Since 2010, Shellmontians have gathered one evening, before Christmas, to hold what is now Richmond’s longest running Christmas parade, after the Steveston Santa Claus parade took a timeout a few years back.
And so, the 8th annual Shellmont Christmas Parade is set for Dec. 20 at 7 p.m. Everyone is welcome to come and spontaneous carolling is to be expected.
While the parade begins at Woodward elementary school, there is no specific parade route, explained co-founder and organizer David Langer, a father of three. And friend and fellow parade organizer Jeff Joseph also downplays the special event.
“It’s just a group of families,” said Joseph.
“Some years it gets bigger, some years it dips. Usually we’ll have in the 60-80 people range.”
The grassroots event usually features a few cars with inflatable Christmas figures tied to the roof. Once gathered together, the neighbourhood moves through the “Seas” (side streets that start with “sea” within the Shellmont arterial road quadrant of Steveston Highway, No. 5 Road, Williams Road and Shell Road) and ends up at Tim Horton’s for coffee and hot chocolate.
“Around the time we started we all just ended back at one family’s house and all these people came and we didn’t know them, so we decided to move to Tim Horton’s,” chuckled Langer.
The parade started with four families, explained Langer, but blossomed into something bigger year over year. Initially the families blared music from the radio station playing Christmas music. Then they bought a sound system and played their own tunes. That sound system blew, so they bought a bigger one and put it in the back of a pick-up truck, where they can crank the Christmas carols.
Funny and memorable stories seem to pop up during each parade.
Langer said a few years ago, a man from Texas read about the parade in the Richmond News while waiting for his wife at the airport. He hopped in a cab and joined the Shellmont crew that evening and returned to the airport after coffee.
The parade always has a unique, sometimes bizarre, poster that makes its rounds in the neighbourhood and online to inform people of the event. 2015 featured John Lennon and Yoko Ono and this year’s poster features Jack Nicholson in The Shining (see Richmond-News.com).
While Joseph said he doesn’t consider Shellmont to be any different than other neighbourhoods, it is one of the more well-known areas of Richmond, along with Burkeville and Steveston.
Langer said the neighbourly feeling has much to do with the school, which is in the centre of the quadrant.
“We all met when (our children) were in Kindergarten. So the school was the heart of it. The school is the centre of everything. And we have such a mix of people of every ethnicity. So our school has always been multicultural,” said Langer
Last year, Woodward parents were some of the most vocal opponents of the Richmond School District school closure proposals (Woodward being among the schools on the chopping block).
