The Similkameen News Leader
Editorial
July 3, 2007
BECAUSE THAT'S HOW WE DO IT HERE
In our neighbourhood we do things up right.
Rarely does a celebration take place where we don't make a bunch of noise and see the police at least once between well-done and done steaks on the barbeque.
Canada Day is really no exception, except, as your garden variety normal Canadians we're sort of subdued. Polite, even.
On Canada Day we do like most other Canadians and go to somewhere where we can mooch some snack food and a piece of cake.
After all, for an average Canadian on Canada Day the best party has got to be someone else's.
So it really shouldn't have surprised us when little Billy covered in smeared Canada Flag tattoos and cake icing asked us that question he always asks at this time of year.
"Why do we do all this stuff on the same weekend?"
He was referring to the Canada Day Weekend which this year contained no less than 12 different activities.
Probably an all-time Princeton record.
Well, we crouched down and looked little Billy straight in the eye, wiped some cake icing off of his cheek, put a hand on his shoulder and said, "Because that's how we do it here."
He had a puzzled look on his face and shrugged his shoulders.
"But why jam everything into one weekend when you could space some of the events on weekends throughout the summer to make it interesting all through the tourist season?"
We tried to explain that tourists only visit Princeton Canada Day Weekend because of the gambling opportunities and that most of them (them 'Mericans) are usually gone back home by July 1st, as they don't understand why we have French words in the song they hear at the odd hockey game.
"Wouldn't it be smarter to spread the events out?" He asked.
We again argued that the idea would fail simply because residents need to be able to point out all summer long that 'nothing happens here' in the dead zone between Canada Day and Fall Fair, with the possible exception of Tulameen Days.
"From a marketing standpoint it would make the area more attractive if there was some sort of celebration each and every weekend," little Billy tried to reason with us.
Nope, we weren't going to let this smart mouthed ten-year-old get the best of us.
We stated that the reason why everything happens on one weekend here is because there's not enough volunteers to go around and that if all the events were to split off each organizing committee would probably make a lot more money and "that would surely screw up their annual budgets to a point where they'd have to change their focus."
Billy made a funny face.
So we went on at great length about how important it is to hold so many events in overlapping time slots as to provide people with 'choices' and that without 'choices' there'd be nothing going on around town.
"But all the choices have to be on the same weekend?"
Obviously we had come full circle on this one and tried again to explain why Canada Day weekend was such a big deal in town and used the word 'tradition' at least three times until we realized the next event we were going to attend had already ended.
Then it occurred to us that this ten-year-old might have been onto something after all.
