The usual calm of a Friday afternoon on Vancouver’s Main Street was disrupted by the thumping of bass drums and the squealing voices of children shouting “Firetruck, firetruck, firetruck!”
It was time, once again, for the annual Paddy Hough Parade.
Students from nearby Hough Elementary School and community organizations dressed in their finest — or at least their greenest — and marched down Main Street in a show of St. Patrick’s Day pride. Onlookers danced, collected candy and waved at the procession as the parade progressed.
Even the sun, obscured by gray clouds for most of the day, peeked out, bringing some truth to the parade’s motto: “The sun always shines on the Paddy Hough Parade, no matter what the weather!“
The Paddy Hough Parade, now in its 27th year, celebrates Patrick “Paddy” Hough, the Irish immigrant and educator for whom the school and neighborhood is named.
Hough immigrated to Canada in 1870 then to Vancouver in 1883, where he was a teacher and associate superintendent in the city
While the parade is a long-standing tradition for the neighborhood, some of the faces on Main Street were there for the first time.
Liz Soth leapt up and down as her son William, a first-grader at the school, marched past. She waved and filmed a video of the 6-year-old boy, who, along with his classmates, was wearing a soda-bottle jet pack attached to his back.
“To Infinity and Beyond” was the class’ theme for the parade, Soth explained.
“This is our first year at Hough,” she said. “We couldn’t be more excited about the school. It’s a gem.”
Soth and her family moved to the neighborhood last summer.
“This school is really special,” she said. “The teachers are amazing and you can tell they care about the community and the future the kids are going to bring.”
Arwen Flynn sat with her daughter, 2-year-old Ramona, and their dog, Ranger, on the sidewalk as the parade passed.
Flynn said she bought a house in the neighborhood last summer, and is trying to spend more time with her daughter at nearby events.
Ramona, dressed in a green raincoat, gripped a small bag of Skittles she’d collected. “The drums,” she proclaimed, were the best part of a parade that included dancing bees, old-fashioned cars and Luna, Hough Elementary School’s therapy goldendoodle.
Flynn enjoyed seeing the neighborhood school take the lead on the event, saying it was exciting to see the students be a part of a community-focused celebration.
“It’s more community that way, when it’s a smaller group like an elementary school taking some pride in the neighborhood,” Flynn said.
