| The Gazette |
Sunday, July 01, 2007
|
Thousands of Montrealers turned out today for the city's Canada Day parade, but elected officials from all three levels of government were visibly absent from the party.
Montrealers waved Canadian flags and cheered as marching bands, pipers, colourful floats, acrobats and folk dancers in ethnic costumes carried the parade as it moved east along Ste. Catherine St. W. from Fort St. to Peel St. and then travelled south to Place du Canada, where a crowd-pleasing birthday cake was served.
But many of those same Montrealers grumbled that no one from the City of Montreal, the provincial government or the federal government bothered to participate in the parade.
Eighty-five different community organizations from Montreal and the surrounding area took part in the 30th edition of the parade marking Canada's 140th birthday.
There were contigents representing Falun Dafa, the Polish Canadian Congress, the Filipino Association of Montreal and the Suburbs, the Montreal Piping School, the Chateaguay and Valley Irish Heritage Association, and dozens of others.
However, parade organizers complained the event received only $40,000 in federal government funding and that funding came in only weeks before the event.
"I'm just fed up," Claude Leclerc, president of the Canada Day parade organizing committee, said of the politics behind the parade.
He said the St. Jean Baptiste Day parade received $675,000.
The only good thing, Leclerc said, is that ordinary Montrealers love the event and close to 5,000 waited in line for close to two hours for a piece of Canada Day birthday cake.
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