White Rock's Torchlight Parade

We've been going to White Rock's Torchlight Parade for most of the past 20 years. It is held on the August long weekend as part of the sea festival celebrations, either on Saturday or Sunday night. This weekend it was held on Saturday night, starts around 9pm. The premise is most of the floats are decorated with lights of some sort, so viewed best when its dark out.

The Torchlight Parade has the reputation of being one of the worst parades around. It is so bad that we are compelled to go just to see how bad it will be. Can it be worse than last year?

When my parents owned a house on Columbia Avenue there was a walkway on the other side of their next door neighbor's house that went to Marine Drive. It came out on the crest of the hill that separates White Rock's east and west beaches. This is a good spot to watch the parade with not too many people. Mostly locals who walk here because there is no parking for anybody driving in. The best part of setting up in this location was the house on Marine Drive across the street where the residents came out on the sundeck and yelled insults at the parade entries. This was a high entertainment value. One year some friends came with us and their son was about 12 years old at the time. He got in the spirit of the hecklers across the street and also started insulting the entries, much to his mother's chagrine. I thought it was pretty funny.

So what makes this parade so bad? Mostly its the timing. The parade will start, usually with a motorbike cop, followed by the parade marshall in whatever vehicle they're in. Then there's about a 5 minute wait till the next parade entry comes along. Then a few minutes later the next entry. Most of the front of the parade consists of one car after another with unknown people in them. There are signs on the doors of most of these cars saying who is inside. But its dark out. No one operating the vehicle thought to light up the sign, so its too dark for the spectators to read the sign.

Sometimes its hard to tell when the parade has ended. Just when you think its over because there hasn't been a float come past in over 5 minutes, another one is spotted coming along.

These days we park at a friend's house near the west beach and walk down, so we're right in the thick of the crowd.

Last Saturday night's parade was no different from what we've come to expect. The motobike cop, the parade marshall, and then a huge wait. Ah, we finally spot it way down the block and it reached us 5 minutes later. A float entered by BMO. My gosh, I wonder if this is typical of the service one can expect from this financial institution. I think I'll keep my business elsewhere. Even my father got into the heckling spirit by yelling at them to speed it up. He commented they need parade volunteers with whips going along the route to keep things going. So it was the usual see an entry, wait a few minutes, see another. Every now and then 4 or 5 entries bunched up together and moved along.

This is the first year the Vancouver Police Mounted squad weren't there on their horses. Also there was no fire truck spraying the crowds with water. I'm guessing due to the police and fire games happening in town right now that they were busy with that event instead.

I must say that Potter's garden centre had a great float. It was a hearse with a werewolf on top of the roof pulling a creepy version of Cinderella's carriage. They were advertising their upcoming haunted house this October at their 72nd Avenue location. Really well done.

Overall this year's parade was much worse than others I've seen with way fewer entries. It was also over a lot faster than past parades, lasting less than an hour.