One week after setting the route for this year's Christmas Eve Firefighter Santa Run, the event has been cancelled.

The annual event has been a staple in the Town of Cochrane for the past seven years and sees local firefighters touring each Cochrane neighbourhood with Santa in tow.

Cochrane Fire services were preparing for a different kind of event this year to comply with COVID-19 health and safety protocols, however, Fire Inspector Jeff Avery says that with COVID numbers on the rise and the implementation of new restrictions, they ultimately had to make the tough call to cancel this year's event.

"This was a really difficult decision to cancel this one, but it was decided that this event did contravene the public health orders that are currently in place in Cochrane," says Avery. "As a fire department, our priority will always be the safety of the Cochrane residents first, so unfortunately we did have to cancel."

In previous years food donations were being accepted for the Cochrane Food Bank, While that won't happen on Christmas Eve Avery says that local first responders were able to collect very generous donations when they were still able to hold neighbourhood parades.

"We did collect truckloads of food when we were doing our community parades with the Activettes and Fire and RCMP," says Avery. "We were able to get seven out of the nine communities done before we had to shut it down with the new public regulations. We did bring a lot of food in this year and residents were just outstanding with the amount of food they did donate."

The local fire department is still urging Cochranites to reach out to the foodbank directly to make donations if you are able to. Avery says that as Cochranites continue to be heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic he anticipates that many more members of our local community will be in need during this holiday season.

Avery says that  Cochranites can look forward to an incredibly special Santa Run event in 2021.

"We're going to make up for this one and do something bigger and better next year."