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Santa Claus parade likely a no-go this year as Kin Club pulls out

June 25, 2020   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

No one can cancel Christmas, but the annual Orangeville Santa Claus parade which precedes the holiday most likely won’t be taking place this year.

The popular parade has been organized and hosted by the Kin Club of Orangeville for over 40 years, but this year the Club has declined to take on the responsibility of hosting and planning the event due to the difficulty involved with the current COVID-19 pandemic.

“I want to make it clear, we never said we were cancelling the parade, we just said we are not prepared to host the parade this year. It’s up to the town if they want to host it.” said Cindy Williams, chair of the Orangeville Santa Clause parade organizing committee. “This year, after a lot of discussion, we came to a logical conclusion. We’re governed by Kin Canada – the national organization, and I contacted them.”

While the national governing body didn’t say they couldn’t take part in the parade, they cautioned there’s a lot involved with the current situation.

“We’re not able to run any event, whatsoever, without insurance,” Ms. Williams explained. “Everything we run, we have to apply for insurance through Kin Canada. We asked if we could possibly be denied insurance because this is a large event.”

With that being a possibility, the Kin Club realized that they could put a lot of effort into an event only to have withdraw later if insurance was denied.

On top of that, participants in the parade must also have insurance.

With so much involved in hosting the parade the Club decided that waiting until the last minute just wasn’t a feasible option.

“We’ve been looking at this situation for three months,” Ms. Williams explained. “It is a huge disappointment. We don’t want to disappoint the kids. There’s a lot of work behind the scenes. This event takes months of planning and a lot of that planning takes place in the spring. We can’t put it together at the drop of a hat.”

While the province is currently re-opening in stages, Ms. Williams said that even if everything was planned, there was no guarantee the parade could happen.

“The way things are going we’re not even sure if big events will be allowed. We don’t know if we will be able to have thousands of people gather in one place.”

Ms. Williams stressed the fact that the parade has not been cancelled by the Kin Club, they are just declining to host this year.

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