(9 Sept. 1873-25 Feb. 1935), piper and teacher of piping. (Pipe Major McVean; he used sp. McVean but his birth was registered with sp. MacVean) Born in Creggans, Parish of Glassary, Argyllshire, Scotland. Parents: John MacVean, who was a shepherd, and his wife Ann MacKay. Neil McVean spoke only Gaelic until he learned English in primary school. He served in the British Army in India and Egypt. After receiving his discharge, he settled in Australia, where he was a landscape gardener at the botanical gardens in Sydney, N.S.W. He served in the Australian forces in the Boer War. It appears that he lived also in Tasmania and New Zealand before coming to Canada, his home for the remainder of his life, in 1905. He was involved for a time in mining in northern Ontario, with a home in Cobalt. At this time, he met various Glengarrians, many men from GC being attracted at that time to the northern mining fields. In 1907, he came to live in the 4th Concession of Kenyon Township. The Glengarry News of 29 Nov. 1907 urged young men to take advantage of the opportunity and seek piping lessons, noting that the local regiment had to recruit outsiders for its band. Angus H. McDonell wrote 70 years later, “In our youth a talented teacher of Highland dancing and piping, Neil MacVean, along with his wife, also a professional dancer, left their Inverness, Scotland, home to reside in the log cabin of the John ‘Bahn’ Kennedy farm near Greenfield.… In the still of a summer evening, the musical skirl of the MacVean piping could be heard at a reasonable distance.” Angus D. Macdonald was one of Neil McVean’s students in piping. Also, Peter MacInnes is remembered as having been encouraged in early life by McVean’s example. Rather surprisingly, the well-informed standard history of GC piping and drumming, which lists some of McVean’s students, reports that Neil McVean may have been “the first teacher of bagpipe lessons in Glengarry.”
Neil McVean was married, probably in 1907 at Montreal, to Sarah Elliot (28 March 1886-10 Jan. 1972), born in Scotland, who was orphaned at age five and raised by a brother. She became early in life a teacher of Highland dancing. For this occupation, she assumed the professional name Ellen Rob Roy MacGregor, by which she was known to her friends. Late in life she resumed her original name. A writer in the Glengarry News of 28 Nov. 1963, referring to a St. Andrew’s concert of fifty years before, observed that among the entertainers, “Mrs. Neil McVean then of Greenfield, is still among the living, a resident of Beaurepaire, Que. She and her late husband danced in the Reel of Tulloch on that occasion.” Her husband was also a teacher of Highland dancing.
In 1916, the McVeans left Greenfield to settle in Cornwall, then moved from there to Beaurepaire (Beaconsfield) In World War I, he was refused by the services because of his arthritis. At Beaurepaire, besides teaching and piping, he worked as a landscape gardener. He was asked to be a judge at a Highland gathering at Banff, Alberta, in 1933, but was unable to attend because of a cerebral hemorrhage. He died at Beaurepaire (three children) He is buried at Lakeview Cemetery, Pointe Claire, Que. He was a Presbyterian, later a member of the United Church. He is remembered to have piped in a guard of honour three or four times, in as many countries, for Queen Victoria’s son, the Duke of Connaught (Governor General of Canada, 1911-1916).
Glengarry News 22 March 1935 * information kindly provided by his daughter Mrs Beatrice Renaud, of Rivière Beaudette, Que. She responded to an appeal for information kindly placed on the present author’s behalf in Gordon Winter’s GN Maxville column (see GN 3 & 17 Oct. 2001) * extract of birth record (photocopy, from Mrs Renaud) * MacPhee 10 (QF), 19, 23-25; includes names of his students and repr. of Angus H. McDonell’s “Highland Games History Is Reviewed,” GN 13 July 1977 * D. Danskin, Kathy Dore, W. MacGregor, R. MacInnes, A History of Piping in Glengarry (1975); portions of this hist. have been repr. in the Ken McKenna column in GN, e.g. (on McVean) 9 May 2007