Canada's 145th Birthday Parade Downtown Vancouver 2012

So, I, along with three other Whitecaps volunteers were involved in the Canada Day Parade held in downtown Vancouver at 7pm in the evening.  This was the Official Whitecaps car.  It was filled with 500 posters and I was given a bag of over 1000 WC tattoos.  This was my first time ever taking part in a parade and it was a pretty awesome experience.  I can now cross it off my bucket-list!

When I got there, I saw that the drummers had already been there as their drums were set up along with a table and and some chairs.  But I was the only person there.  Then along came David.  One of the members of my Club Ambassadors team.  So we sat and waited together for the Whitecaps to arrive.  Or anyone for that matter.  We got hungry so we decided to look around a bit for the "goodies" we were promised would be there.  Of course it was right across from our check-in tent.  On the way there, we ran into the other volunteer and my Co-Team Leader, Ashley.  So the three of us returned to the WC muster station to wait for our Team to arrive. 

So, once the drummers all gathered and the team arrived with the car, all we had to do was wait for Spike, the Whitecaps mascot.  When he finally did show up, it got very interesting at our Muster Station.  The Bellydancing team pulled up behind us and our drummers started drumming.  Spike hopped up on top of the car and was busy taking pics with people as they had all started to line up!  

When he was done with that, he then hopped off the car and went over to belly dancers and they started to show him some of their moves.  To which, Spike, tried to mimic them and it suddenly became a dance off!  As we were waiting for the parade to start moving, two of the belly dancers saw Spike dancing to the dummers on the sidewalk and decided they would come over.  I told them to join him and show him a few moves.  Which they did.  He was schooled not once, but twice! Check it out!

Burnaby North High School was stationed ahead of us and were on the road practicing an excellent rendition of Thriller, by Michael Jackson.  It was pretty awesome.  They even had a guy on a very large white tuba!

This was a float across the street from us.  It was the Philippine float but we're not sure why it was called the World Peace float.  We asked the Parade Marshall co-coordinator and she had no idea either or why there was a pink princess on it.

Anyways, once the parade started, we were on our way, heading down Alberni and then rounded the corner on Nicola and then onto W.Georgia.  Because the sun had managed to shine warm and bright today, there were more people out than we had anticipated.  We ran out of posters about half way up W. Georgia and the tattoos were pretty popular.  But we ran out of those by the time we got to Burrard.  Its unfortunate but that's just how things go sometimes.  Spike was very popular in the parade.  All the kids loved him and he was his most fun and crazy self.  Its hard not to like him.  Once we rounded the corner on Hornby, we were done.  The parade was a success and we all had a great time.  David and I ended up running a little bit as our car and drummers had marched on without us.  We never realized how much time it takes to give out tattoos.  Oh well....it was great fun.  

So, folks, these were the major events that happened in June and July so far.  I will try to keep you updated more frequently as I do have a Lions game coming up on Friday.  Hope you enjoyed the videos and pics from today.  I could only take them from our Muster Station for obvious reasons.  But at least I took them!  Hope everyone had a great Canada Day!