Canada Day Parade

1Canada Day Parade

  by

  Valerie D. Kirkwood

  *****

  Canada Day Parade

  Copyright © 2015 by Valerie D. Kirkwood

  *****

  Canada Day Parade

  There’s nothing quite like a Canada Day Parade in a small town like Kemptville, Ontario. Nearly everyone is involved in one way or another, either walking in the parade, or lining the streets to watch it pass by. It’s generally a lot of fun, and usually nothing untoward happens...

  This year I was again handing out candy with the Friends of the Ferguson Forest Centre. Our float was a hay wagon piled with a selection of trees from the Centre’s retail nursery, pulled by a pickup truck driven by Centre Manager, Ted Parnett. The trees had been decorated with a multitude of paper butterflies coloured by grade school children. They had looked pretty two hours earlier, but now they humg limply in the afternoon humidity.

  The parade mustered in the parking lot in beside the B&H Grocery. Ted parked the float where numbers 47 and 48 had been chalked between the painted yellow lines. I noticed that the organizers had put the ponies on the far side of the parking lot, well away from the lady with her two pack llamas, all decked out in red and white tinsel. They certainly didn’t want a repeat of last year’s unfortunate incident.

  Beside us, in 45 and 46, the South Branch Elementary School African Drummers patta-pummed their gimbes, whiling away the time. Their brown and orange striped African costumes looked a little the worse for wear in the heat. On the other side, in 49, (50 was as yet vacant) sat a little electric car pulling a garden cart, on which sat a shiny, whirling, flashing, Rube Goldberg contraption of some sort. A computer printout banner (my gosh, who had continuous-feed paper anymore!) proclaimed: Dyn-O-Tel Corp.

  Dyn-O-Tel. Ah, yes, the group had bought the Richardson Building – at least the part of it which hadn’t collapsed during the snows of ‘13 – and were using it for who knew what over there on Van Buren Street, across from the old Co-op, now defunct. The Municipal Councilors had been happy to give the company a tax break to entice them to move in, but the expected flush of jobs had never materialized. We rarely saw the denizens of the refurbished building, though a multitude of antennae and transmissions towers of varying shapes and sizes had sprouted on the roof. All we usually ever saw of them was one or two making late-night coffee and donut runs to the Tim Hortons. Mostly, we cursed the road work on Van Buren, where Hydro contractors were digging a trench between the substation and the Richardson Building.

  “Do you know what they do there?” I asked Laura, Ted’s wife, nodding toward space 49. Her son, Cole, had landed a summer job there, mowing the lawn and keeping the weeds down in the parking lot.

  Laura shrugged, transferring candy from the store-bought bags to the wicker baskets we would carry. “No,” she said. “Cole got a tour through part of the place on his first day there. He said it’s full of computers and white boards, and tables piled high with printouts in one section. He said there are piles of circuit boards, and wires, and other electronic gear all behind a steel door. He caught a glimpse one day while he was on his way to the loo.” She handed Maureen one of the candy-filled baskets. “Remember to save some for the kids at the end of the parade route. I hope I bought enough this time.” She winced as one of the Shriners’ (Tunis Temple, Brockville) funny airplanes whizzed by the bumper of the truck, headed toward where the teens of the 73's Hockey Team had nonchalantly gathered beside the convertibles filled with the North Grenville Senior Girls’ Soccer Club. The girls shrieked at the airplane, and the boys tried to look cool. The Shriner gave them a big smile and a few toots of his claxon horn, and whizzed away to see what other groups he could stir up.

  A rumble of thunder distracted me. A few cumulus clouds had merged into a tower shape, with a mini-anvil on top. At the moment, the cloud was just west of us. “Maybe it will miss us. Two minutes to go before the parade is supposed to start.”

  As though the thunder had been a cue, the Kemptville Legion Bagpipe Band punched their instruments into working order and formed ranks under the B&H sign. The Shriners fired up the rest of their airplanes, funny cars and other assorted vehicles, mostly powered by what sounded like lawn mower engines. The Swords to Plowshares Museum had their collection of WW II vehicles out, and swarmed like ants over two recalcitrant jeeps which refused to start. One finally roared to life in a bluie cloud of smoke. Antique cars, monster trucks, ATVs, a school bus, a moving truck – its only concession to Canada Day being two tiny flags stuck in the rear door hinges – a farm tractor, and many pickup trucks coughed, grumbled or purred to life. The fumes of unburned gas, mostly from the Shriner contingent, probably added far more carbon to the atmosphere than the Ferguson Forest could mitigate in an entire year.

