Nobody ever said planning a yearlong celebration for St. Albert’s 150th anniversary would be a picnic. That certainly held true late last month when the Rendezvous 2011 organizing committee pulled the plug on an attempt to break the Guinness record for holding the world’s largest picnic along the banks of the Sturgeon River.
Instead of the prestige that comes from a record-breaking picnic with 25,000 participants, the Rendezvous 2011 group has set its sights at a more realistic — and less costly — goal of organizing “the largest picnic that St. Albert has ever had,” as committee chair Margaret Plain put it. If St. Albertans want to celebrate a Guinness feat this August, it will have to be over a pint or two of ink-black Irish beer.
On the surface the news, delivered early in St. Albert’s anniversary year, has the potential to let the air out of the city’s 150th celebrations. There will be I told you so comments from those who from the start were skeptical about drawing 25,000 people, nearly half of St. Albert’s population, to Red Willow Park — and there were plenty of them. There will be questions about whether Rendezvous 2011 bit off more than it could chew or if the group did its homework on what a Guinness attempt involves. It turns out that during its record-setting picnic that drew 22,232 people, Lisbon, Portugal hired 1,000 people to count heads and oversee the rigorous Guinness guidelines, a cost clearly outside Rendezvous 2011’s budget, even with $500,000 in city dollars.
Finger pointing is no way to start St. Albert’s 150th year. We as a community must resist that urge and embrace each and every opportunity to recognize our history and celebrate in meaningful ways. After all, we’re not talking about a disappointment on the level of say, Team Canada’s world junior collapse in the gold medal game against Russia. The dream here was far more modest than a gold medal, and Rendezvous 2011 is doing the appropriate thing by looking for a silver lining with St. Albert’s largest-ever picnic.
Whether 25,000 or 250 come out to the Sturgeon River in August should be irrelevant. A world record was a goal, but the point of the picnic wasn’t just about etching a place in history. The record was the icing on the cake for a much larger aim: coming together as a community to share stories and memories of St. Albert’s history. A community, after all, is but the sum of its history and the shared experiences and bonds of its citizens.
St. Albert has plenty of history to remember and we have even more people and experiences to celebrate, past and present. The 150th anniversary celebrations begin in earnest next week with the Continental Cup of Curling and the Black Bonspiel theatrical production. It’s a time for neighbours to share, laugh and enjoy living in a great community. Let the fun begin!
