O, Salmo!

Well, there's good news and bad news about Canada Day. The bad news is that it marks the halfway point of the swiftly fleeing summer. The good news is that it means we'll be headed to Salmo tomorrow morning for one of the best small-town celebrations of anything anywhere.

It starts with breakfast at the funky, artsy Dragonfly Cafe. They make fantastic veggie breakfast burritos, and their walls are adorned with beautiful photographs and paintings for sale. Their bakery case offers one luscious treat after another, and some of them are even healthful.

Then we'll make our way downtown (one block away) to stake out a good spot for the parade. Every emergency vehicle in the area will be decorated for the parade, and every fireman and EMT has a bag of candy to toss out to children along the route. The Girl Guides will march, the Shriners will haul their clown cars up from Washington, and there might even be a llama again this year. It's a noisy and joyous parade full of civic pride. We'll get a rare glimpse of overt Canadian patriotism which--like still waters--runs deep and wide.

After the parade we'll meander down to the park (another block or two away) for the homemade pie sale that benefits the Salmo Food Bank. All year long, volunteers pick and process fruit, roll out crusts, and bake pies for the Canada Day sale. For meat-eaters, it's the perfect follow-up to the annual barbeque. We'll wander around looking at floats and petting horses fresh from the parade. There are always a few vendors with interesting wares--one year I bought a flying cow whirligig to hang on our balcony.

Across the street there's a car show with all sorts of audacious antique cars and hot rods.

But the best event of all is the used book sale sponsored by the Friends of the Salmo Library. There are tables and tables of books--really GOOD books--and magazines to browse with boxes of books stashed under the tables to replenish the offerings as needed. It's my best source of obscure Canadian literature, and I always come home with treasures. We've accumulated so many in the past five years that we're thinking of boxing them up and sneaking them back under the sale tables this year.

Too bad Will and Kate won't be in Salmo tomorrow. They're missing the best Canada Day celebration going.