With Canada Day fast approaching on Sunday, you might be making plans on how to spend the day. May I suggest you spend it with us?
I grew up in a waterfront community in the GTA and while I loved the fireworks on July 1st, the day never really represented much more than that to me until we moved to South Georgian Bay. As our children grew up, we spent every Canada Day exactly the same way. We’d head out to the beach in the morning for a swim and then go home to pack a picnic. We even had a perfect wicker basket for the occasion, a red and white checkered tablecloth and always a few packages of Sparklers. Late in the afternoon, we’d head to the waterfront park in Collingwood where we’d blow bubbles, kick around a ball or play a little Frisbee. We’d grab a couple of picnic tables and before long, several of our friends would join us with their own children and baskets in tow. Then the local bands would arrive and one by one, take to the temporary stage set up in the park and entertain us with a few songs each. At some point, we’d dig into our baskets, set the table and have a feast all the while begging the kids not to feed the seagulls. Other people would arrive all the while and by dusk, it would almost suddenly seem the whole of the Town had arrived.
This is the part I love. As you wander around between lawn chairs and tangled legs, you see the local shopkeepers, the waiter from your favourite restaurant, your dentist, the mail carrier and your neighbours. There are boats gathering in the harbour, there are visitors to town, old folk and babes in arms. Everyone comes out to share in this and somehow, it always feels to me like a big reunion. At dusk, the band strikes up the first notes of “Oh Canada” and we all stand. Other than singing, it seems that a silence falls over everyone and everything for those couple of moments. The voices of our town become a choir that always makes a big lump swell up in my throat. I wonder, do other people feel that too?
Then the fireworks start … our own which always amaze and impress me plus, behind us we see the display from the Village and across the Bay from Wasaga Beach and points in between. The oohs and aahs form the new chorus to our small town, Canada Day song. There really is nothing like it in my books. Maybe we’ll see you there?
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