As dusk settles on Gibsons Harbour this Saturday, a few more lights will blink into the night.
A procession of people carrying homemade lanterns, some simple, others elaborate, will be led by a costumed Duane Burnett from Winegarden Park to the harbour’s gazebo, where musicians Karen Graves and Budge Schachte will fill out the evening’s luminous atmosphere.
Gibsons Lantern Festival will be a first for the town. “It’s new for me,” said Verna Chan, one of the festival’s primary organizers.
Chan is more familiar with organizing the Music in the Landing series, but for the last few weeks she has been working through the logistics for the July 27 festival – booking food trucks, renting concert equipment, and gathering materials for the LED lanterns.
The timeframe was tight because the festival is a product of the vacuum left by the cancellation of Sea Cavalcade.
“Since Sea Cav was not going to be there, I just thought if we expanded Music in the Landing to at least cover that weekend we would not have a huge gap in entertainment,” said Chan. Another group, meanwhile, including Leanne Johnston, Deborah Keith Geoffrion and Sheila Williams, had emerged with the bright idea of a lantern festival. “I just said, we could combine these ideas to have a lantern festival, family picnic, food night and music and make it a whole evening of entertainment. And that’s where it originated.”
The group put a proposal together, Chan presented it at council, and within a week councillors approved it. “It all happened very quickly,” said Chan. It also happened a little serendipitously.
One of the highlights of the festival will be a performance by critically acclaimed Toronto musician Michael Occhipinti and the Lester McLean Band. “This band got hold of me and said they would only be in town that one weekend and wanted to play,” said Chan. Now they’re booked for the Lantern Festival and will be taking the stage in Winegarden Park for two hours, starting at 7 p.m.
Lantern festivals appear throughout the Lower Mainland in July, with the Illuminares Lantern Festival and Procession the most widely known, drawing 30,000 people to Trout Lake in East Vancouver.
The Gibsons festival will be humbler, but Chan said the enthusiasm is palpable. Approximately 100 people attended a free lantern-making workshop held last weekend, and at least 400 people expressed interest in attending the festival on social media. Sheila Williams, one of the organizers, will be bringing more complex lanterns, to give the town, “a taste of what could possibly happen,” Chan said.
She said the event has the potential to expand into a day’s worth of activities in the future.
Saturday’s festivities will start in the afternoon.
Battery-powered lanterns will be supplied for another lantern making workshop in Winegarden Park at 4 p.m. Music will take over the park from 5:30 to 9 p.m., starting with Latin dance lessons, followed by the Jim Foster Band. Restaurants are providing special takeout menus for the event and food trucks will be on site.
“For me it’s the whole thing, it’s music, it’s participating in something fun you can do with your whole family,” Chan said. “I think it brings people together.”
Those participating in the procession are encouraged to wear costumes.
