Since 1866, the 34th Battalion and its successor units including the 116th Battalion, 182nd Battalion, and the Ontarios, maintained an award-winning brass marching band. The Regimental band earned top national honours in 1948 at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. The band's patron, Colonel Robert Samuel McLaughlin (Colonel Sam), funded the purchase of the band's instruments and uniforms for several decades, having gone so far as to build a bandshell at Oshawa's Memorial Park to provide the bandsmen with their own venue to entertain Oshawa's citizens.