"RoseGarden" - - - - - - - from - nscave

This past weekend I attended the Halifax Dartmouth Natal Day parade. I hadn’t been to a natal day parade since the two cities were individual some years ago, and at that time each had its own separate parade on individual days. Since that time, amalgamation took place and the two cities were joined as one.

I guess I expected a larger extravaganza since two cities were joining in a single parade. Not so this time. The parade starts in Halifax, crosses the MacDonald bridge across the harbour and proceeds through the Dartmouth streets to its end.

My vantage point was downtown Dartmouth.

Wait Until They Get Here

The first aspect I noticed was the long trek across the bridge. No one can really watch the parade on the bridge and you certainly can’t see it from the water, so it is a long “wait until they get here” time period for the entrants to get from one side to the other.

Gaps, Long Spaces, No Continuity

The parade would have been good, not great, if it had been viewable all at once in one continuous line. I believe in the past parade marshal's or somebody kept things in line, together, and arranged entrants so there was a balanced variety throughout.

This can be difficult to accomplish sometimes, but there is no way there should be eight gaps, in a single parade where viewers are standing by  for long periods waiting for the next entrant to appear.

Note, this is not a comment on the people in the parade, that’s a lot of walking for those who had to do that, and you could tell they were putting their ‘all’ into it.

We Just Don’t Show Appreciation

This comment is for the viewers, not the people in the parade. This year is the Centennial of the Royal Canadian Navy. There were navy bands, air force, and cadet squadron representatives throughout the parade – and not to forget veterans and the police forces.

One thing I noticed south of the border is that anytime their military are present in any sort of ceremony or parade, the public cheer, clap and make a lot of noise to show their appreciation.

We don’t seem to do that. I noticed a few single claps here and there, but not much that would gain any attention.

I think we should be more appreciative – and show it!

This work by NSCAVE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License