The haze has dissipated and the noise has subsided and the litter has been removed, and somehow Vancouver feels a little more like Vancouver.
The fireworks and the accompanying daylong Fourth of July celebration returned to Fort Vancouver this week following a one-year hiatus. Attendance numbers haven’t been released, but those who participated engaged in the city’s most powerful communal experience.
The positive aspects are easy to enumerate:
• Despite the fact that admission was charged for the first time — $7 for those 13 and older — a good-sized crowd showed up. On Sunday, Elson Strahan, president of the Fort Vancouver National Trust that oversees the spectacle, said, “We feel that we have as big a crowd as we have had in the past.”
• The show, scaled down from previous extravaganzas to a 20-minute fireworks display, still provided a worthy spectacle.