2016 Montreal Saint-Patrick's Day Parade

If there's one thing that Montrealers can all agree on, it is that everyone loves a parade.  Especially when that parade is the Saint-Patrick's Day Parade.  This was the 193rd Saint-Patrick's Day Parade in Montreal.  Having been established in 1824, it is easily the longest running parade in North America.  While it's true that everyone enjoys feeling a little bit Irish, another reason for the local popularity of the parade is that it kind of serves as the unofficial arrival of Spring.  Montrealers shake off their Winter blues and go out to celebrate in the warm sunshine.   Except, it's not always all that warm.  Today was a bearable -4 Celsius, but nothing like the 2014 edition that even I declared to be cold.  I've been going to the parade for years, and this is the third time that I take photographs of the parade for my photography blog.  I'll be honest, some of the images are starting to get a little repetitive and some of the faces are getting a little more familiar, but there's still always something new to see and some new photographs to take.  For instance, this year Spider-Man joined the parade, I snapped a very cool photograph or a saxophonist in a marching band and also discovered that several members of the Star Wars universe had gone Irish for the day.  It's also seeing fun little moments like dancing bathtubs, the crowd egging a marching band into playing 'We Will Rock You' by Queen during a little break in the action and after all these years, I'm still a sucker for photographing flags that are flapping in the wind.  With all of that being said, let's get on with the show.  The first photograph was taken at f/11, 1/320sec, ISO 400 at 35mm and the second photograph was taken at f/11, 1/125sec, ISO 400 at 42mm.  It also shows the lengths some Montrealers will go to in order to see the parade as you can spot a number of heads peaking out from above the roof of the Boutique Tag.  That's another fun little sport I like to practice while at the parade, trying to see which roofs people will show up on.  Here are some more photographs that I took at the parade.

f/9, 1/500sec, ISO 400 at 55mm

f/9, 1/400sec, ISO 400 at 63mm

f/9, 1/500sec, ISO 400 at 46mm

f/6.3, 1/2500sec, ISO 400 at 40mm

f/6.3, 1/320sec, ISO 300 at 25mm

f/5.6, 1/1000sec, ISO 400 at 43mm

f/5.6, 1/1250sec, ISO 400 at 24mm

f/2.8, 1/1250sec, ISO 400 at 68mm

f/6.3, 1/200sec, ISO 100 at 70mm

f/5.6, 1/400sec, ISO 100 at 70mm

f/5.6, 1/320sec, ISO 100 at 35mm

f/7.1, 1/160sec, ISO 100 at 67mm

f/7.1, 1/100sec, ISO 100 at 70mm

f/6.3, 1/160sec, ISO 100 at 70mm

And with that, the cleaning crews came up to pick up the wayward bottles and cans of beverages that I had spotted among the crowd over the course of the morning as parade goers made their way to a wide selection of Irish pubs which opened early for the occasion.  A good time was had by all and I will leave you with a little Irish wisdom I stumbled upon through a friend, "As you slide down the banister of life, may the splinters never point in the wrong direction."