Canada Day parade in Montreal canceled after organizer pulls the plug

Montreal’s Canada Day parade was canceled less than two weeks in advance, and while organizers are blaming the city, municipal officials are also blaming the organizers.

“We don’t even know the reasons,” Julie Parado said on Friday. She is part of the Filipino Association of Montreal, which was ready to participate in the annual event this year. “We don’t know anything. I heard about it this morning.”

Parade organizer Nicholas Cowen said he had to reapply for permits, funding and approval several times last year.

The application process became so complicated that Cowen said he needed outside help from the offices of various elected officials at different levels of government to make the parade happen.

This year, he said road work on Ste-Catherine Street and red tape were to blame, and that’s why he didn’t apply for a parade permit this year.

“The route would then have been changed and I would have had to apply for a whole new set of permits,” Cowen told CBC News.

“And there’s no guarantee that I would have gotten it. I canceled it to say, hey, look here, there’s something wrong.”

In a press release issued Thursday, Cowen’s group, Canada Day Parade in Montreal, specifies the family event which attracts 120,000 spectators each year. This year, there will be no parade or cake due to “political divisions”, it is specified.

The very first Canada Day parade in Montreal took place in 1977. Cowen has been involved since the 90s and has been the organizer for over two decades.

Last year, the federal government requested that parts of the parade be scrapped entirely, including the annual celebration cake, the release said, and the budget was also reduced to 2013 levels, “which brought another devastating blow to this dear event.”

Ericka Alneus, a member of the city’s executive committee in charge of culture, said her office would have helped if Cowen had applied.

“We need to make sure that when we have parades, everyone is safe. So there are regulations that need to be followed.”

Aref Salem of the official opposition lamented the decision on social media platform X on Thursday evening.

“Canada Parade canceled: what else? ” he wrote. “The Plante administration must stop turning a deaf ear and act! Businesses and organizers deserve better,” he wrote.

Cowen said he hopes the parade will be held again in the future.

This year, there will still be festivities in the Old Port at the clock tower. Events begin at 1 p.m. More information can be found on the event website. website.