Jack-o-lanterns will go on parade along Rotary trail
Pumpkin parade has become an annual tradition along the Rotary Trail in East City at dusk on the night after Halloween
A stretch of the Rotary Trail in East City will be lit by a long string of jack-o-lanterns on Thursday evening.
It’s called a pumpkin parade and it’s been a tradition in Peterborough for four years now.
At dusk on Nov. 1, people are invited to bring their jack-o-lanterns to the trail between Hunter St. and Douro St., light them up and leave them for all to admire.
The jack-o-lanterns are on display for the evening and then city public works crews pick them up that same night for composting.
Jane Easton of Rogers St. is the organizer; she took it over from her former neighbour Sarah Giesbrecht, who started it with her husband and kids in 2015.
Giesbrecht was inspired by a similar pumpkin parade along a walking path at Sorauren Park in Toronto; she thought it would be fun to organize one here.
She organized it for two years before she and her family moved to Kingston.
Easton then took over organizing the pumpkin parade in 2017, and is doing so again this year.
“She (Giesbrecht) started such a good thing — it would have been a shame to let it go,” Easton said Tuesday.
Easton has two sons, aged 11 and 9, and her family enjoys the event.
“It’s fun — there’s so much good, positive feedback about it,” she said.
The pumpkin parade has attracted increasingly large numbers of jack-o-lanterns: in 2015 there were about 100, in 2016 there were 243 and in 2017 there were more than 430.
Last year many people drove from across the city to bring their jack-o-lanterns to the parade.
Although Environment Canada predicts some showers and a low of 3 C overnight Thursday, Easton says she doesn’t think it will deter people from coming to the parade. “It’s starting to be that time of year when it’s dark and dreary — the parade gets us out of the house one more time,” she said.