IBEW mem­bers toss candy from their float in the Labour Day parade.

Walk­ing down Lis­gar Street toward City Hall, I heard the band play­ing “Here Comes Santa Claus.”  I was con­fused. Did I come to the wrong place?  Had Christ­mas been moved to Septem­ber? Maybe people had finally seen the folly in hold­ing the Christ­mas parade in Decem­ber!  A couple hun­dred march­ers were cued, wait­ing to begin the Labour Day parade, and there was Santa him­self, lead­ing them in an orange reflect­ive vest!

The office of an old auto body shop sits empty.

I had expec­ted a giant rally; ban­ners, war cries, a show of force, a demon­stra­tion of the power of people united!  A liv­ing, flow­ing mass of people, mov­ing together in uni­son like a river. Instead, it was a rag-tag bunch, a mix of youth­ful act­iv­ists and grey haired uni­on­ists; reg­u­lar people, out on a hot day at the end of sum­mer, singing and passing out candy. It was the kind of parade any­one could join, so I marched too, tak­ing pic­tures along the way. Watch­ing the Labour Day march­ers wind their way around the down­town, I felt proud.  I felt like I belonged.

Santa and his band

We passed an old auto body shop, it’s doors recently closed. Labour may indeed have brought us the week­end, but the erosion of the live­li­hoods of work­ing class people is not off­set by hol­i­days and cheap elec­tron­ics. I wished more people had turned out. There is much work left to be done. We are all labour­ers really, play­ing a part in a big life-drama.  Our per­sonal nar­rat­ives, like the clos­ing of the old auto­body shop, exist inside the con­text of our society.

On Glad­stone, I walked ahead to the front of the parade. The big man with the white beard called me over. “How’d you like to take a pic­ture of Santa?” he asked. “Yeah!” I replied. “I am Santa,” he said, with a com­ple­telly dead­pan deliv­ery. I took two pic­tures, he blinked in one. The best gift Santa has ever given me is the gift of his time and his self. The shut­ter clicked, and in a split second we made some­thing that will last.

Thanks Santa, see you at Christ­mas!  Or maybe at next year’s Labour Day parade.