Now it has been mentioned that Carrick was both beautiful and Scottish, which are a little unusual for a town. The town was, however, quite usual in that it had nine churches. Downtown there was a large Presbyterian church, an Anglican Church, and a United Church. Further out there was a Lutheran Church, a Baptist Church and a Catholic Church. On the very edges of town there was a Pentecostal church, a Mennonite church, and a Jehovah’s Witness temple, all of which were regarded with suspicion by the town’s people. The twins were special in that they did not belong to any of the churches. Being of the hippie persuasion their parents liked to spend Sunday mornings listening to music and organizing their buttons.
Most of the other children found this very surprising and exotic, so the twins were revered for having such a unique family.
You might also find it surprising, but the twins’ parents liked to organize buttons because their job was collecting buttons. They collected buttons and then sold them to people who worked in the theatre and in film. Because of this they often had reason to travel around southern Ontario, from Niagara on the Lake, to Stratford, to Toronto and even down to London, and they often took the twins with them. Rain and Sunshine loved these trips, they would sit in the back and roll down their windows and execute their surprisingly accurate impression of bagpipes out the window for all to hear.
Luckily, their parents immediately recognized the amazing talent of their daughters and talked about them to everyone they knew in theatre.
And so it happened that Rain and Sunshine began to perform their amazingly accurate impression of the bagpipes on stages around southern Ontario. They became quite renowned for their skill and were even allowed to compete in competitions against real pipers. They never won, but always pushed the pipers to play at the highest extent of their skill. More often, they opened the local piping competitions.
They would walk out on stage dressed in kilts and blouses, their brown hair brushed neatly and holding each others’ hands. When they got to the center of the stage they would smile at each other and Rain would begin to drone. The audience always hushed at the skill and professionalism of these two young girls on stage, for at this point they were not even 11 years old, and some would be moved to tears when Sunshine began in earnest with the haunting melodies of the Scottish ballads. Their specialty was Scotland the Brave and when they performed it sometimes the audience would spontaneously rise from their seats and dance, laughing and crying real tears of joy.
Of much interest to people was that the twins never spoke on stage, they never made set lists and yet they always knew which song they would perform next. This was put down to their being twins and having a special connection that others lacked. A great many articles were written about them in the local news paper. Reporters loved to tell their story, because young girls recognizing that they have been blessed with such a unique gift at such an early age are of interest to everyone.
One fateful day the phone rang; their mother answered it,
So the twins and their mother went to the CBC studio in Toronto where the twins were interviewed about their gift and performed Scotland the Brave for Bill Richardson with as much heart as they could.
And she knew that and all the radio audience also knew.
