Vancouver's Celebration of Light is arguably the biggest event of the year for the city, but it's not without its critics.
The annual three-night fireworks competition brings hundreds of thousands of people into the western neighbourhoods of Vancouver, with audiences everywhere from Spanish Banks to the Granville Street Bridge to the North Shore Mountains.
This year the teams from Australia, Mexico, and the Philippines wowed spectators with the shows lasting nearly half an hour apiece on the nights of July 22, 26, and 29.
At the same time, some aren't fans of the epic crowds and are concerned about the effect the three nights of explosions have on animals, both pets and local wildlife. Others point to the cost.
Last year V.I.A. polled readers about the event while it was happening and about two-thirds (66 per cent) of those who responded said they were fans of the event, with both locals and those from outside Vancouver pretty much matching.
We ran the same poll again this year during the event, and this year it seems the Celebration of Light has lost a bit of its luminescence.
V.I.A. polled 973 readers and asked the question: Do you like the Celebration of Light? Of the respondents, around 60 per cent thought it is a great event. There was a bit of a split though, with those in Vancouver less in favour of the massive event.
About 58 per cent of the 600 Vancouverites think it's a "great event." That's a drop of 8 per cent year over year. The margin of error is about 3 per cent.
The poll ran from 7/23/2023 to 7/30/2023. Of the 973 votes, we can determine that 602 are from within the community. The full results are as follows:
Results are based on an online study of adult Vancouver Is Awesome readers that are located in Vancouver. The margin of error - which measures sample variability - is +/- 3.14%, 19 times out of 20.
Vancouver Is Awesome uses a variety of techniques to capture data, detect and prevent fraudulent votes, detect and prevent robots, and filter out non-local and duplicate votes.
