After the recent announcement of the disbandment of the Santa Claus Parade Committee, another community-minded group is stepping forward to take it on.

Cochrane Light Up has decided to add the parade to its event roster under new chairperson, Stephenie Shelstad. The Light Up committee recently held their Annual General Meeting and with new additional board members, Shelstad, says they are happy to take the event on and don't want to see it fade away. "It's important to have in our young community and it needs to keep going."

Shelstad won't be the one necessarily taking the parade lead, instead, she is letting new committee member Raelle Rivoire take on planning. "Raelle who runs the Rustic market is so excited to take on the parade. She has always wanted to do a parade in town and she now gets the opportunity to show what she wants to do."

Rivoire shares the first step is to work with the town on a route and the group is hopeful the parade will come back to the Historic downtown like it debuted in 2014 before being routed through the Quarry.

Business collaboration is also something Rivoire wants to work on, in hopes to make this the biggest and best Santa Claus Parade ever.  "Some businesses would love to have a float in a parade but don't have the means to do it. Either they don't have a vehicle that would work or they don't know how to build all the different aspects for it and there are other businesses in town that would be able to collaborate with them. I think it would be really great because we haven't really seen that, I think people think they need to have their own individual but I think collaboration is going to be the best thing to make it as big as possible."

Even though this year was the biggest Santa Claus Parade to date, Rivoire feels there is an opportunity to grow the parade and continue its already established success. "I want to get a bunch of different businesses involved and then we can get as many people involved as humanly possible. It's an amazing asset for Cochrane to have a parade; we're going to try and make it as big, fun and exciting as we possibly can."

Shelstad says the group is hoping to host the parade as an annual event after the initial kinks are worked out. "It's not something you want to do every other year, everybody wants to see Santa at Christmas."

Light Up is looking to partner with another event group to take on the community visit aspect the Santa Claus Parade committee executed and Shelstad invites anyone who may be interested to contact her at cochranelightup@gmail.com