I got to see the Capital Ex parade today. I’ve never been to the main parade of the Edmonton summer. It’s downtown and I don’t work there, so I haven’t been able to make it there in the past. However the new corporate overlords let us go see it.
It’s quite a bit bigger than the Silly Summer parade on Whyte Avenue. So it’s less intimate. But it wasn’t as big as I expected.
There were maybe about ten floats. The rest of the “exhibits” could be classified in one of several categories.

• People who think they are famous and want to wave at the crowd from the back of a car.
• Marching bands. There were three bands that highlighted bagpipers. The Red Deer marching band’s cheerleaders looked like their uniforms were from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
• A trailer piled with junk, that someone thought was festive, being pulled by truck. Usually this was advertising something.
• Horses. Always followed by a street-cleaner.
• Tanks! Best thing there. Nothing commands respect like the barrel of a gun bigger than your head pointed at said head. But being me, I really wanted to yell at them to honk their horns.