Let's have a reason to party all summer
Published Friday July 3rd, 2009
My kids went on an archaeological dig at Bore Park on Wednesday, and found treasures galore. The artifacts dated back to the days of Moncton's early settlers and gave my children a whole new sense of perspective on the place they call home. My kids, little Indiana Jones and young Lara Croft, had some help in all of this, of course. Staff from the Moncton Museum were there to help my kids and others interpret the finds (and just possibly they may have helped the artifacts get there in the first place).
It was all thanks to Canada Day in Metro Moncton Wednesday, which this year struck me as an event far more important than merely marking the 142nd anniversary of a bunch of old white guys signing a document.
Never mind, Canada. Canada Day is a great way to celebrate the start of the month we all wait for every year. When you live in cold and snowy Canada, I think the beginning of July easily trumps the beginning of January as cause for celebration. Throw in that whole history lesson aspect to July 1 and you have the perfect excuse for a party. And isn't it just perfectly Canadian of us to love a good party but earnestly feel we have to justify it with socially positive things like honouring our heritage? Sorry, I just had to point that out. And isn't it quintessentially Canadian of me to say sorry for having an opinion.
Nevertheless, opinions on Canada Day I have.
It's fantastic. People who work too much like I do got to spend an entire day with the kids, doing stuff they liked (for free!) We filled the downtown, spent money on food and drink -- in the Mazerolles' case, Canada Day downtown meant sitting down to a traditional Canadian meal of enchiladas at Mexicali Rosa's -- and as a mass of people came together to really show the potential of city hall plaza as an attractive community gathering place.
Sure, the lines for all the kiddie bouncy things and airbrush tattoos and face painting were too long and too confusing in the congested space, but it's never bad to be too successful, I think, and certainly never bad for the energy of an event to pack the crowds in instead of scattering them all over. (On that line-up note, memo to grown-ups: perhaps if we all took a pass next year on getting our faces painted and our forearms tattooed with Canada flags, the lines wouldn't have been so godforsaken long for all those little kids for whom face painting and temporary tattoos hold a fascination beyond our imagining).
At any rate, I say let's make sure as many people as possible have the day off and let's hold one of these downtown street parties every Wednesday in summer, because surely every week of summer is a thing worth celebrating. And while my first reaction was disappointment to realizing Canada Day couldn't be worked up into a long weekend this year, in retrospect, what a treat to have hump day taken right out of the work mix this week.
And then there were the fireworks, the best free entertainment of the year, every year. While they may have been free to spectators, the annual fireworks are of course really expensive, making the spectacles of the last few years even that much more impressive. Every time we in the crowd on Wednesday thought the fireworks must surely be over, another big round of salvos shot skyward.
At one point, some people even started to head for their cars, only to realize there were what would prove to be another six or seven kaleidoscope minutes left.
A friend of mine who just moved here from Toronto last fall told me Thursday she couldn't believe how long the pyrotechnics lasted, how impressive a show a community of our size could muster.
Meanwhile, my buddy and co-worker Greg Agnew reports Riverview "won the Olympics" for patriotism Wednesday. He declared Riverview's Canada Day celebrations a sea of red and white, while Moncton and Dieppe threw great parties that didn't necessarily scream Canada Day.
The nationalism in a good way started right off in Riverview, with a massive Canadian flag hanging from the raised ladder of one of the town's fire trucks. It carried on throughout with thousands of birthday revellers mostly decked out in the colours of the flag.
For the record, Salisbury's Canada Day events this year also felt highly "Canada Day-ey" in the assessment of the Times & Transcript's chief photographer, who as you can imagine has seen a lot of Canada Day celebrations in a lot of cities and towns over the years. It's not a competition of course, so kudos to every community that mobilized to bring its people together for a grand summer party.
So let's do it. Let's make eight Canada Days this summer, one for every week of July and August. Surely next Wednesday, we could mark the 142nd anniversary of the Fathers of Confederation getting over their hangovers -- remember, Sir John A., our nation's first great party animal, the man who brought 700 cases of champagne to Charlottetown for the Confederation meeting, was at the helm of the ship of state. The week after that we could mark the 142nd anniversary of the Fathers going out on the barbecue circuit to explain the changes to their constituents, and so on and so on. Get us the day off and we'll bring the fireworks and the people, I'm sure of it.
Oh baby. Oh man. Oh my gosh. O Canada.
n Brent Mazerolle is the Times & Transcript City Hall Reporter and a native of Moncton. He has never turned down a reason to party -- weekend or week day. His column appears in this space every Friday.
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