Organizers of this year’s Vaisakhi parade in Surrey are expecting another record crowd – even larger than last year’s 200,000 people.
Parade spokesperson Moninder Singh Buar said there’s a “buzz in the community” leading up to the celebration, indicating the number of attendees could even be larger.
“Over the last year or so, there’s been a lot more community engagement from the youth in Surrey,” Buar said. “There’s a lot more buzz around the celebration around the religious side.”
For the past few years, Surrey has been home to the largest Vaisakhi parade outside of India.
Vaisakhi occurs in mid-April each year and coincides with the time of first crop harvesting in Punjab, and also marks the anniversary of one of Sikhism’s most important religious events, the establishment of Khalsa in 1699.
Attendance at Surrey’s annual Vaisakhi event, which is now in its 12th year and is coordinated by the Gurdwara Sahib Dasmesh Darbar temple in Newton, has usually hovered between 80,000 and 100,000. But a couple of factors led to the increase last year, one of which Buar expects will be duplicated.
“A big reason is the parades in Vancouver and Surrey are now on different days, so people who had to choose one or the other now do both,” Buar said, noting the Vancouver event also attracts large crowds.
Vancouver’s Vaisakhi celebration takes place April 13, while Surrey’s is on April 20.
“There wasn’t a lot of communication between the two groups for a while, but there is a lot more now,” Buar said. “It benefits both of us.”
The weather also cooperated last year, Buar added, after rain fell on the 2010 parade.
“If the weather holds, definitely we expect to have as many people this year,” said Buar. “We usually expect around 100,000, but last year was a surge, it was unexpected. But we did do more promotion and marketing.”
More than 2,500 participants from over 20 community groups are expected to participate this year.
More Vaisakhi stories:
• Vaisakhi: A Celestial Celebration
Read all these stories as they appeared in print in our Vaisakhi e-Edition