July 1st is Canada Day. As usual, this year Toronto area has many large-scale events to celebrate this grand festival. At the same time, it is also an important opportunity to spread the Dafa and tell the truth about Falun Gong to the public. To help Toronto residents understand Falun Dafa better, Toronto Dafa practitioners selected two major parades that have the most attendants.
Rain was forecasted, but it turned out to be a sunny day. The morning parade was in East York area. At 9:00AM, over 120 practitioners, wearing colorful neat clothes, came to the starting point of the parade and began to prepare balloons, banners, newspapers and other introductory Falun Dafa material. Because recently more people have shown interest in learning about Falun Gong, we printed 10,000 copies of a newspaper for the event.
At 10:30AM, the parade at East York started. The procession was about 1 kilometer and Falun Gong part was over 100 meters. Our group was at the back, right behind a military band and was eye-catching. When Falun Gong practitioners started the parade with the beautiful music of Pudu (Universal Salvation), the Falun Gong group soon became the central focus of the whole parade. The Canadian national flag and the big banner of "Celebrate Canada Day" were at the front of the Falun Gong procession, followed by a huge Falun emblem and signs introducing Falun Dafa and Zhen-Shan-Ren (Truth-Compassion-Tolerance). During the parade, practitioners distributed newspapers that tell the real story of Falun Gong and other introductory material to the public. They brought their best wishes of "Falun Dafa Happy Canada Day" to the public with their smile. The people on the road responded warmly with applause from time to time. Thousands of copies of newspapers and flyers were handed out and around 100,000 people heard about Falun Dafa because of this parade.
The parade ended in a park of East York. Falun Gong practitioners began to spread Dafa and practice the exercises at a spot that they had reserved. Many people passed by and took newspapers and other material. Despite the baking sun, practitioners' peaceful movements attracted many passers-by. Some people sat down and started to learn the sitting exercise.
At 3:00 PM, about 90 practitioners traveled over 40 kilometers to a park in North York and joined the afternoon parade. Having participated in similar parades since 1998, Falun Gong practitioners have made a good impression. This time, half of the parade was composed of Falun Gong practitioners. It seemed as if this parade was organized for Falun Gong.
After the parade finished, the organizers spoke highly of the performance of Falun Gong practitioners:" You have made important contributions to the success of this parade!"
(July 6th, 2000)
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