KulturOntario's video: Oktoberfest Thanksgiving Day Parade Berlin-Kitchener 9-10-2017 pt 1

The Oktoberfest Thanksgiving Day Parade is a major event in Berlin-Kitchener, and is broadcast live on CTV news each year. In 2020 due to the flu pandemic this event was cancelled, but live on CTV from 12-1:00 pm instead there will be a retrospective special with footage from past events. In 2017 it was the 49th annual celebration of the biggest Oktoberfest in North America. The Oktoberfest Opening Ceremonies often have taken place in front of Kitchener City Hall, but in 2019 they took place in a large parking lot on the north side of King St. near Frederick St. Downtown King St. was closed off for several blocks for a street festival with kiosks and entertainment. There were bands and other entertainment on the downtown stage on Friday and Saturday which was for free and open to the public. Most of the Oktoberfest events and festivities that take place during the week are at the various participating German clubs, for which tickets need to be purchased. Some popular clubs' weekend events get sold out. There are multiple events and places to go during Oktoberfest on each day. Tickets, Oktoberfest memorabilia and Tracht can be purchased at the official Oktoberfest Store or online. Due to the flu pandemic this popular event did not take place in 2020. There are livestreamed events and other activities planned for 2020. https://www.oktoberfest.ca/ Oktoberfest Kitchener official site https://www.oktoberfest.ca/ Oktoberfest website from Germany https://www.oktoberfest.de/en/ The settlement around Kitchener, Ontario was founded by ethnic German Mennonite pioneers from Pennsylvania in 1803 and was originally named Berlin. In 1916 during WW1 the name was changed to Kitchener due to prejudices at the time. Herbert Kitchener was Chief of Staff of British forces during the Anglo-Boer War 1889-1902, and led a very brutal scorched earth policy against the Boer rural civilian population. About 30,000 Boer women and children died in his camps. Emily Hobhouse was an English nurse who tried to help the starving and dying women and children in the camps and raised awareness about it. This is a link to a pdf of her book The Brunt of War and Where it Fell (1902). https://archive.org/details/dli.granth.106230/mode/2up The Boers are long time Dutch settlers in South Africa, who first arrived there in 1652. The war's objective was to take control of the 2 independent Boer republics : the Orange Free State and the Transvaal after very large deposits of gold and diamonds were discovered there, which made Britain very wealthy and a center of the gold trade. For much of the 20th century about 40% of the world's gold was mined in South Africa. In 1916 as Kitchener was on his way to Russia on a diplomatic mission, he went down with his ship after it struck a mine. Britain was trying to convince the Czar Nicholas II to stay in the war, since it was unpopular in Russia and was costing a lot of lives. Russia made peace with Germany after the Czar was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in 1917 with the help of German General Staff and many others. Helping the revolution backfired on Germany when the Bolsheviks tried to spread it throughout the rest of Europe and the world. The German Kaiser Wilhelm II and Austrian Emperor Charles I lost their thrones as a result of WW1 as well. In retrospect it is easy to see that they should have worked out their differences and avoided the destructive conflict. That is a bit about the context in which Berlin, Ontario was renamed to Kitchener. Most people are aware that it had been called Berlin earlier. The local ethnic German population had nothing to do with the causes of the war and many had been settled in North America for generations. Ethnic Germans and were the founding stock of the province of Ontario and many US states as well, and have contributed a lot to the development and prosperity of Canada and the US. In the US Germans are the largest ethnic group according to several surveys.