Celebrating Saskatoon history

Last Friday was an exciting day in Saskatoon because there was a celebration for the 125th anniversary of the founding of the city. A re-enactment of the meeting between John Lake, the commissioner of the Temperance Colonization Society and Chief Whitecap, the Dakota First Nation chief had been planned. The mayor and town council in period dress came down the river in canoe and Chief Darcy Bear the current leader of the Dakota First Nation rode up to the riverbank on horseback to meet them.

I only caught a glimpse of the canoes and horses as I rode my bike across the Broadway Bridge to meet up with my parents at my dad’s office. As soon as I go to the street corner I jumped off my bike and ran up announcing that the Dakota were coming with some of the passion that Laura Secord might have had. We then quickly started walking towards the Victoria Traffic Bridge. We missed the official meeting, but had a chance to listen to some of the speeches and later watch a number of dance performances on the new River Landing Amphitheatre. It was a beautiful fall day.

Between the speeches and the dances we decided to check out the food stands on the bridge. A lot of other people had the same idea at the same time and in order to try and save time my mom joined one hamburger line-up and my dad joined another one at another stand on the opposite end of the bridge. My role was to be the go-between and pull one person out of line when the other was shorter. The situation was a little ridiculous and even more so because in the midst of it all I ran into a friend and I had to tell him that I didn’t have time to talk because I was busy being a messenger between hamburger line-ups. In the end we didn’t even end up eating until later. As the evening drew to a close I ran off to go and volunteer at an International Peace day event, but crossing back over the bridge I stopped for a few minutes to watch part of the fireworks display. I love the excitement of fireworks.