Nanaimo Empire Days Parade From 2014
Nanaimo Empire Days Parade — 2014
For more than 140 years, the Empire Days Society, supported by countless unpaid volunteers, put on a first-class weekend of celebrations in Nanaimo. At the heart of it all was the Empire Days Parade, long recognized as the longest-running parade in Canada.
On parade day, Commercial Street was lined on both sides, from the cenotaph down to Victoria Crescent. If you wanted a good spot, you had to arrive early.
The weekend was packed with activities for young and old alike. HMCS Nanaimo was open to the public, and the grand finale was the fireworks display in the harbour, which filled the downtown with spectators. Traffic on the Pearson Bridge had to be controlled by police because the regular lights simply could not handle crowds of that size.
In earlier times, the celebration was a week-long event, complete with the crowning of the May Queen, dances at the old civic arena, and plenty of good, wholesome family entertainment.
Then, around 2015, in keeping with the anti-colonial mood of the day, pressure was brought to bear on the Empire Days Society to change its name. The word “Empire” had become offensive to some. People were still happy enough to let the hardworking volunteers put on the weekend celebration — they just wanted the name changed.
When that name change was not accepted, funding was diverted, and a new group came forward, saying they would run the event without honouring Queen Victoria or the now-offensive Empire.
Long story short: the first year under the new organizers, the celebration was a mere shadow of what it had once been. In the years that followed, it was not even a shadow of itself.
Is there a lesson in all of this? Perhaps. Maybe not everything rooted in the Empire was such a bad thing after all.
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