The Hamilton Police Grade Two Pipe Band is a blend of young and experienced players, with seasoned pipers and drummers mentoring and playing alongside some of the top young players in the southern Ontario region.

The band was upgraded to Grade 2 in November, 2006 by the PPBSO, in a unanimous vote.

The upgrade came in the wake of a contest season in which the band won the contests at Hanover, Georgetown, Hamilton, Kincardine, Chatham and Maxville, where the band was again a North American champion. It completed a perfect season by winning at Fergus.

Undefeated, the band handily won the PPBSO's champion supreme title.

In 2005, in its first year in Grade Three, the band nearly swept all of its contests, winning in Hanover, Hamilton, Kincardine and Chatham, before packing up and heading to Scotland in August 2005.

Days after arriving, the band won the North Berwick Highland Games, finishing ahead of many of the top Grade 3A and 3B bands in Scotland. It  then finished 9th in Grade 3B at the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow, Scotland, with the band's snare line and mid-section ranked first. They were awarded a silver cup, signifying a world championship.

The band returned to the Worlds as a Grade 2 band in 2007, but did not make it through the morning qualifier on a dreadful, deluged day in Glasgow. The band also played at the Ulster Championships outside Lisburn, Northern Ireland, as well as at a concert staged by the Northern Irish branch of the Royal Society of Pipe Band Associations.

In 2007, the band won the Canadian Championship for the fifth straight year, at increasingly higher levels. It opened the 2008 season with a win at the Georgetown Highland Games and another at the Chatham and Cambridge Highland Games, and then at the Glengarry Highland Games, where the band won another North American title, its first in Grade 2.

Musicians in the band range in age from 15 years to the other side of 50 years. In all, there are some 20 pipers in the Grade Two band, and another 13 musicians on the snare line and drum mid-section. New to the roster this year are Alex Gandy, one of the top young pipers in the word and a former world champion with Field Marshall Montgomery, and several other top-flight pipers such as James Troy. A pair of longtime band members, Stuart Aumonier and Scott Haynes, are back after Scottish sojourns and are back in the piping ranks this summer.

So far in 2009, the band has won all of its contests and for the second year in a row came out on top at the North American Pipe Band Championships, which attracts virtually all of the top Grade 2 bands on the continent. The young nucleus of the band has won Maxville four times in six years, in three different grades.

The band is preparing to compete in August at the World Pipe Band Championships.

The Grade Two band is led by Pipe Major Peter Aumonier, a top solo competitor and nationally-regarded judge, and former member of the famed Simon Fraser University Pipe Band organization. Another nationally-known musician, John Gaudet, leads the drum corps.

2009 Band Roster