Fruhling's Parade of Champions

Holiday weekends mean holiday parades. As we've just finished both the Canada Day and the American Independence Day holiday weekend, I would like to compare and contrast some parade observations from both countries. If that sounds boring, please enjoy clicking on the funny pictures instead.

While visiting the small town of Ketchikan, Alaska, my wife and I had the opportunity to witness a true Fourth of July parade. Locals showed a sense of national pride that clearly rivals any amount of maple leaf face-painting we could come up with, and while we may wear our Canadian patriotism on our sleeves, they wear their American patriotism on their sleeves, hats, jackets, pants, shoes, earrings, handbags and doo-rags.



On the other hand, this holiday weekend I had the opportunity to experience my son's first parade here in Steveston, British Columbia. He loved the marching bands the most because they were loud and shiny. He also learned to wave a flag like a champ, and yes, those are bag pipes and Mounties in the background, because we're Canadian, after all.


Of course, both parades had the requisite Shriners. While we had dudes from the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine on mini-bikes, they had Freemasons in fezzes on All Terrain Vehicles.



While Alaska had a simple salmon strolling the streets, in BC we've apparently got these wild salmon that are too hardcore to walk, need to be contained by black nets, and have formed some sort of unintelligible punk rock group.



Meanwhile, both events had their share of celebrity attendance. Alaska welcomed Smokey the Bear, what looked like Geoffrey from Toys"R"Us, and some guy in a Donald Duck costume who's daughter appears to be demanding money so she can go do something potentially more exciting.


Not to be outdone, Steveston invited the famous Mr. Peanut, Edward Scissorhands' younger and more casually-dressed sister or cousin or something, and the famous eighties child safety icon, ASTAR from Planet Danger (who can put his arm back on while you can't).


And what parade would be complete without providing the children with fun giveaways, like this colouring book for example. While probably useful to know about in a dangerous situation, just think about the hours of fun any child would have using their crayons to carefully shade in Daddy's motionless body.

Finally, the Americans rolled out the big guns with a float brought to you by the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart. Note the prominent placement of the "United We Stand" text beneath the company's name, while the sheer magnitude and geographical accuracy of the globe really just speaks for itself.



In the end, the Canadians really had only one chance to top it off and come through with a parade homerun. So what did we do? I think every true Canuck knows the answer to that question: we sent out the guy with a skeleton on a motorcycle.