Port of Vancouver Cancels Upcoming Canada Day Fireworks Following ‘Canada Together’ Rebranding

A reveler waves a Canadian flag while sporting a patriotic outfit during Canada Day celebrations in Vancouver, on July 1, 2019. Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press

Vancouver Fraser Port Authority has announced that its Canada Day fireworks show will be cancelled in 2023 and every year going forward, with the celebration being rebranded as “Canada Together.”

“We took a whole new direction for the event last year, renaming it and rebranding it to be considered Canada Together as opposed to Canada Day,” said Gillian Behnke, the manager of community relations and events with the port authority.

“As part of that reimagining, we decided to discontinue the fireworks. That was a decision we made last year, and it was sort of an ongoing decision that wasn’t something that would be revisited each year and we just really wanted to better align ourselves with this new direction for the event.”

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in Vancouver’s festivities being cancelled in 2020 and 2021. While Canada Day festivities returned in 2022, the city decided to again cancel the fireworks display in downtown Vancouver citing rising costs.

According to Port of Vancouver spokesman Alex Munro, the new direction for the event followed national conversations about how best to celebrate the day following the “tragic findings at residential schools.”

In May 2021, the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation announced that the remains of as many as 215 children were found using ground-penetrating radar around a former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia’s Interior. This was followed by a series of other similar announcements. So far, no excavations have been performed on any of the sites to recover remains.

“The event was re-named Canada Together and is planned collaboratively with representatives from the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations under the theme of ‘weaving together the fabric of a nation,'” Munro told Global News.

Several cities across Canada have announced the cancellation or scaling back of Canada Day celebrations in recent weeks. On May 23, an email to City of Toronto volunteers said the city’s Canada Day celebrations at Nathan Phillips Square would be cancelled due to “resource constraints” during a “fiscally complex year.” But a day later, the city announced it had reversed its decision and the celebrations would proceed as originally planned.

The City of Calgary has also announced it would not hold fireworks during its 2023 Canada Day celebration, instead opting for an enhanced pyrotechnic show involving lights and sounds from the main stage at Fort Calgary. The reasons given by the city for cancelling the fireworks include sensitivities related to Truth and Reconciliation, the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Immigration Act, and disturbances to the city’s wildlife.

An online petition, started by a group called Common Sense Calgary, has been opened in an effort to reverse the city’s decision to cancel the fireworks. It has received more than 10,000 signatures to date.