The parade route for this year's Santa Claus Parade in Windsor is changing.
"The route now does start at Riverside Dr. at Janette," says Chair of the Board of the Windsor Parade Corporation, Maggie Durocher. "It travels east on Riverside Dr. to Ouellette, it goes south on Ouellette to Wyandotte and that is the parade route."
She says her organization found out about the change about a month ago from the city's Special Events Resource Team.
Durocher calls the change disappointing and says the parade corporation was never consulted.
"What we are hearing from city officials and the varies departments is that the route on Ouellette is to labour intensive for Windsor Police Services," says Durocher. "There's too many cross streets to man so this route is one that they feel that they can deal with and that's what we've been given to work with."
The route for the 2019 Windsor Santa Claus Parade (Photo courtesy of santaparade.org)
She says for her, it's the least desirable route she's worked with in 27-years.
"It's certainly not something that we would have wanted but unfortunately with the exception of changing the staging area, this was not something that we had input into," says Durocher. "It's something that we were told basically, this is going to be the parade route so that will be our Canada Day parade route."
The previous route started on Ouellette Ave. at Giles and headed north to Pitt St.
Durocher says the time for the parade has also changed.
She says the parade will begin at 6:30 instead of 6pm on November 30.