  The parade moved out in reasonable order, with a couple of brawny Reservists pushing the recalcitrant jeep. The patta-pums from the African Drummers coalesced into a coherent rhythm as their float moved out onto the street. Ted eased our float out carefully, wary of jostling the potted shrubs out of position. The little paper butterflies fluttered on a suddenly gusting breeze. I looked up at the micro storm. It might, just, pass us to the south – not good news for the people at the big celebration down on the college campus.

  Looking rather smug, the driver of the Dyn-O-Tel micro car glided in behind us. He had on a red Hawaiian shirt, with a white pocket protector. Even more lights twinkled, and whirling things intermittently extruded and retreated into the bowels of the machine. He had only just turned the corner onto Clothier street when a distraught fellow broke away from the crowd and ran up to the driver’s window. He was wearing a green plaid shirt with a black pocket protector, and beige corduroy pants, not at all Canada-Day wear, I thought.

  “Harry, what are you doing with that out here?” he demanded, clutching at the bottom edge of the window frame..

  “It’s only the Mark II,” Harry said with a grin. “Besides, aren’t we supposed to be raising our company’s profile in the community? Now stop that, Jeff,” he said, slapping at the other’s hands. “You’re making a scene.”

  The other fellow glanced over his shoulder at the parade watchers. The children were focused on candy, but the adults seemed interested in the little altercation.

  “All right. But get that thing back to the lab right quick after the parade.” He faded back through the crowd, but I caught periodic glimpses of him making his way along the storefronts, keeping pace with the Dyn-O-Tel float.

  The little storm cloud gave a burp of thunder. Patta-pum went the Drummers, without a missed beat. Behind us, right behind Harry and his gizmo, two gray ponies with Canadian flags over their rumps, flanked a team of miniature horses pulling a cart. The driver had on a flouncy pink dress. A Pomeranian with bright black eyes panted in the space behind the seat. I couldn’t see the Llama Lady. All the better, I thought. One of the pony riders looked nervously at the cloud. Her mount tossed his head against her tense reins.

  We turned the corner onto Prescott Street. I had a little skirmish with a pushy urchin who tried to grab a double handful of candy out of my basket. A cheer arose from the crowd father down the street as the Swords to Plowshares managed to roll start the reluctant jeep on the downgrade to the bridge. After a couple of smoke-laden backfires, the engine caught and sounded like it might stay running.

  A spate of rain blew by us, not enough to disperse the crowd. Harry, looking somewhat alarmed, stopped his car, ran to the gizmo, poked a few buttons, and some of the extendables retracted and stayed that way. He hurried his float back into position, the ponies and minis trotting to keep up. The 73's, next in line, were in no such hurry, because the Soccer Girls were behind them, and as well, both of the min
is had taken advantage of the pause to fertilize the pavement.

  The thunder cloud now loomed ahead of us, having taken an unusual turn to the northeast. It was growing more inky by the second. I could see lightning flickering under its eastern flank, and I counted the seconds to the thunder. Two and a half. That would put it somewhere near Van Buren street. I glanced back at Harry. He seemed not to have noticed, as he waved at a cluster of children in strollers, who waved back at him. They seemed fascinated and amused by the twinkling lights on the gizmo.

  Over the bridge we went. I jogged to the back of our float to refill my candy basket. Patta-pum, patta-pum, patta-patta-patta-pum went the Drummers, their rhythm echoing back at them from the brick and glass storefronts. The Scotiabank building, more modern building than most, had a facade set at a 45 degree angle to the corner of Prescott and Asa Streets. The Drummers’ rhythms bounced oddly there, doubling and halving, magnifying and augmenting at a tremendous rate. The students noticed this, and drummed with more vigour, grins widely. Two of the Shriners’ funny cars circled around them, to the crowd’s delight. Up ahead, the sick jeep gave one enormous backfire, and the storm produced a blinding flash of lightning, one fork of which zigged and zagged toward Harry’s gizmo. I flattened myself against the pavement, hoping that I wasn’t about to die.