Swift Current florist starts new year on a high note at Rose Parade
Swift Current florist Poppy Parsons started the new year with a memorable experience as a floral float decorator at the 2022 Rose Parade in Pasadena, California.
This was her third time at the famous event and she was glad to return after last year’s Rose Parade did not take place due to COVID-19.
“It’s just amazing to get back with my floral family,” she said. “We haven’t seen each other in a couple of years and we haven’t had opportunity to do other work together. So it was nice to see them again. We come from all over and just to gather and to be together and create something lovely is amazing.”
This was the 133rd anniversary of the Rose Parade and 43 floats made their way along the 5.5 mile (8.85 km) route on New Year’s Day.
She was a member of the floral design team for Fiesta Parade Floats, which is the most awarded float builder at the Rose Parade. The company entered six floats for the 2022 parade and won several trophies, included the coveted Sweepstakes Trophy.
“This year was just a little bit different, like everything is with COVID,” she said. “Our company owner chose to only do six floats this year. He turned away multiple companies, just to keep everyone safe. He wanted less floats and less people inside the floral warehouse. Less floats mean less florists, less volunteers, and so a really small group of florists, about half or maybe even less than half the designers there this year. So truly an honour to be invited to this smaller really elite group, and to be asked to come down was truly a blessing.”
Parsons was the only Canadian team member of Fiesta Parade Floats and as far as she is aware she was the only Canadian florist attending this Rose Parade. The invitation to be part of the team came as a pleasant surprise.
“I didn’t think that I would be asked, because I’m travelling from so far,” she said. “You know, they might keep it more of a local group closer to the Pacific northwest and California and that area, but they actually created a list of florists they wanted to have.”
Her name was on that list and she happily accepted the invitation, which required her to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
“They created some nice teams that could draw off each other’s experience and different design set styles to create the best floats possible, plus we all had to be vaccinated,” she said. “Everybody in the warehouse needed to be vaccinated and so if there were people that were not vaccinated, they were not invited. It kind of shortened the list a little bit there as well.”
She was a member of the team responsible for decorating the Courage to Hope float of Donate Life, which is a national non-profit organization in support of organ, eye and tissue donations in the United States.
“That’s the same one I did two years ago and it’s just extra special, because of the message they are portraying,” she said.
The experience of decorating this year’s Donate Life float was even more memorable due to the opportunities she had to connect with volunteers with personal stories of organ donation.
“It’s also volunteers that do the work, and we’re working alongside them doing our large installations and you get to chat with people,” she said. “They’re either donors or they are recipients or they are families of donors that have passed away. It’s really a heartwarming and emotional journey as we have opportunity to chat with them and learn their stories. So there’s really an emotional connection and bond with some of them.”
The 15 float riders and five walkers who accompanied the Donate Life float along the parade route on New Year’s Day are organ, eye and tissue recipients or living donors.
“This year we had a donor recipient walking the entire parade route of over five miles, and she’s a heart transplant recipient,” Parsons noted. “She received the gift of life of a heart and she walked that entire parade route to show how much she loves that and that’s part of the theme, Courage to Hope. It gave her the courage and it gave her life and she wants to show how much she appreciates it, and you can do it, you can dream it. She’s a fabulous woman and it was a pleasure to meet her.”
The design of the 2022 Donate Life float had an Italian theme featuring Venice. A key feature of the design was the recreation of the winged Lion of Venice, based on a bronze sculpture located on the Piazza San Marco or St. Mark’s Square in the city of Venice. The float design also included several gondolas, a wellknown feature of Venetian city life and travel on the city canals.
The Rural Mental Health Project and Network is looking to offer two more cohorts of training to those looking to bring momentum to their communities in regards to mental wellness.
After completing cohort 14 in December, the Rural Mental Health Project and Network found that they still have enough funding to train more people to be what they call animators, said Project Coordinator Tim Neubauer.
“We think doing another two cohorts of training will probably take us up to that
150 Community mark. So currently, with the training that we’ve done, we’re roughly representing, right now, 118 communities,” said Neubauer. “We use the funding to train one person from a community to actually take the training, and then to facilitate their work in the community over the course of a year. Then there’s also some communities who recognize that it’d be helpful to have a few more people that go through the training. So they’re able to do that. And so basically with the current funding, that’s where it came from, we have room for two more cohorts of training.”
Neubauer mentioned that currently the Rural Mental Health Project is looking into further funding, which would allow them to offer a further three cohorts of training, but this funding has yet to be confirmed. A cohort of animator training allows for approximately 25 people.
These animators are citizens who are passionate about making a difference in their community in the realm of mental health, said Neubauer.
“We call them that person that brings the, the momentum or the movement in a community, or if you want to use the word catalytic, but they’re sort of bring life into that community aren’t already doing, like, most communities in Alberta already are doing things when it comes to supporting mental health and well being. But it’s really trying to maybe even connect some of those things that are happening. So that people can work more collaboratively.”
Since the project’s launch in 2018, it’s been constantly evolving, due to the networking aspect of it and the differing needs of the communities benefiting from the presence of the trained animators, said Neubauer.
“As we get feedback from people that take the training, we make changes and adapt things. One of the big changes over the last couple years was taking the in-person training, we had to completely re-tool that to a virtual format. Because it was two days of in person training, and then a month later, another two days of in person training. And so we had to take that and sort of adapted to a virtual way of trading, which has been with some challenges, obviously, with that. But also, we’ve seen, that has been really helpful, too, because there’s travel that was involved before, some people were coming from some very rural and remote places. So the internet is still an issue for some, obviously communities,” said Neubauer. “But it has allowed us to remove some of the barriers to people to maybe come and take the training because they can do it in a virtual platform. Over so that’s evolved, and then because of the network constantly growing, so we have the animators that are part of the network. So like I said, those are well over 200. Now, if you count cohort 14. But we have also like 700 subscribers to our newsletter, and people, other partners who are part of our network. So there’s a number of different groups across the province, and they’re just interested community members that are part of the network. So because of that, we’re able to get a lot of feedback from across the province. And so listening to that allows us to kind of adapt what gets done.”