Only a week after Santa Claus Parade organizer Mick Gee announced he would be stepping away from the event another organization has stepped up to take the reins.
With the threat of cancellation looming, organizers of Cochrane Light Up, the hugely popular Historic Downtown event, announced its early present to save Christmas.
“There was a group in town who were doing the Santa Claus Parade the last couple of years, and they decided this year to dismantle it and give it up,” said Stephenie Shelstad, chair of the Cochrane Light Up organization.
“So with this being our big kick-off to Christmas, we really didn’t want to see the Santa Claus parade die, and we thought our community was big enough to have one.”
According to Shelstad, when the former Santa Claus parade organization held its annual general meeting, nobody stepped up to take over the project.
As a result, the society was dissolved.
Shelstad said saving the parade was made possible by the addition of a new board member, Raelle Rivoire.
“I heard a few different rumours that the parade was going to be ending, that Mick was no longer going to be doing it,” said Rivoire, parade organizer and the current organizer of the Santa Claus parade.
“We don’t want to see Cochrane lose such a great event for the community.”
In order to ensure longevity of the parade, Rivoire said she teamed up with Stephenie Shelstad, the chair of the Cochrane Light Up event team.
“We were going over different things, because I’ve ran smaller parades in the past where I lived up north,” said Rivoire.
Rivoire said that though she asked herself if she might have bit off more than she could chew, there was plenty of support to be found through Cochrane Light Up.
“(Stephenie) said ‘if you wanted, we can do it under the Light Up umbrella”.”
Rivoire said that by the end of it, the decision was made and finalized in under 24 hours.
“We didn’t want to see it stop,” said Rivoire.
“We’ll do it, we’ll figure it out along the way.”
