Oct. 31st: Fireworks on Halloween???

When I first moved to Vancouver over 5 years ago it was a pretty easy transition.  Nothing that happened here was all too different than life back home, except that here it was done in the presence of mountains and an ocean.  Then just over two months of living here I got my first sense of West Coast culture shock.  Fireworks on Halloween???? These people are crazy.

Fireworks are obviously for the late spring/summer seasons.  When it's warm and the sun does not go down so early (though perhaps the West Coasters are on to something there).  Needless to say - we never had fireworks going off while kids are in the streets collecting candy from their generous neighbours.  Instead, we had our fireworks on the Victoria Day weekend when we had an additional day off and wanted a fun way to celebrate.  Well apparently they do things a little differently here.  So 5 years later I decided to finally come around and embrace this tradition.

A few of us headed over to a neighbourhood party for some mulled wine and fireworks.  I will admit that I was a little bit frightened when I found that the location where they were setting off the fireworks was located in the middle of the street, merely feet away from the fronts of houses, power lines, and the general crowd. It also didn't help that in the first round of fireworks, one of them actually blew out the bottom of the bucket it was sitting in.

Fortunately the hosts of the event knew what they were doing and managed to light all of the fireworks safely without causing harm to anyone around them.  And it was a lot of fun.  I don't think it will ever beat Victoria Day fireworks spent with the Werstiuk's and Kurtz's in our backyards while chowing down on some summer BBQ.  But - it was a great evening spent with friends over a warm drink and under some bright lights.  And that's pretty awesome!  I'm still not fully adjusted to this new tradition - but with time perhaps I will make it my own.  In the mean time - I definitely know which neighbourhood to go to if I want to celebrate.