That’s what it says at members.tripod.com/~dub2000 (scroll down to the Vancouver entry). It’s part of the lore. Spectators and fireworks show boosters have been saying it for decades about the annual Vancouver Fourth of July aerial fireworks display, which unfolds in all its glory at 10:10 tonight over the Columbia  River just upstream from the I-5 Bridge.

So, here now is another attempt to debunk a myth. Two weeks ago it was the myth that light-rail trains might one day operate between Vancouver and Portland over the Interstate 205 Bridge. That’s not going to happen.

Today, it’s the myth that Vancouver’s  fireworks show, now in its 46th year, is the biggest west of the Mississippi River.

That’s not necessarily so, although it is probably the largest west of Mississippi Drive on McLoughlin Heights. It must be noted that the sponsoring group itself, the Vancouver National Historic Reserve Trust, stops short of making the claim. Its Web page (www.official4thofjuly.org) proclaims the extravaganza is just “one of the largest fireworks displays west of the Mississippi.”

Don’t take my word for it that the “biggest-show-west-of-the-Mississippi” claim is dubious at best. I discovered something called the Pyrotechnics Guild International (PGI) (www.pgi.org) and tracked down its president, Bill Bahr, in Freehold, N.J.

Don’t get him started.

‘This stupid government’

“I couldn’t give you a clue” who has the biggest show west of the Mississippi, he said, noting rather pointedly that I was interrupting his dinner. “It’s not interesting enough to us. We’re an organization of fireworks manufacturers and hobbyists. We’re trying to keep fireworks as an American tradition and trying to stop this stupid government from taking that right away from us.”
Bahr says the Consumer Products Safety Commission “is who I’m talking about. They’re the ones.”

As I said, don’t get him started.

When it’s dinnertime in New Jersey, it’s still mid-afternoon in North Dakota, so I called Tom Sklebar, the 1st Vice President of PGI, in Millarton, N.D.

“I have no idea,” Sklebar said, then suggested that trying to pin this down is a fool’s errand.

“Are you talking about the number of shells?” he asked. “Or are you asking about the weight of the product going up? How are you measuring it?”

He looked past my imprecision and suggested I check out members.tripod.com/~dub2000 and click on “Highlights.” That site has several “biggest show” lists: (Biggest in the World, Biggest in the Europe, Biggest New Year’s. Here’s its “Biggest July 4th” list:

1. “Macy’s 4th of July” New York City; 2. “Pops Concert at the Esplanade” Boston; 3. “Central Pennsylvania 4th Fest,” State College, Pa.; 4. “Welcome America!” Philadelphia; 5. “Independence Day Celebration,” Washington D.C.; 6. “WaMu Family 4th,” Seattle; 7. “Go 4th on the River,” New Orleans; 8. “Friendship Festival,” Buffalo, N.Y; 9. “Lights on the Lake,” Lake Tahoe; 10. “Freedom Over Texas,” Houston.

Note it has three west of the Mississippi : Seattle, Houston and Lake Tahoe.

But, who’s to say those people aren’t spreading their own myths? For all we know, when they were deciding what cities would be on their precious lists, they heard about Vancouver, assumed it was the other Vancouver and scratched it.

You can almost hear them: “This here’s an Amurican holiday and our list is gonna be strictly Amurican cities, by gum. None of them Canucks.”

In any case, the 31-minute show here will be big. Richard Lary, the chief pyrotechnician, says he and his crew will fire 3,190 individual shells, each one from 3 inches to 12 inches in diameter. Another 2,250 shells between 2.5 and 3 inches are spread among 90 “multi-shot boxes.” Those shells fire sequentially, a split second apart.

That’s a total of 5,440 shells. Lary couldn’t find numbers for last year, but said in 2006 there were 3,775 total.

So, 5,440 is a bunch. But get this: Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, claims the world’s largest fireworks display was in Funchal, Portugal, on Dec. 31, 2006, with 66,326 shells.

Happy Fourth, and don’t make any myths.

GREGG HERRINGTON’s column of
personal opinion appears on the Other Opinions page each Friday. Reach him at gregg.herrington@columbian.com.