Crystal Beach parade buries Old Man Summer on Saturday

Crystal Beach’s End of Summer Parade will lay Old Man Summer to rest again on Saturday, keeping alive a tradition summer cottagers invented more than 60 years ago.

The parade starts at 1 p.m. at the Crystal Ridge Community Centre, with about 35 entries rolling rain or shine down a five-kilometre route to the Crystal Chandelier, where a ceremony and awards presentation will follow.

Winnie Swalm, 91, will lead the procession as grand marshal this year. She was chosen for her community volunteer efforts as a sitting member of the Crystal Beach Beautification Committee since 2000. She also served as vice-chair of Fort Erie’s Communities in Bloom committee.

The beautification committee will follow her with a float of its own.

“We need to celebrate a grand marshal, somebody who really has done a lot for the community and really is a part of it,” said Paul Lewis, co-chair of the parade.

Revolution, a Niagara-based steel drum band, will play this year, and Last Chance Horse and Pony Rescue will bring horses back to the parade for the first time in at least 12 years, Lewis told Fort Erie Radio.

Lewis said college-age renters who shared Crystal Beach cottages for the summer held the first funerals in their last week together in the mid-1960s, though some local historians date the tradition to the 1950s.

“The end of summer was a sad thing. ‘We’re all going to now go back into the real world, our separate ways, and I may not see you until next summer,'” Lewis said.

The old parades copied a funeral scene from the 1958 movie ‘The Vikings’ by floating the coffin carrying Old Man Summer into Lake Erie and lighting it on fire. Parades in recent years have left out the fire.

Lewis said the original parades faded in the late 1970s as cottages changed hands, but the tradition ended temporarily after Crystal Beach Park closed for good on Labour Day 1989.

Friends of Crystal Beach brought the parade back about 25 years ago. The Friends asked the local businesses and community organizations to enter, and the number has been steadily growing each year.

Wally Abarella, who took part in the 1960s parades, drives his Keystone Cops truck across the Peace Bridge from the United States for the parade.

“It takes a great number of volunteers, and we count on our Friends of Crystal Beach members and friends and family of everybody to help us pull this off,” said Donna Lewis, a parade organizer.

The route needs a volunteer at every corner, and Friends of Crystal Beach is looking for new members.

Entries line up at noon at the Crystal Ridge Community Centre. Registration is open at focb.net.

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