Opinion: Who should step up to return Vancouver's Canada Day fireworks?

Opinion: Who will step up to bring back Canada Day fireworks to Vancouver?

Canada Day at Canada Place fireworks (left) and an electronic sign informing the public that Canada Day 2022 fireworks are cancelled (right). (Shutterstock | Mark Marissen/Twitter)

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This past Saturday, Vancouver’s loss turned out to be a gain for Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond, White Rock, Coquitlam, and Port Coquitlam, where Canada Day celebrations were still bookended with literal bangs in the night sky.

Although there was still some revelry, downtown Vancouver was much quieter than usual without Vancouver Fraser Port Authority’s traditional Canada Day fireworks at Canada Place.

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Typically, each year prior to the pandemic, the Canada Day fireworks in downtown Vancouver attract about 200,000 spectators to the areas in and around Canada Place and the Vancouver Convention Centre, and around Coal Harbour.

Those crowds that typically descend into downtown Vancouver for Canada Day festivities would linger in the area throughout the day and into the evening, and support shops, restaurants, hotels, entertainment businesses, and other services. This year, revellers seeking fireworks likely turned to the suburban events.

For tourism and hospitality, the large-scale Canada Day fireworks at Canada Place added another major event on the calendar to help bring in and entertain visitors.

Happy Canada Day from Coquitlam! 🇨🇦

It’s a day to celebrate our diversity, while also reflecting on the past, and looking forward to creating a brighter future, together.

And I’ve got to say, few kinds of events bring out the kind of crowds that fireworks do. pic.twitter.com/lrfJJFJlIG

— Kenneth Chan (@iamkennethchan) July 2, 2023

Crowds descending around Lafarge Lake before the fireworks. pic.twitter.com/lMZmGbsk4D

— Kenneth Chan (@iamkennethchan) July 2, 2023

The post-fireworks exodus. pic.twitter.com/dr7lcMWyb0

— Kenneth Chan (@iamkennethchan) July 2, 2023

The port authority cancelled its Canada Day fireworks due to the pandemic, initially because of health safety restrictions in 2020 and 2021.

Its fireworks were again cancelled in 2022 due to skyrocketing costs that impacted all events and festivals returning after a prolonged pandemic hiatus. At the time of the 2022 cancellation announcement, it was generally assumed by the media and public that their fireworks would simply be cancelled for just one more year as a result of the continued pandemic impacts — that an effort would be made to return the tradition the following year in 2023.

Then in May 2023, Daily Hive Listed was the first to report that the port authority’s Canada Day fireworks were actually permanently cancelled, igniting a public uproar.

“After careful consideration, we decided in 2022 to permanently discontinue the evening fireworks display for July 1 at Canada Place primarily due to rising costs,” a port authority spokesperson said at the time. This was part of their decision to take a new approach with their Canada Day celebrations starting in 2022, including the renaming of the event to “Canada Together,” with greater First Nations involvement in the retained daytime programming of the festival.

But the absence of Canada Day fireworks for the fourth consecutive year even surprised the City of Vancouver’s new political leadership, which ran on a civic election campaign last year to restore civic pride, fun, and events in a city that seemingly can’t quite shake off its “No Fun City” moniker.

“We’re disappointed to see this event cancelled for 2023,” said Mayor Ken Sim in a statement in response to the revelation that the fireworks had been permanently cancelled.

“One of our core goals is to make Vancouver a more vibrant, fun, and exciting city to call home — our team is fully committed to working with organizers to make it easier and more affordable to host events, shows, and festivals in the City of Vancouver.”

The Mayor also said he will reach out to the port authority to discuss further to hopefully see the return of the Canada Day fireworks in the future.

At the time, a Daily Hive online reader poll, albeit informal and unscientific, saw over 9,000 votes on this question: “Should Canada Day fireworks in downtown Vancouver be restored?” A resounding 90% of these voters said “Yes.”

The comment sections on our platforms in reaction to Daily Hive Listed’s news on the “permanent cancellation” also lit up with the vast majority expressing great disappointment.

The usual detractors, a small minority, would of course bring up their usual reasons of environmental considerations, wildlife impacts, and/or impacts to pets. But it says more about them when fireworks are highly predictable on the calendar — they can be expected on only a handful of dates over the course of each year — and when such voices ignore the very fact that the fireworks attract hundreds of thousands of people. They bring out entire communities.

And now some are also calling for drone shows as the replacement for fireworks.

While drone shows creating animations, patterns, and shapes can certainly be very impressive, they come with their own unique challenges.

To come anywhere close to replicating the spectacle of large-scale fireworks, an impressive drone show requires several hundred drones, and the production cost for such shows with a decent running duration carries a six-figure cost.

The more drones that are used, the larger the takeoff/landing site that is required in very close proximity — and the flight path to/from this sizeable site cannot fly over people for safety reasons.

Drone shows are also extremely more susceptible to weather than fireworks. They generally do not operate in conditions with high winds, heavy rainfall, snowfall, and/or sub-zero temperatures, which drains the battery life quicker than planned. The risk of failure or cancellation for drone shows is greatest in the winter, but large-scale fireworks can still go ahead within a much wider range of adverse weather conditions year-round.

