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Well, who doesn't love a parade?
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Turns out Montreal really, really loves parades.
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We've got, of course, the St. Patrick's Day parade,
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We have a steep tradition of parades in Montreal
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and here to dive into all of it with us.
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This is our favorite Montreal expert
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and tour guide, Tom Seewright Tom.
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Thank you so much for joining us.
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My pleasure, thank you.
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Okay, we'll get to St. Patrick's in a little bit,
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but how did parades first become a thing?
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And when did Montreal really start marching in the streets?
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Because when you think of a parade, it's a very specific
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and almost strange thing.
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We're just going to decide all of us to march together, you know?
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It is kind of crazy if you think about it, right?
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In the 1700s, 1800s parades in Montreal were rather common,
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but they used to be not so much a party
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and let's go have fun.
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They used to be mostly like about a religious ceremony
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or sometimes even like a showing of military strength.
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So the Catholic Church would organize these parades
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like on feast days or st. days.
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So a lot of French Canadians were part of that
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and then the British culture, well, that was more about,
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let's bring out our military drummers
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and display our imperial power.
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So it was kind of a contrast between either
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it being religious or military.
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That's kind of how it started at first.
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Yeah, I just had a flash of a little Portugal.
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There's always a procession or a parade
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and I forget what a holy day it is,
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but I remember the little girls all dressed in white.
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That still happens there.
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Okay, so let's talk about the city's most famous parade,
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which tends to get a little raucous, if you will,
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there'll be some debauchery around it.
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But before all of that, Montreal St. Patrick's Day Parade
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has a tradition and it's an old one.
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How old is the St. Patrick's Day Parade?
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It's the oldest of all our parades.
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The first one took place in 1824.
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So that means the Montreal St. Patrick's Day Parade
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is older than Canada itself.
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I think it's kind of a wild fact.
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It predates the Santa Claus Parade, it predates all these,
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it even predates the Saint Jean-Baptiste Parade.
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We're not interesting.
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It's held every year except they didn't
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have it a few years ago for COVID reasons.
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Even but during the wars, like during World War II,
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the World War I, they were still having
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the St. Patrick's Day Parade.
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Montreal really did have a large
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and very influential Irish population
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around the early 19th century, 1900, I'd say.
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And the Irish immigrants, they were so important
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to the city's development that this parade
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became a way for them to assert their Irish identity,
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their pride, and they were basically saying
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to everyone else in Montreal, hey, look at us,
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we belong here, we've helped build this city
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and it became like a statement of identity.
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And I think that's really important to the Irish community.
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And over time, today you go to the St. Patrick's Day Parade
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and it's like all these other different communities
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and they're like, we're celebrating with our Irish friends.
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Yeah, there's all sorts of different floats.
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I've been, I've been, I've been,
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I've been this for years and years and years, right?
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You know, working in media, so we each have our floats,
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we're always in the St. Patrick's Day Parade.
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And younger, you know, you would go and revel,
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let's say people would revel.
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But there is such a history of parades.
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I was marching in parades younger
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because the Greeks, different communities,
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like Greeks have the 25th of March, our Independence Day,
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I always had to march in that one.
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So there's a beautiful tradition in communities now.
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But there is also the other aspect of it, right?
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Which is, we see it in the St. Patrick's Day Parade,
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that the sort of entertainment, right?
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When did that switch?
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Yeah, I'd say that happened around the early 1900s
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and believe it or not, that happened
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because of who was sponsoring these parades.
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Who was trying to get visibility out of it?
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So department stores?
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And so into the book, the example of it
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is the Montreal Santa Claus Parade.
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You know, in 1925, it was designed to help kick off
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the Christmas shopping season and make you want to go downtown
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and go to St. Sins or go to Eaton's and shop
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and visit Santa Claus.
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The radio stations even would broadcast the parades
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for, you know, there would be celebrity guests
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And that sort of inspired a new way of seeing the parades
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is something very much like fun for everyone.
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And then you add on to that from the 70s on up until today,
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then they became associated with like visions of change
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Like the one that I think of is the Montreal Parade Parade.
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Like you said, the Greek parades or the Italian parades
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or the Haitian parades, it parades today.
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It's kind of like they mix the politics of the past
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with the performance and the party atmosphere
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So Montreal has dozens of parades every year, almost,
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I think more than any other Canadian city.
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If I say that, I'm not 100% sure.
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But I think we have more parades than anywhere else in Canada
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and it's a big part of who we are.
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Yeah, we are both equal parts of protestee people
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and a parade people.
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And hopefully those two shall not meet.
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Tom Seafright, again, he's the her Montreal expert,
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our tour guide, follow him on Instagram as well.
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Tom is always such a pleasure.
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We'll chat again very soon.
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