Green floats, green shirts and garish leprechaun hats filled Bank Street recently during the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade.
Next year, the party won’t change but the end location of the parade might.
Members of Ottawa’s Irish community want to have the route altered.
Usually, it starts at city hall and ends at Lansdowne Park which provides a large venue for the after-parade party.
“Somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000 people came out this year,” says Peter Rock, head of fundraising for the Irish Society which hosts the event.
But Patrick McDonald, financial consultant for the Irish Society, wants the parade to end in the Byward Market instead.
He says the reasons for the proposed route change relates to Irish community history.
“From the 1820s to 1832, the canal was built by mostly Irish workers,” says McDonald.
The new route would not be a change so much as a return to old ways, he says.
“If you go through the old history of the parade, they used to go through the Byward market here anyways.”
Even his church, St. Brigid’s, is named after the lesser-known female patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick’s counterpart.
The church is also home to the Irish Canadian Cultural Centre, which hosted Irish Week from March 10 to 17, as well as several other events throughout the year.
Pat Kelly also wants a route change.
He and Larry Bradley are owners of the Byward market location of the Heart & Crown pub.
But Kelly says taking the parade to the market would mean going up Rideau Street, and the city is reluctant to close it off.
In the end, it will be up to the Irish Society to plot a new route for the parade and seek approval from the city.