December 3: Ow my environment
Posted by Candice on December 3, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Tom was right. This post is more cheerful. It is actually a recounting of our first Toronto Christmas event.
So the Toronto Christmas parade is held in early November. For the past two years Tom and I have contemplated going but decided against it because it is hard to get in the holiday spirit when it is 11 degrees out and you are busy doing fall-like activities (you know, jumping in leaves, making pumpkin pies, wearing a lot of orange sweaters). In fact, I have a personal policy to ignore all things Christmas until November 25 (at which time I acknowledge that other people are doing holiday things) and to not engage in any holiday activities myself until December. This keeps it special.
Anyways, I broke my policy a little bit when I went to the Toronto tree-lighting event last weekend. The event took place outside city hall and Tom and I arrived just as the mayor “flipped the switch” and turned on a giant lit Christmas tree and a whole design of lights around the square. I really like how Toronto does try to instill a bit of city pride and inclusiveness through events like this. Just in the way the mayor talks and the way the festivities are presented it is a really positive environment for anyone looking for a little community spirit. Anyway after the lights went on about 1/2 of the people left and the actual party got started. There were brief performances by Steven Page; Matt Dusk; Keisha Chante; and some up and coming dance band that did a really bad job lip syncing and put on an unnecessarily fake performance. We were mostly there to see Steven Page (who was tons of fun and sang some old BNL songs. Does he have custody of them? How does that work?) but the other performances were fun too and everyone did one holiday song which helped set the mood.
When the musical performances ended some circus performers scaled city hall with a lit torch, zipped from the tower of one building to another and ran across the top of the building to light the fireworks beginning a crazy fireworks display. It was really incredible. The fireworks were all choreographed to music and created an absolutely awesome spectacle. Tom and my conversation went something like this.
Tom: Ow, my environment.
Candice: I was going to say 1/2 of the world’s children don’t have access to clean drinking water, but same sentiment.
It was a great holiday kick-off and you can check out the pictures on Tom’s flikr.
Subscribe to the comments for this post