The Kinsmen Club of Stratford recently voted to cancel its annual Canada Day and Santa Claus parades after Stratford council voted last month to keep the parades off provincial highways including Erie Street, Ontario Street and Huron Street.
The Kinsmen Club of Stratford has now canceled Stratford’s annual Canada Day and Santa Claus parades after city council voted late last month to keep them off provincial highways, including Ontario, Erie and Huron streets, this year.
During a special meeting of council convened Monday evening to discuss a motion to reconsider that decision, the seven councilors who voted in favor of reconsideration just missed the two-thirds of council threshold needed for the motion to pass.
Coons. Kathy Vassilakos and Danielle Ingram voted against the motion to reconsider while Couns. Jo-Dee Burbach and Cody Sebben weren’t present for the meeting. Just one more vote was needed for the motion to reconsider to have passed.
While Burbach was on a leave of absence during the original council vote to keep parades off provincial highways, Sebben voted against that motion at that meeting.
“In accordance with the procedural bylaw, it requires that, for a motion to reconsider to be approved, two-thirds of the whole council vote in favor,” city clerk Tatiana Dafoe explained. “It’s not two-thirds of the council present. If the motion to reconsider had been carried, then any motion put forward after would have just (needed) a simple majority of council for approval.”
Speaking with the Beacon Herald by phone after the brief city meeting, Kinsmen club Canada Day Parade co-chair Bob Walters said the club’s decision to cancel both parades will stand unless its own members introduce and pass a motion to reconsider.
“That’s the direction from the club,” Walters said. “Unless we get direction (otherwise), right now we will not be proceeding on anything other than the (original) route we set.”
The route proposed for the Canada Parade by Walters and the club’s Canada Day Parade committee would have seen the it start at the William Allman Memorial Arena, travel up towards Ontario Street, west to Downie Street, down Downie and across on St. Patrick Street, and then travel along a portion of Erie Street.
Council’s rationale for keeping the Kinsmen parades to local streets only this year had to do with both the ongoing Huron Street reconstruction project, which made that road — part of the traditional Canada Day Parade route — unavailable, and safety concerns from city staff about vehicles being driven around road-closure barriers, which was said to have compromised the safety of both staff and Kinsmen volunteers during previous parades.
Walters, however, argued the alternative routes proposed by the city were just as unsafe for the public.
“We don’t think it’s safe that big trucks (that are in the parade) have to go down residential streets. It provides no parking for spectators. It provides no viewing area for spectators because they would have to be on residential properties,” Walters said.
“It just doesn’t work.”
Walters said the Kinsmen club will release more information about why it voted to cancel both annual parades later this week.