And as it turns out, drone shows are also highly susceptible to signal interference, which was the case with Bright Skies at Canada Place in early December 2022. The two-night show using 300 drones, supported by Best Buy, was cancelled last minute when it only became apparent well after the first show’s failed scheduled start time that there was a technical issue, with marine traffic signals in Vancouver harbour interfering with the production. It is not clear if this will be an ongoing issue for the feasibility of drone shows in the area. An event cancellation at such a last minute is a nightmare scenario for any event planner, who have to answer to event sponsors, stakeholders, and the public.

The first failed drone show attempt attracted a few thousand people to the area around Canada Place, but it was certainly extremely far from coming anywhere close to the hundreds of thousands or even the tens of thousands of people that could be expected for large-scale fireworks.

Simply put, few kinds of events bring out the type of big, diverse, family-friendly crowds that fireworks do, and in a relatively cost-effective way with a high rate of guarantee that the show will actually proceed and attract a mass crowd. Few kinds of events are as universal as fireworks for celebrations, and for that reason Vancouver’s largest public events for attendance have always been fireworks events. The public has repeatedly voted with their feet each year.

And the actual fireworks production is, in fact, a relatively small budget item for such mass crowd public events, with crowd control logistics and security being the overwhelming main cost drivers for such events, especially in an urban setting like the downtown Vancouver peninsula. But that is simply the price of bringing community together and attracting tourists for fun and the economic benefits, and an argument can be made that such investments for civic pride and community gatherings are priceless.

This is not to say drone shows would not be a positive addition to Metro Vancouver’s events calendar, especially in the summer when weather conditions are generally more favourable (such as Canada Day), but there is a false expectation that drones are a complete fireworks replacement for all scenarios.

As well, a growing number of longtime major fireworks events around the world are not using drones as a replacement, but as an add-on feature to the traditional fireworks, with animated shapes and patterns acting as a backdrop for the brighter lights that come from the large explosions.

All of this leads back to the following question: who will step up to bring back Canada Day fireworks or at least introduce a Canada Day drone show to Vancouver to cap off the day?

After staging and funding Vancouver’s official Canada Day fireworks for decades, the port authority has been on the receiving end of the complaints for its decision to permanently cancel its fireworks. This aligns with the port authority’s years-long trend of downsizing its Canada Day programming ever since it went all out for Canada 150 celebrations in 2017. In 2018, the port also cancelled its tradition of staging a pre-fireworks Canada Day parade on West Georgia Street.

But the City of Vancouver has a big role in all of this, too, as it has taken the port authority for granted for their tradition of putting on Vancouver’s official Canada Day public celebrations on behalf of the City. Staging and supporting events and festivals, including Canada Day, are part of the traditional responsibilities of a municipal government.

The municipal governments of Surrey, Burnaby, Richmond, White Rock, Port Coquitlam, and Coquitlam directly produce and fund the official Canada Day celebration held in their respective jurisdictions, along with other major civic events throughout the year.

The same can be said for the official Canada Day festivities in Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto.

The last major public events directly produced and funded by the City of Vancouver was its nine-day, Indigenous-themed “Canada 150+” festival at the Larwill Place parking lot in downtown Vancouver, and before that the “Vancouver 125” celebrations in 2011 marking Vancouver’s 125th anniversary.

Instead, Vancouver heavily relies on the goodwill of organizations like the port authority and non-profit societies for its major public events calendar, with the latter being volunteer-driven groups in many instances.

Historically, the port authority’s Canada Day festival — outside of their core mandate of ensuring the efficient movements of goods through Canada’s Pacific gateway and the country’s economic well-being — is seen as one of the ways they give back to the community by checking off a big box in Vancouver’s events calendar.

While the port authority has publicly stated rising event costs is its main reason for ending the fireworks, the federal entity’s annual financial statements suggest a healthy organizational financial picture to support such costs, equivalent to just a small fraction of one per cent of their annual operating costs.

Their operating costs went up by 16% to $179 million in 2021 and a further 8% to about $194 million in 2022 due to expenditures such as salaries and employee benefits, consulting, and other operating and administrative costs. But operating revenues for these fiscal years reached $275 million and $305 million, respectively, representing an annual net income of roughly $100 million, with strong year-over-year growth for the latest fiscal year. Consolidated earnings went up by 10.5% to $149 million in 2022, mainly due to the return of the cruise season. Net revenues are redirected to areas such as capital costs, like improving and expanding port facilities.

Any likelihood of bringing back Canada Day fireworks to Vancouver likely depends on the port authority’s support and participation, as an expansion of its “Canada Together” festival. But it will likely require a bit of City of Vancouver leadership and support in order to convince the port authority to reverse its decision.

With highly limited corporate sponsorship dollars to go around, adding fireworks to Vancouver’s existing official Canada Day celebration organized by the port authority is the most practical path forward, as opposed to creating a second competing Canada Day-themed event in the city, and there are advantages when it comes to economies of scale in terms of costs, and City and policing staffing resources.

Moreover, there are also few suitable locations for large-scale fireworks and mass crowds to gather in the downtown Vancouver peninsula, with English Bay already used as the identity of the Honda Celebration of Light. Canada Day fireworks have long belonged in Coal Harbour.

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