The 50th anniversary special fireworks show on Sunday, September 3, has been held in front of the smallest audience I have ever seen at La Ronde. The weather was colder than normal and the rain has been almost uninterrupted from the morning to the mid-evening. A light rain did persist at the beginning of this 20-minute show. That was really unfortunate as this Labor Day weekend has begun with a sunny day and I was told that a large crowd had visited the park on Saturday.
On Sunday, the amusement park midway was almost empty when I arrived around 7pm. I went to the ticket booth located between the Arcade and the Bronze section to buy my $15 ticket for a seat in the grandstands. I was told that only 20 tickets had been sold since the beginning of the day at that booth. I don't know if the figure was an exaggeration or not, but the in-park audience had no more than a few hundreds people, for sure. I would estimate the size of the audience in the grandstands between 100 and 200 viewers. The sound coming from the speakers and the fireworks resonated in a different way owing to the almost empty grandstands.
Initially advertised as a La Ronde in-house production, it was later announced on the park website that GFA designer Éric Cardinal was in charge of the pyrotechnic design. He had also designed this year closing display. Similarly, this bonus fireworks show was largely based on shell effects. The setup covered ramps 1, 2, 3 and 4, including a volley of nautical flares. The soundtrack has been crafted by competition technical director, Paul Csukassy. I was wondering to what extent the 50th anniversary of La Ronde would be the actual theme of this display, it was not very clear from the available information.
Following the countdown synchronized with the extinction of the ferris wheel (but not the Jacques-Cartier bridge lights), the show began, in respect with the 50th anniversary idea, on the music of Expo 67 song, "Un jour un jour" by local singer Michèle Richard. A barrage of whistlers was fired, with comets synchronized on the rhythmic opening words. Blue (a signature colour of Expo 67) stars then appeared from various shells (some of them having a mushroom shape) and cakes on ramp 3. Warmer colours later evoked the "couleurs de l'été" from the song. This good opening segment ended with a return of whistlers and blue stars.
Then, the Expo 67/La Ronde theme was lost as subsequent musics were more current summer-style popular musics, like this year popular song Despacito. It also featured 33 tours, the only French-language song of that soundtrack. I was surprised and disappointed to not hear the emblematic song Emmène-nous à La Ronde. It might have been a good idea to communicate more with the audience about the theme of the show in order to highlight the storyline - if any - behind it. Some transitions between segments were somewhat disruptive, for instance a long interruption around the 8th minute caused me to wonder whether a technical problem had occurred.
The arsenal did include a good range of shells of various effects, including many crackling, pistils, and changing-colour effects. The low-level effects comprised some flares (including nautical ones), comets and cakes of stars. They were often synchronized with components of the soundtrack and the beat followed the musics pretty well. However, the design was not highly sophisticated or detail-oriented.
As I mentioned early, the Jacques-Cartier bridge lighting system was not turned off during the show. The 20-minute display began at 8:45pm. At 9pm, the hourly lighting patterns of the bridge came into life and it caused some distractions. Actually, two separate shows were going on at the same time. The rain did stop approximately at the same time, and the show came to a close with an increasing pace, leading to the largest shell of the night and some salutes, followed with brief applauses from the small audience.
It is a great idea to bring back these Labor Day Weekend fireworks shows, a "tradition" introduced in 1999, which has been lost between 2005 and 2015. Also, in contrast with previous Labor Day shows, this one was not based on the unused material from the competition entrants. Additional budget was apparently available, so the show could last 20 minutes (instead of 10 minutes or so) and it had a very good density. But it was a shame to not hold this event in better weather conditions and, more important, in front of a decent audience.
Fred | 
