BRYCE WIRZBA
bwirzba@medicinehatnews.com
If the sounds of Highland bag-pipes amongst emergency sirens didn’t serve enough as a hint, the sight of ornately decorated trailers and horses may have done the trick.
There were 133 entries that took part in this year's Medicine Hat Exhibition and Stampede Parade. A mixture of bands, floats and horses wound their way through downtown streets as rows of onlookers watched along the edges.
From Parade Marshall Laurie Sharland waiving to the crowd from her Cinderella-esque horse drawn carriage to Hobo Hal riding in his miniature train, the parade had many sights to offer. There were individuals dressed in Arabian-Night attire, fiddlers on the back of a trailer playing a Métis jigging tune, and lacrosse players firing balls across to one another. The Medicine Hat BMX Association’s float was a replication of a riding course, grass included for affect, and kids in their ‘50s-styled peddle tractors driving at angles, to and fro.
One of the onlookers was Doug McLeod.
“I’ve been coming down since I've been too young to remember,” he reminisces.
“I like the bands and the floats that put a lot of time and work into.”
Winnie Slootweg is another onlooker who’s come to the parade for many years, about 50 years to be more exact.
“I’ve been doing this for years and years and years. You just have to come and support it.”
She’s like McLeod.
“I love the bands but there are as not as many in there anymore then there used to be.”
This year five bands took part in the parade, The Wa Wa Drum Corps. was on hand with their tri-coloured, track-suit inspired attire. The group played some cartoonish drum-marches with the ting of an xylophone in the background. The South Alberta Pipe and Drum was also on hand, with their red-plaid kilts and traditional tunes of “Green Hills” and “Scotland the Brave.”
Cal Niebergall, band co-ordinator for the parade, was pleased with the array of musical styles each band brought.
“We love a variety. It was actually kind of cool when you can get different types of music coming in.”
As the music came and went, Harley Heinrichs was walking around with his smaller brother, looking out for someone.
“I was looking forward to the parade and seeing my sister because she was riding the horse,” he said.
His sister Haley won second place in the “Riders 10 & Under” category in the parade’s competition.
Further down from the two boys was Brayden Maine out with some of his friends as he waited in anticipation.
As he puts it “a couple years ago I saw a giant monster truck, it was like bigger than these buildings and I want to see that.”
Some like Maine are in it for the neat attractions while others, like Janelle Hirsch, come down for other reasons.
“It’s a family thing we do it every year. It’s an important for our family to do that,” she said.
At the end of the parade, prizes were given out to the top three groups in each of the 13 categories. More than $3,300 in total was handed out.
Hometown Acting Studio ended up winning first place in the Organizations category.
Their float theme was “Alice in Wonderland,” with a big cheshire-cartoonish cat face at the front and a checkerboard of colours running along the float’s side.
“We had pretty much everything on there,” said Clare Lapinskie MacMillan, founder of the studio, noting also the Madhatter's tea party.
Twenty kids dressed up in costumes to accompany the float, an endeavour that took about 40 hours to make.
“With the movie and the cartoons we though how fun it would be. There’s lots of characters for the kids to play,” she said.
“I imagine what made us win was the details and the enthusiasm of the kids.”

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