Lions Festival of Lights launches its 39th edition in northwest Calgary

Dozens of dazzling Christmas light displays are lighting up Confederation Park until January 8.

The Lions Festival of Lights kicked off on a warm night in northwest Calgary on Saturday.

It was the 39th year of the festival, which is a labour of love for Lion Otto Silzer, the man who has been responsible for close to four decades of having thousands of lights spread holiday cheer along 14th Street in northwest Calgary.

Silzer said Saturday that it’s still a thrill to plug in at 6 p.m. and then celebrate with a hot chocolate, a cookie and some live music --along with hundreds of Calgarians who have come to celebrate the Lions Festival of Lights as a true municipal tradition.

“We’ve just turned on the lights for the Lions Festival of Lights for the 39th year, and it’s just a blessing for the city to be able to enjoy these lights,” Silzer said.

Silzer is looking for someone to take over the task of preparing the annual light show and Saturday at least, he sounded encouraged.

“Three people have come forward now to say that they would like to help us, and with (Calgary mayor) Jeromy Farkas’s comments this evening that he says that he (would) likes to see it continue on well into the 40s and 50s and 60s, so let’s hope that it will continue.”

The event is said to feature over 800,000 lightbulbs, but Silzer said that’s more of a goal than a fact.

“Well, we haven’t actually counted them,” he said. “That would be an enormous job to actually count these lights, but we estimate that there’s somewhere around 800,000 lights that are in this display, and (the number) keeps going up every year as we add more rope lighting and special features. So it’s great.”

The Lions Festival of Lights is located at 24 Ave. and 14 St. N.W. starting nightly at 5:30 p.m. through Jan. 4. It’s free.

With files from CTV’s Darren Wright