Winterlight

Edmonton has run a whole bunch of events this winter in an effort to celebrate our cold season. The majority of the events were free to the public, and a really wonderful way to get our city out in the cold weather and have a whole bunch of family fun! Some of the celebrations were The Silver Skate Festival, Ice on Whyte and Bright Nights which ran over the Christmas Season in several different Locations. The final celebration was called Illuminate and took place in Churchill Square last Saturday night. It was a celebration of fire and light, and designed to recognize the end of winter, and to usher in Spring.

The event was pretty cool--the big choir from here did a walk through Churchill Square singing the whole way, and carrying these cute little triangular lanterns.
There was dancers with illuminated umbrellas, hula hoopers, live entertainment of all kinds, Randall Fraser of The Edmonton Stiltwalkers Assoc. and his fire batons along with another stiltwalker (sorry, I don't know who you are!) and there was a Native Indian drum circle, and a Native elder there to perform the ceremonial lighting of the fire and circle dance to usher in Spring. It was incredibly beautiful!

Oh, and the 30 ft high illuminated marionette was really cool too! It's operator was on top of a building!

I know I'm leaving out a whole bunch of people, and I apologise for that!

Here are a few pics I took that night.