One Saskatchewan man is attempting to map out every residential Christmas lights display in the province and needs your help. The online map for glowing homes is free to all and in its fourth holiday season.
“SparkleTour” creator Iann Gorrill says last year’s turnout was the best to date. Across Saskatchewan, there were 253 entries in nine communities.
“Definitely our biggest year. Probably had twice as much to three times as much traffic to the website and probably at least that many more locations last year too,” said Gorrill, in a phone call from Regina on Dec. 5.
About midway through November the addresses started coming in again and he wants to the map to be full as a Christmas stocking by the end of the season.
“So far, we’re at 82 addresses for this year. That’s pretty good, it’s kind of slowed down a little bit but it’s still one or two a day are coming in. I’m not really getting as much in Saskatoon as I had last year, I’m hoping that changes,” said Gorrill.
READ MORE: Warm, dry weather impacting Saskatoon businesses
According to Global News meteorologist Peter Quinlan, Saskatoon is in the middle of a multi-day mild stretch. Daytime highs have been above freezing for the past four days and are expected to remain above zero until Wednesday.
Additionally, officials at the Saskatoon airport are reporting only trace amounts of snow on the ground. Gorrill thinks the lack of snow is making it difficult for people to totally get into the spirit of decorating their homes and seeking others.
“It feels weird. Like it’s kind of almost a forced effort at this point to drink the eggnog and have the candy canes, you got to do it. But it’s odd when you can drive around with the windows down, it’s not very ‘Christmassy,’” Gorrill said jokingly.
“Of course, displays always look nicer with some snow.”
The SparkleTour creator points out decorators can take advantage of the mild temperatures to get up their Christmas lights instead of having to do so during much colder weather.
“I could still be putting them up today in no toque and no gloves and that would be OK. It’s definitely made it easier to get your stuff up,” said Gorrill.
As of this weekend, there have been north of 80 submissions throughout the province and 18 from Saskatoon. Last year, Saskatoon had a total of 55 addresses on the map.
“It’s a tough thing to do because you really only get two months a year to work on it. To have people’s attention to about Christmas, so it’s tough to grow a product when you can only work on it for maybe six weeks and then you got to start over,” said Gorrill.
The reason for the crowdsourced Christmas lights tours is simple – helping Saskatchewan families have a great Christmas.
“I like to think of it as my gift and my wife’s gift to everyone … more people can enjoy doing something as a family together that doesn’t cost them anything,” said Gorrill.
When asked which display was top, Gorrill couldn’t decide and he’s been considering a contest.
“Overall in the province, that’s really tough to say, there’s so many good ones and so many that I don’t get to see. Like there’s a new one that I just got for this town of Debden, I never knew where Debden was, but the guy says he’s got over 10,000 lights,” said Gorrill.
It’s easy to submit your display for the map and it doesn’t have to be your own.
“You don’t need 10,000 lights to be on the map,” said Gorrill.
“If you’re proud of your lights and you think other people would like you’re lights then please submit your address or if you’re out and about and you’re driving home after work and you see a house that looks amazing, there’s no real rule, if you see something that you think other people would enjoy, please then by all means submit it.”
The ultimate goal of SparkleTour, once the provincial map is completely lit up, is to one day map out the rest of the country.
“One day in the future I want it to be in all of Canada, I think it’s a really great thing that families can do and it’s not limited to us in Saskatchewan, that’s the end goal, all of Canada would be wonderful,” said Gorrill.
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