Yesterday one of my students recommended that we go to Nathan Philips Square (City Hall) to help ring in the Christmas season at the Calvalcade of Lights. “It’s tonight – you should go, it’s fun! It makes you enjoy winter!” she said.

And so at the end of my workday, I fought the urge to collapse in our warm apartment.  I successfully convinced my reluctant husband that we should, actually, go out into the cold night and stand for a couple hours while waiting for fireworks. It’s so not Mehmet’s thing, standing around in crowds. But this wasn’t about him. It was about me, and my need to just do something besides work. I needed some photography fodder too!

An off we went.

I’ve been really happy that we haven’t had snow yet. “Don’t you like snow?” everyone asks me. I do! But I know it’s coming, I don’t want to push it.  I really would rather have four months of winter than five. We’ve had such a mild, comfortable November!

It gets dark early these days, though. Wow. This was about 6:45pm. In Malaysia, it got dark early every day too, and it seemed quite strange to me – I associate hot, sunny days with long, light evenings. One of the downsides of living in the tropics is that days are always short.

Anyway, although I dream of the tropics a lot these days, let’s get back to last night.

You can see the people flooding in towards the entrance of the city hall square.

The street was lined with hot dog and sausage carts. It’s such a Toronto tradition!

We made our way through the Fair Trade booth and admired handmade items from around the world.

Once inside the square, we watched the skaters for awhile. Anyone can come and skate here for free – bring your own skates or rent some – it’s a delightful place! The evening’s festivities include the ‘lighting ceremony’, so we’ll come back to this skating rink once it’s all lit up.

See all the people lining the car park overhang there? The whole square was packed! Half a day before this, I didn’t even know about the event, and now that we were here, it seemed all of Toronto was as well!

After waiting for only about 15 minutes of welcomes and announcements from the stage, the whole crowd counted down, and the square was lit up.  You can’t see it in the picture, but as soon as the lights went on, billions of tiny shimmery somethings were released and drifted down around us. Very pretty!

Christmas music, lights, happy families – Olga was right… I was beginning to feel better about winter!

In the background you can see the bright lights and the arches over the skating rink.

Mehmet is always so patient while I wander around taking pictures!

For the next 45 minutes or so, the stage was alive with bands and lights.

In the meantime, people mingled, and everyone was waiting for the fireworks.

It guess it would have looked gorgeous with snow!

We wandered back to the ice rink.

So pretty, isn’t it! It’s not normally packed like this throughout the winter… this was just opening night.

A highlight, of course, was the huge Christmas tree in the square. That’s the city hall there – those two crescent-shaped buildings.

And then, shortly after 8pm… the fireworks started!

It only took a minute or so before the buildings were almost hidden by the smoke!

For me, the best part was that the whole thing was set to beautiful classical music.

There were lots and lots of cheers.  Everyone seemed to love the show.

When it was all done, Mehmet exclaimed that they were the best he’d ever seen.

I think that even though there were none of the massive fireworks that I love, it was really the environment (buildings, Christmas tree, etc) combined with the music that made it so memorable. PLUS, we didn’t have to wait 4 hours like on Canada day. The fireworks started just an hour and a half after we arrived.

Good times! Okay, winter, I guess I”m okay with you coming.

And as always, once we got out there, Mehmet was glad we went.  Besides, he likes to make me happy.

Happy wife, happy life! is what they say.