Big crowd for big show
City of Charlottetown estimates 30,000 people took in fireworks display
An estimated 30,000 people gathered around the waterfront in Charlottetown to view the Canada Day fireworks.
That was the number released by Laurel Lea, tourism officer with the city, at the economic development, tourism, arts and culture committee meeting on Tuesday.
These committee meetings
used to be held behind closed doors but are now open to the media and the public.
When Lea gave her report to
the committee, all of the talk centred on the success of the July 1 festivities at Victoria Park.
“It’s hard to gauge (actual numbers), but city police have been doing this for many years, so they pretty much know different areas of the (waterfront) and typically how many people they would hold,’’ Lea told The Guardian.
“They do a rough count in a couple of different areas and then you can extrapolate from there.’’
The city is also estimating that at least 10,000 people took in family activities and the concerts at Victoria Park throughout the day on Sunday.
The concerts featured wellknown Island names like Irish Mythen and Paper Lions.
“Obviously, there are so many entry points to Victoria Park so it’s hard to get a hard number but, based on capacities that we know for both of the main fields, we’re estimating that over the course of the day . . . at least 10,000 people took in those festivities.’’
Lea said their numbers also tell them that at no point on Canada Day was there fewer than 3,000 people in the park.
“That’s good, especially on a beautiful day where sometimes you get that pull to the beach and (people) re-appear around supper time but we really didn’t see that this year.’’
Lea said she was especially impressed with the demographic mix for Irish Mythen and Paper Lions. Both young and old took in the two shows which led straight into the big fireworks display.
It didn’t hurt the numbers that Sunday was such a sunny and warm day, although the temperature certainly cooled off substantially by the evening.
“It seemed like the wind just picked up and the temperature cooled right off, (but) it didn’t deter people.’’
Organizers also managed to cap off the big day with the annual fireworks show, despite the fact that skies got hazy about 20 minutes before the show began.
“We kind of went from clear skies to . . . we started to see that ceiling was lowering a little bit.’’
The Guardian talked to a few people who saw the fireworks. One person who saw them at Victoria Park said they were spectacular while another person who was closer to Peakes Quay said the high ones were hard to see due to the hazy skies.