Degrees of hesitation

So I'm sitting at the secretary desk in the bedroom, when I hear the familiar popping and cracking that means either New Year's Eve or Canada Day. 

It's Canada Day this time, and I leap up and leave the apartment, taking the stairs three flights up to the roof. Three neighbours are already there, one tucked up in a blanket on a collapsible chair. 

Which promptly collapses. 

She's not hurt.

Over the western horizon hangs a pale gold crescent moon.  Below are a line of ancient trees, which effectively block our view of the fireworks.

Damn inconvenient trees.  Providing us with oxygen, but depriving us of the show.

Some fireworks are high enough for us to see the curved brilliant edges, and we can make out the outlines of the enormous domes of red and white exploding light through the branches.

The neighbours chat and comment, as I think about these past three pandemic Canada Days:  the muted non-holiday of the early pandemic as we realised this was for the long haul; the muted non-holiday of last year, when the discovery of hundreds of graves in the schoolyards of the old residential schools had everyone abandoning the traditional wearing of red-and-white for the orange teeshirts of indigenous solidarity.

This year, there seems to be a degree of hesitation about how to dress for our national holiday.  The staff in the local coffee-shop, along with most other restaurants, have opted for the orange, while groups of families with small children have hauled out the Canadian flag teeshirts and wave miniature flags, as they make their way home from the festival at Ship's Point, hosted this year by the Lekwungen Peoples:  Songhees and Esquimalt First Nations.

We've quietly hung out our flag again this year, worrying, just a little bit, if this will be seen as supporting the truckers, and their organisers, who seem to have co-opted the maple leaf for their own furious and defiant ends.

To the west, a final powerful fire-flower.  The Resident Fan Boy appears, two seconds too late, having just figured out where I was.

I invite him to enjoy the crescent moon.  It's really damn lovely.