teach workshop in the summer of 2002  and then launched a new Caller-run Plus Club in the fall of 2003.   We started with 3 squares and now in our  5th year we're dancing 7-9 squares each week!  This club introduced is a 'new concept' for Plus for this area - combining a Plus teaching program & full Plus dancing into a single evening.  It worked very well & was exactly what the dancers were wanting.  This year (2007-08), I dropped the teaching aspect & now just dance the full Plus program and have 2 tips of APD each night to increase the dancer skills.  APD has been received well & an improvement in dancer skills is very apparent, so we'll continue that going forward.  For more information, check out The Trackers website. 

After giving it some thought, I decided in the fall of 2006 that I would start learning to teach & call A1.  Knowing that the transition from an A1 dancer to an A1 caller was not a task of simply  'changing hats', I started my 'learning' process by recruiting dancers who were (1) ready to move up to A1 and (2) willing to be 'students' to the 'learning' A1 Caller !  Brave group eh?  Well, we had 2 squares each Wed. morning  learning the A1 program as I learned to teach & call it.  We've been having a great time together & the dancers have chosen the name "Lockits" for this group.  We continued on as a 'basement' group until April 2008 and I will now launch a new A1 club of the same name in the fall of 2008 !!

So, as you can see, I'm calling 2 evenings and 1 morning each week and try to get in an evening of  A1 dancing as we can fit in the time.  Unfortunately we had to drop our regular weekly Round dancing simply because our schedule was far too busy.   Despite the hectic schedule from September through to the end of April, nonetheless, it IS enjoyable!  

My personal motto is that should I ever stop enjoying it, then I've got a pile of vinyl Frisbees & CD's for sale !!

I joined CALLERLAB as an Associate in 2003 and subsequently joined the Mainstream & Plus committees.  I attended my first CALLERLAB convention in April 2006 and have now become a full member of Callerlab.