Canada Day in Ottawa (2013-07-01)

Another Canada Day, and another year of patriotic red and white.  Words can't even do justice to the number of people that were downtown this year, so I'll let this picture do the talking;

A panorama of chaos... :-)

Needless to say, it didn't take long before I had had enough of the crowd, and retreated to my floating sanctuary.

Much more peaceful down on the canal

As it was last year, we had lots of visitors to the boat through the day;

A student that came to see his teacher

A little princess

The princess directs her minions

Think I remember who this guy is... :-)

Yeah, not my guests...

Not guests, but a welcome sight nonetheless

Lots of interesting sights to be seen.

A dragonboat touring the canal

Many interesting "self" decorations

Once again, ummm....

We had the priviledge of participating in a special ceremony put on by the Britannia-Rideau Power and Sail Squadron.  This is the 75th anniversary of the Canadian Power and Sail Squadron, so we got to participate in a small procession that brought the 75th anniversary CPS colours down to be dipped in the canal.

Not only did we have the priviledge of participating in this historic event, we were given the honour of flying one of the 75th anniversary burgees on our boat, which we did proudly.

As the day ran down everyone prepared for the grand finale to the day.  We had quite the gang on board to watch the fireworks.  I think my waterline was about 6" lower with all of this 'ballast' aboard... :-)

Waiting for things that go "boom"

Soon it was dark and the fireworks began.  My pictures don't even come close to doing the fireworks justice, but this is a small sample of what we saw;

All in all, it was another great Canada Day.  It was even better by about 01:30, once all of the well 'pickled' revellers finally stopped wandering around the canal and went home... :-)