Now that’s one big cake!

The enormous Westside Daze Canada Day cake is a point of pride with Leah Thordarson, president of the Westside Celebration Society, the group of volunteers who put on Westside Daze.

“It’s double-layered, cream filled with strawberries,” said Thordarson.

Baker extraordinaire Anja Dumas has been lead baker for the giant cake, which serves between 800 and 1000 people, for six years.

Dumas won’t reveal her recipe for what is reputed to be the best Canada Day cake in the valley; however, she will say it takes 120 eggs to prepare 16 to 18 layers of white cake decorated with 40 pounds of washed and sliced strawberries.

A number of local businesses team up to donate the ingredients for the approximately three by eight foot double layer cake.

The cake layers are baked simultaneously the night before Canada day using the rotation oven at Nature’s Oven Bakery.

On Canada Day morning, the layers are delivered on a rack to the Westbank Lions Community Centre, which donates the space for the cake to be assembled, iced and decorated by volunteers. “It’s always gorgeous,” said Thordarson. That afternoon, the B.C. Ambulance Service picks up Dumas and the cake and brings them over to Memorial Park.

The ambulance is the only air-conditioned vehicle large enough to carry the giant cake which needs the cool air during transportation to keep it from melting in the July heat.

It takes four to six people to move the cake, which sits on a four-by-eight piece of plywood.

The Canada Day ceremonies begin at 2:45 p.m. Sunday, July 1 in Memorial Park beside the Johnson-Bentley pool with Canada Day speeches from local elected officials and the Westside Daze committee.

Second vice West Kelowna Youth Ambassador Brooklyn Schell will sing O Canada and at 3 p.m. elected officials, with help from the West Kelowna Youth Ambassador team, will cut and serve the cake.

There is always plenty of cake to go around and those who don’t get strawberries on their cake can get a serving of strawberries on the side.