Two sets of early evening thunderstorms threatened to dampen the opening of the 35the season of the Montreal International Fireworks Competition. Mother Nature, however, smiled upon La Ronde as the clouds cleared away to a magnificent sunset as the precursor to the return of Hands Fireworks after an absence of 34 years.
Despite the weather, the grandstands were almost full (using a new general admission seating process which seemed to work well enough) and the audience were treated to a fantastic soundtrack with all the pieces dating from 1985, a year I remember vividly!
The display was energetic throughout, especially in the use of the lake with many nautical shells and cakes of all types (from multi-coloured bengals through star mines and shells of colour and glitter). The audience thoroughly enjoyed the soundtrack with cheers throughout the display – especially during Prince’s Purple Rain segment, when the sky was filled with purple falling leaves shells with mines of purple stars below. The audience were surprised, and warmed, by the barrages of large fireballs during Duran Duran’s A View to a Kill when the lyric repeated “dance into the fire”. I discovered afterwards that each fireball was produced by 2 gallons of gasoline lifted from a 6″ mortar.
There were some technical difficulties here and there, with asymmetries appearing – presumably because of the sharp thunderstorm with heavy rain that had passed through mid-afternoon. The design itself was a bit simplistic, but the use of mines was enjoyable. Some of the transitions between the songs were a bit too abrupt, too, exacerbated by cakes that were reluctant to finish firing on time (also presumably affected by the rain). The finale was magnificent, with huge bombardments of salutes, gold shells, mines and nautical shells. The audience cheered as the 35th season was well and truly inaugurated!