The Farmers’ Days parade has been a long-standing community tradition. For many years, long before I was part of the club, the Rotary Club of Stony Plain organized the parade. For club members it was seen as one of the significant annual events that we participated in. The parade was even marketed and promoted as the Rotary Farmers’ Days Parade.
Club members would prepare the registration form for people interested in putting a float in the parade, map out volunteer locations, arrange float judges and ribbons, match dignitaries to classic cars, and assign traffic marshals to direct traffic or enforce road closures. It was a big undertaking requiring significant organization for several months leading up to the event and then hundreds of volunteer hours the day of the event. However, as time went on and member interests, availability and even abilities shifted, taking the lead role became more and more challenging.
The pandemic gathering restrictions opened the opportunity for discussion about how we do things better for the future. Looking at the parade and its challenges became one of these focal areas. Options were considered such as hiring traffic control companies but at the end of the day members felt there were too many safety concerns and too limited volunteer capacity to keep the lead role on the parade. In 2023 we decided the club would not be part of organizing the parade.
Personally, it hit me with a sense of loss. I love the feeling of being part of something bigger and larger than just me and my frame of reference. Tradition, history, and honouring the past are important to me. I felt like we were giving up on something that was entwined with our identity. Who were we if we weren’t going to be leading the parade? What was our role in community building if we moved away from this key community event, one of the signature town events? How would people even know that the Rotary Club of Stony Plain cared about Stony Plain? For me, the club and the parade had been linked and it was challenging to see how we belonged within the community.
Even when you know it’s the right thing to do, change is hard. Time, patience, and perspective are valuable allies when going through change. So is a positive attitude. I’ll share more in a future post.
Keep Shining!