(Clearwisdom.net) July 1, 2007 marks the 140th birthday of Canada. To celebrate the event, a Canada Day Parade was held in Montreal. The organizer of the parade invited the Divine Land Marching Band and local Falun Gong practitioners to take part in the parade. Falun Gong practitioners' great performance won them the highest award of the parade--the President's Award. Their float, Celestial Maidens' dancing and waist drum troupe were warmly welcomed by the spectators.
The Divine Land Marching Band
When the Falun Gong group passed the stage, the chair of the parade committee Claude Leclerc stepped down the stage and shook hands with practitioners and issued the award to them. The organizers gave a detailed introduction of Falun Gong to the spectators. They also told the spectators about the persecution in China and the Canadian independent investigators' report about the CCP's organ harvesting atrocity.
Claude Leclerc said to the spectators that the performance by the Divine Land Marching Band was fabulous. The band performed in the parade last year and people loved it, so the organizers invited them again this year. He indicated that he would invite them back next year.
Demonstrating the exercises
After the parade, the practitioners were invited to demonstrate the exercises on stage. The gentle movement drew many people's attention. Practitioners briefly introduced the principles of Falun Dafa to people and told them they could find more information on the Falun Dafa website. Many people asked practitioners to repeat the name of the website so that they could write it down. Some spectators told practitioners that the exercises looked very beautiful and said that they plan to go the exercise site to learn the practice.
Mr. Jiang Fan, director of the Divine Land Marching Band, told the reporter, "The band was set up in April 2006. Since then, we have attended more than 30 parades, festivals and community activities. This is our second time to perform at the Canada Day Parade. We are very happy to see that so many people, especially Chinese people, enjoyed our performance. Our wish is to serve the community and bring the beauty of Falun Dafa to people."
Many media reported on this parade, including CBC, CTV and TVA. Some of them played them live.
Falun Gong practitioners won the highest award of the parade--the President's Award.