Winnipeggers gathered for the annual Canadian Kilt Skate at the Riley family duck pond in Assiniboine park to celebrate Scotland\u2019s contribution to Canada\u2019s multicultural heritage on Monday.<\/p>\n
The kilt skate began in 2015 as a nationwide initiative to connect cities through a shared cultural celebration. <\/p>\n
In Winnipeg, the event is typically held at Assiniboine park with help from the St. Andrew\u2019s Society of Winnipeg and draws a big crowd.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe won this contest, if you wanna call it, in 2021 and I believe we won it again in 2023. It\u2019s just based on spirit and interest in the number of people so there\u2019s probably about 100 people out here today,\u201d said Peter Heavysege, past president of St. Andrew\u2019s Society.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a way for families to come out and enjoy and maybe a chance for us to share some Scottish culture. There\u2019s a large Scottish population in Manitoba second, third, fourth generation and so on, and its family day in many provinces but we\u2019re celebrating Louis Riel Day but it\u2019s also a great day to bring out families and just have a skate,\u201d Dwight Macaulay, president, St. Andrew\u2019s Society.<\/p>\n
Mayor Scott Gillingham was among the skaters out at the duck pond.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got Scottish heritage on my mother side, so I\u2019m proud to be joined today and joining the saint Andrew society for the great Canadian kilt skate. It\u2019s a perfect day. The weather is unbelievable here at Assiniboine park, the duck pond and so we are just out, a lot of us, skating in kilts!\u201d Gillingham said.<\/p>\n
Eight-year-old Luke Jakilazek has been attending the great Canadian kilt skate since he was two months old.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means a lot to me, I get to see some of my Scottish friends here, its really nice!\u201d said Jakilazek.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrowing up and everything I remember going to the legion\u2019s and stuff like that and for all the Scottish parties and everybody and it\u2019s just important that we keep up the heritage and there\u2019s a big Scottish community here in Winnipeg in real Scottish pride here in Canada as well and we just wanna keep that going throughout the generations,\u201d says Graham, Luke\u2019s father<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Winnipeggers gathered for the annual Canadian Kilt Skate at the Riley family duck pond in Assiniboine park to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-480171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}