This year towns and cities across Saskatchewan have been forced to get creative to host special occasions such as graduation thanks to COVID-19. In many cases, high school graduation ceremonies have been canceled or postponed altogether, some have displayed banners as a way to honour their graduates, and places such as Redvers have opted to host a parade as a way to say congratulations.
“As parents though 12 years of school we had been talking and we knew the school wasn’t going to participate in anything due to COVID, so we decided as a group we would try to make something happen,” stated organizer and parent Erin Poirier.
Redvers is about 242 kilometres southeast of Regina and home to about 975 residents. This year’s graduating class from their high school has 22 students who will be moving on to various careers. As Poirier explains they wanted to host a parade for the kids while still ensuring social distancing rules were maintained.
“We could have just made it going down main street but it’s quite a short street and we didn’t want people to converge in certain areas, so what we’re going to do is we’re going to start off at 7:30 and we’re going to head south out of the Redvers Rec Centre and we’re going to go around the crescent and try to hit every street in Redvers just so people can watch it from their yard.”
This year’s grad parade will be led by the Redvers Fire Department and Carlyle RCMP followed by multiple trailers carrying the graduates while ensuring social distancing remains in place.
“That was out main purpose, to make it work for everybody. It’s a little different but it’s not your usual standard parade but we’ll do our best and hopefully it works out,” smiled Poirier.
The graduation parade starts at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, June 26th.
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