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Canada Day deserves to be celebrated

At the last Barrhead town council meeting mayor Gerry St. Pierre said people would understand and forgive the town for not having more of a Canada Day celebration. And in all likelihood he is right, which I think, in some ways, is unfortunate.

At the last Barrhead town council meeting mayor Gerry St. Pierre said people would understand and forgive the town for not having more of a Canada Day celebration.

And in all likelihood he is right, which I think, in some ways, is unfortunate.

While I understand that our recreation department is busy with getting the aquatic centre ready and won’t have the time and resources to put into Canada Day, that did not have to be the case.

I also believe part of the reason why people won’t be disappointed is that it doesn’t seem, from my point of view, that the town and residents have put a lot of emphasis on celebrating July 1.

In my short time in Barrhead I have attended two Canada Day celebrations, and they have been understated, to say the least.

My first Canada Day, in 2015, consisted of a presentation and speech from Barrhead’s homegrown national bobsleigh athlete Melissa Lotholz, a free hot dog barbecue, face painters, the singing of O Canada led by Const. Robert Hynes and a dance performance from one of our local dance studios. The whole event lasted about three hours from 6 to 9 p.m. ending with a short fireworks display.

While nice, it certainly isn’t the type of celebration I am accustomed to. Take Peachland, B.C. a town of just under 5,000 that doesn’t have an arena, curling rink or pool.

There, Canada Day festivities would begin in the morning, with the singing of our national anthem by town councillors, a cake cutting, 10 kilometre run, a parade, and entertainment throughout the day with close to a 20 to 30 minute fireworks display at about midnight. Celebrations such as this are not out of the ordinary. Taking a quick peak on-line, I see Mayerthorpe, is having a similarly scaled celebration.

Last year Barrhead’s July 1, festivities were smaller yet consisting of a hot dog barbecue, two or three tables in the Agrena lobby where they asked people to paint small tiles of something that uniquely represented Barrhead as part of the Mosaic 150 project along with the fireworks.

It looks like this year we will be in for much of the same.

Admittedly town council had hoped they might be able to combine the Canada 150, Barrhead 90th anniversary, aquatics centre grand opening for a much larger celebration — with I imagine heavy emphasis to be put on the aquatics centre.

In my opinion, I believe this was the wrong tact to take. Canada deserves its own celebration, regardless of what else is happening in the community.

True Canada isn’t perfect. Like all other nations, we collectively as a people, have a lot of work to do to help overcome issues like inequality, poverty and hate, but as a whole we live in one of, if not the best country in the world — one that deserves to be celebrated in a meaningful way.


Barry Kerton

About the Author: Barry Kerton

Barry Kerton is the managing editor of the Barrhead Leader, joining the paper in 2014. He covers news, municipal politics and sports.
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