Ontario Parades: Street Parties and PerformancesSometimes a vacation destination isn't a place, it's an event. Ontario parades celebrate the diversity of life in Ontario. The big ones are in Toronto but there are smaller versions, particularly of the Santa Claus Parade, in most larger Ontario towns.
Color, music and rhythm are the order of the day here and, as
you watch the parade on a hot July/August Toronto
summer
day, with the blue sky and lake as a backdrop, you can almost imagine yourself in the Caribbean.
The Caribana parade makes its way along Lakeshore Boulevard from about noon to four or five in the afternoon, with colorfully costumed dancers and floats of a variety of sizes and colours.
As with most festivals, the parade is free to watch. The events though generally have an entrance fee. To enter Exhibition Place, where the parade ends, costs about $25.
You can see more parade pictures
here.
The other two big parades in Toronto are the
Santa Claus Parade
in November, running through to December for other towns, and the Pride Parade in June.
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Probably the biggest parade of them all is Caribana. Started in 1967 as a way for folks from Trinidad and Tobago to re-live the carnivals of 'back home', it has grown steadily to embrace aspects of all the Caribbean islands' cultures.
It pays to arrive early to get a good view because the front rows along each side of the road quickly fill up. The south (lake) side is more accessible with a long unbroken view. The north side has trees and buildings along the route so it isn't so accessible. However, the north side does have a bank to sit or stand on so you can see over the fence that mars the view on the south.
