No matter how much work goes into planning an event, Mother Nature will always hold the upper hand.

What started off under a blue sky and warm sun, Canada Day celebrations were off to a great start with a record number of pancakes being served at the Royal Canadian Legion. Well surpassing the 750 plates served the year prior, it was a sea of red as community members gathered together to celebrate Canada's 152nd birthday.

Music filled the air, dancers from Stoney Nakoda added a special element to the morning, and a community drumming exercise showed that even offbeat, Cochranites can make beautiful music when they all come together.

The Canadian flag was raised at 11 a.m. and community members were treated to cupcakes thanks to Mayor and Council before heading over to Mitford Park.

Mitford Park was extremely busy right off the get-go, says Kailey Leonzio, Event Coordinator for Cochrane and Area Events Society (CAES). "With the event starting at noon, we just weren't anticipating as many people that showed up down there. It was awesome, but we ended up rushing around to get things open so people could enjoy them since they were there."

Wishing, obviously, that Mother Nature was on their side, Leonzio shares that once the wind picked up she knew that was not the case. "I kept trying to tell myself it is just going to blow over, but it ended up being about four hours from the start to finish of when we had to close, to the time we had to start things back up."

Not wanting to make the call to cancel festivities altogether, Marina Chabbert, President for CAES, says they always try to remain positive. "You can never anticipate; you see the forecast, but sometimes they're wrong so you just hope for the best. You have to go ahead with plans and hope that they won't be as bad as what they say they will be. This time they turned out to be correct and the show had to go on. For people's safety, we had to stop because we didn't want things to fly away, property destroyed, or people getting hurt."

Leonzio says it was so great to see a few hundred people return to the grounds, take in the two last bands, enjoy the fireworks, and grab something to eat from the food trucks who stuck it out. "Though it was such a bummer to have to close down and go against Mother Nature like that, I am really happy with how everything turned out in the end. I have been checking social media looking at the feedback from the event, and everything has been super positive. Everyone has been so great, supportive, and understanding that it was really out of hands and that we were just looking out for the safety of people when we had to shut everything down."

Grateful that out of an eleven-hour event, seven hours were still very much enjoyed by young and old community members. "I look at the glass like it was still more full than empty."

During the peak of the event, it is estimated that close to 7,000 people came to enjoy the festivities on the grounds at Mitford Park at one time, says Leonzio.  "I can't even imagine how many people we could have had if we had almost 7,000 people there in the first three hours. Whether it would have constantly increased or if it would have stayed steady with the number of people that were there; it is so hard to say, and so hard to know."