MONIQUE KEIRAN

As Halloween nears, we’re pumped about pumpkins, but are they just a waste?

In a few days, Mount Douglas Parkway will turn into Pumpkin Parkway.

As soon as the ghosts and ghoulies of Halloween finish their celebrations, used jack o’lanterns begin lining the road through Saanich’s Mount Douglas Park. In recent years, as many as 300 pumpkins have turned up in the park during the first week of November, creating a spooky spectacle under the trees.

According to Statistics Canada, about 2,500 farms in Canada grow about 80,000 tonnes of pumpkins every year. British Columbia farmers produce about one-10th of that national harvest, generating more than $4 million in farm revenue in the province.

But most pumpkins sold these days are used for decorating at Halloween, not for food.

Which kind of makes Pumpkin Parkway the Pumpkin Parkway of Shame.

In April, the Commission for Environmental Co-operation found Canadians to be among the biggest wasters of food on the planet. The commission — an agency set up under the now-ending North American Free Trade Agreement — reported that Canadian consumers throw out an average of 170 kilograms of food each annually.

When all stages of the food supply chain were accounted for, the agency found 396 kilograms of food per capita is wasted in Canada every year. That works out to 6.24 billion tonnes lost or tossed every year in Canada.

Not that chowing down on jack o’lantern pumpkins is a good idea. Soot from any candles burned inside would render the pumpkin flesh unsafe to eat. And if the carved pumpkin has been sitting around in the open for days, bacteria and mould would be having their own parties.

Saanich Parks estimates costs of cleaning up the parkway to be about $600 to $800, but those would be hard costs. As one resident has pointed out, the cleanup last year involved eight Saanich workers, two Saanich trucks, a tractor, a rented bin delivered and a full day of work and wages. But no partridge in a pear tree.

All of this kind of poops on the Pumpkin Parkway Parade.

It’s a waste on many levels — of food, resources to grow food and taxpayer money. But pumpkins just don’t rate highly on the everyday menu in North America. We might enjoy pumpkin pies and pumpkin-flavoured lattés and beer, but pumpkins’ greatest value to North Americans seems to come as entertainment.

For example, last year, 2,000 people gathered near Saskatoon to watch as three massive pumpkins were hoisted 36 metres in the air, then smashed to the ground. The largest pumpkin — all 590 kilograms of it — crushed its target, a car. The second portly pumpkin was filled, piñata-like, with candy before it was dropped from the crane. The third was filled with numbered ping pong balls for a $1,000-prize draw.

In many communities in the U.S., pumpkin chuckin’ is an annual tradition. Some groups build trebuchets and massive slingshots to hurl pumpkins into the air and across hundreds of metres.

And B.C. is a hotbed for giant-pumpkin enthusiasts. According to Giant Pumpkins British Columbia, Langley hobby farmer Scott Carley smashed the B.C. record last year with a 699.9-kilogram specimen, his fourth year of winning the trophy for the biggest pumpkin. The world record — a 1,190.5-kilogram behemoth — was set by Mathia Willemijn of Belgium in 2016. Pumpkins this big look semi-squashed and sloppy. They’re too big and heavy for their own flesh to support.

Down the coast in Oregon, about 20,000 people came out last weekend to watch the 15th annual West Coast Giant Pumpkin Regatta. Dozens of costumed participants crawled into carved 454-kilogram (1,000-pound) pumpkins and paddled across a pond in a race to the finish line. A similar regatta is held in Nova Scotia.

I’m pretty sure none of these spectacular, spectated pumpkins were eaten. They might have fed livestock, or they might have been composted to feed future generations of pumpkins.

Compared with those other events, Pumpkins on Parade along the Parkway are small potatoes … er, pumpkins.