Windsor’s Canada Day Parade will take place downtown Wednesday morning.
The parade begins at 11 a.m. from the corner of Ouellette Avenue and Giles Boulevard, and will head north, ending at Pitt Street.
Maggie Durocher, executive director of the Windsor Parade Corporation says the theme this year is ‘Our Canadian Mosaic’.
“We have so many different multicultural groups involved and we thought it was a great way to be able to highlight that,” she said.
“The opening of the parade will feature this year for the first time a number of flags that the Multicultural Council of Windsor and Essex County will be parading right at the beginning of the parade to keep up with that Canadian Mosaic theme.”
Durocher says recently retired AM800 host Patty Handysides will serve as this year’s grand marshal leading the parade up Ouellette.
“We have floats, we have a number of marching bands, as well as concert bands. Concert bands you’ll find on a flatbed as opposed to marching,” she said.
“We’re really excited this year to present the Philippine heritage band from Vaughan, Ontario. They’re a 120 member in total band unit and we think that they’re really going to bring something special to the parade.”
Durocher says attendees are invited to the The Fan Zone located at University Avenue and Ouellette.
“That’s where you get your free firecracker timbits. Those are brand new for this year, along with flags, tattoos, new colouring pages, and games,” she said.
“We’ll have a face painter there, as well as Jangles the Clown doing balloon art. That runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.”
Expect road closures in the area beginning around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday.