THE IRISH DANCERS were a big hit during the Vancouver parade with their colourful Celtic designs costumes. PHOTO: Brendan Flynn
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Roundup to St. Patrick's Day Events
VANCOUVER - Every year, a tremendous amount of time and energy goes into planning events for St. Patrick's celebrations and organizers of some of the bigger events including parades from Edmonton to Seattle are only now regaining their strength and rest.
This year, Vancouver held its first St. Patrick's Day parade since 1975. And what a parade it was! Mayor Larry Campbell declared the week of March 12 to 17, as "Celtic Heritage Week." The City of Vancouver, the Fire Department, Police Department and transit were all extremely supportive. Steve McVittie, Director of the Celtic Heritage Society and was the Parade Marshal along with Brendan MacRoberts and both did just an excellent job in making sure the parade started on time (Vancouver time, not Irish time) and ensuring that everything went smoothly and it did, just like clockwork.
President, Malachy Mahon of the Celtic Heritage Society and volunteers at the Society were responsible for organizing the parade and in two short months they were able to organize about 50 floats along with organizations and clubs who walked in the parade with flags and banners. Pretty impressive on such short notice ...imagine what next year’s parade will be like!
Warren Purchase, organizer for CelticFest 2004, is to be congratulated for his hard work in staging the many workshops and musical events that took place throughout the week along Granville Street.
JOSE AND MAURA (Editor of The Celtic Connection) proudly carried Celtic Connection colours in the parade. PHOTO: Brendan Flynn
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The Celtic Connection distributed the March issue of the paper all along the parade route and marched in the parade with our banner along with “Wilma’s army,” a contingent of Irish, Welsh and Scottish flag bearing Celts, all under the direction of Wilma Head-Paton. It was a glorious sunny day and we all had a fun time.
It was wonderful to see so many nationalities taking part in the parade, everyone from leprechauns to Brazilian dancers. The parade pictures on the pages of The Celtic Connection tell the story. It was estimated that there were about 20,000 people at the parade.
One of the comments I heard many times was, “’I never knew it was going to be such a big parade and I intend to get a float in next year.” Call Malachy Mahon, President of the Celtic Heritage Society of Canada at (604) 294-8227 and get you name on the growing list for 2005. Visit: www.celticheritage.org.
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