2023 Stewardship Campaign: Testimonial 6, Nick Perrin

During our 2023 Stewardship Campaign we will be sharing Testimonials from some of our members. We hope that you enjoy them!

In our final testimonial for this year, we wanted to leave you with a funny story. So much of what makes McDougall special is the people who make up the congregation. I think Nick’s memory highlights that while we take many things seriously, we also have a lot of fun!

Nick Perrin

I’m proud of McDougall for having the leadership ability and foresight to ‘shift with the demand of times’ by  addressing the changing spiritual-socio- economic and demographic  needs based  of the church’s membership.

Favourite Memory:

Facilitating the celebration of Pam Gibson’s 25th Anniversary as McDougall’s choir director (began at age 19). Pam served as the choir director, talented organist and soloist for well over 25  years.

In addition to Pam’s gift presentation, the choir prepared a  special medley of songs for Pam. This was followed by an interlude of a vocal  duet presentation by Nick Perrin and Bruce Elson. It was well known that these two had difficulty in carrying a tune in a hand basket. Unbenounced to Pam, Nick and Bruce had practiced to mime the words of a song on stage which in fact was being sung by two talented voices from Keith Watts and Will Mayhew who were in a hiding place behind the congregation. As Keith and Will crept forward to reveal the spoof, the congregation erupted into applause and demanded: ‘Encore!! Encore!! At which point Keith and Will, still unrevealed to the audience crept back to their hiding place to facilitate the Encore.  Pam as well as many of the congregation were mesmerized by the sudden singing talent of Nick and Bruce. After the applause had ceased a second time, Keith and Will marched up the center isle singing and the spoof was revealed. Obviously the spoof was successful, because at the end if the service, one of the elderly members who missed the spoof, approached Nick and said: “ I had no idea that you and Bruce were that talented!!!”. Even though Nick and Bruce were riding on their successful debut, they never proceeded with voice lessons and still enjoy singing out of tune.

To learn more about this years Stewardship Campaign, please visit their webpage.