Monday, November 17, 2008

Santa Parade 2008

I realise that the Toronto Santa Parade is not book related, but for those of you who did not go and who did not see it on TV, here are some pictures. I have not cropped these, so they may be quite large. The parade was held yesterday (November 16th). My 6 year old son and I went to see the parade.

The parade started at 12.30 pm. Since we live not far from the end of the route, I know it takes anywhere from 1 to 2 hours to get to our end. We left home at 1 pm. It was snowing when we left home. However the ground is still not cold enough to allow the snow to settle. I think it helped that it was snowing, because the crowds were not as big as usual. One woman I spoke to, said she had been there since 10am.

The official route ends at the Church and Front street intersection. Last year my son and I had been waiting at Jarvis and Front street for the parade and I was disappointed to note that there were no music bands. When I asked a parade official, he said they were being diverted back up the road somewhere for some reason.

This year I went to Church street because that was the official end of the parade. For those of you who are familiar with Toronto's Flatiron building, it is currently undergoing repairs. Which means there was scaffolding all around it. We could have used that for shelter but we didnt need it, because the snow stopped falling right when we arrived at Church street. And not 5 minutes later, the first floats showed up. Our timing was perfect.

This year we saw ALL the music bands as they passed and were diverted off the parade route down Church street. All the other parade groups and floats continued going along Front street. There were 3 bands from USA - one from Ohio and two from New York state.


The group dressed in yellow and black is a music band being diverted down Church street. The women in the red jacket and blue jeans in the middle of the picture is directing them to turn the corner.



























































1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This parade looks like such fun! My kids would love it. Happy to hear the weather cooperated, too.