Festive Light and Music Show continues through the Holiday Season

Looking for a stop to add to your tour of the sensational Christmas lights in Cochrane this year?

Here's one you can't forsake.

Lights with synchronized music of the Festive Season will continue to delight passersby until early January in Historic Downtown Cochrane.

Located in and around Centennial Plaza on 1st St. W. (main street), the show debuted during Cochrane Light Up on Dec. 5th and has run every night since.

It runs every half hour daily from 5 to 10 p.m. and is about 10 minutes in duration. 

The project is a long-time dream of Light Up's Stephenie Shelstad. She was thrilled to bring it to life this year and has had nothing but positive feedback from families.

One family wrote a review telling of how they enjoyed going to the plaza to dance to the music with their children.

"It's nice that families are going down there. I drove by once and saw a family there. It really warms the heart."

People are asked to practice safe social distancing and there's plenty of vantage points from which to enjoy the show. In fact, it's completely different when viewed from different angles.

While enough funding was provided by the Town of Cochrane for the materials needed for the project, three generous local businesses helped make it a reality by donating their time to plan and complete the installation.

First Light Automation, Winducks Christmas, and Our Electrician worked together on the project.

"They were so good," says Shelstad. "They were understanding, jumped through hoops, and did everything they possibly could. When certain things failed, they pulled up and fixed them. Yeah, it was absolutely amazing. There was no pressure on me this year at all."

Tim Wuthrich and Tim Jakel are partners in First Light Automation. 

Wuthrich says the actual installation started about a week before the show but the planning was completed over a month. 

"There's been a lot of manhours going into it," says Wuthrich. "Because we were going across multiple streets a lot of it is wireless networking to synchronize everything, so there was a lot of infrastructure involved."

The two Tims are in a networking group with Nikolay Nikolov, of Winducks, who asked them to do the networking.

Winducks has been operating in Cochrane for two years and says the expertise of the two companies complemented each other.

"Our work is really done with passion and care and we've been really eager to be part of Cochrane Light Up, so we were very grateful to be chosen for this project."

Shelstad says there is an opportunity to get other businesses involved in the future and expand upon the show next year, both in the Historic Downtown and other areas in the downtown core.