I am not sure how to summarize Canada Day this year, other than it was a good day spent together (mostly) as a family. Mother Nature had a spoiler role to play as well. The original plan (if you can call it that) was to hop on our bikes and roll downtown. The festivities are spread out across Prince’s Island Park, the Riverfront and Fort Calgary. When we went downtown for Canada Day when Stephanie and the kids visited a few years ago, we really got footsore trying to get to everything. There had been alternate suggestions of spending part of the day in Banff, Cochrane or even Drumheller.
But we’re a family of homebodies. And the suggestion was made that we stay home and play board games instead. As the Canada Day Activity Coordinator in Chief, I suppose I was a bit disappointed, but I couldn’t fault the desire to spend time together. We walked out to Sobey’s for some groceries (buns, pickles, snacks). The weather was perfect.
We extended the walk a bit just because it was so nice. We played Rainbow Towers (a version of Jenga) before lunch, and had some hot dogs while watching the National Film Board of Canada film The Sand Castle. You can’t get more Canadian than that. The Miranda’s friends Dennam and Jordan showed up and all the kids went for a bike ride to the playgrounds over in Watermark. When they returned, we picked up the games with Castle Panic (we won-the castle withstood the invasion) before sub sandwiches.
But it was during the late afternoon that Mother Nature showed up and wasn’t happy. The weather turned foul, with hurricane force winds, light rain and the temperature dropping from 20 degrees to 8 degrees. We thought that there was no chance of fireworks, but the weather leveled out a bit after dinner. It was still chilly, but just overcast. Tammy wasn’t feeling well (she’s on some iron pills from the doc) and Miranda wanted to stay home. But Ian wanted to see the fireworks in Cochrane.
He and I bundled up and spent a few hours at the festivities in Cochrane. We walked around for a bit, and managed to find a frisbee to play with for a while. We watched the headline band Daring Greatly from where we were playing and later from up close.
In the end, Ian got his wish and we saw the fireworks. We were up close.
Happy 🇨🇦 Day!
Sounds like it wasn’t too bad there in Cochrane. Too bad the weather went south; it was so promising earlier one.