UPDATE! St. David's Big Lunch - June 2

The Hamilton Street Swing Quartet will play its own version of Kingdom Gospel Choir’s ‘lullaby for the Royal baby’ when the group performs at St. David’s 8th Annual Big Lunch June 2. 

Four weeks from the birth May 6 of son Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, organizers of St. David’s Big Lunch will again roll out the red, white and blue in recognition of another Royal occasion. While the celebratory decorated cake is being cut, Hamilton Street musicians will play the lullaby its pianist Strauss Whiteside – classical and jazz pianist and composer – has added to the Quartet’s program of 20s, 30s and 40s tunes.

Parishioners are invited to bring friends and neighbours to the parish BBQ at 11:30 on Sunday, June 2, to share the official date on which Big Lunches are being held across Britain, Northern Ireland and the Commonwealth. Each year more and more people take to their streets, gardens, and neighbourhoods to meet, greet and share a few glorious hours of ‘community-spirit by the plateful’. Big Lunch participation currently stands at a record 9.3-million.

This 10th birthday year of the Big Lunch is expected to have an added dimension as the nation celebrates the birth of baby Archie. Far from the centre of the action, St. David’s also will don its festive mode when it brings the neighbouring community together. Moving the parish picnic from a local park to the car park at the church for a celebration of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in June, 2012, was the beginning of a new-to-Canada way of bringing people together for food, fun and fellowship. Since then parishioners of the church in the cul-de-sac of Tsawwassen’s 51A Street have welcomed large numbers to ‘community-spirit by the plateful’.   Barbecued hamburgers and hot dogs, salads, and dessert cupcakes royale, are all part of St. David’s Big Lunch menu but there’s always the added special feature – decorated cake and ice cream. It is time to ‘throw a party’ (Royal-style) on the first Sunday in June from 11:30am to 1:30pm.    

In recent years the Parish of St. David’s, Delta located in Tsawwassen has foregone the usual concept of the parish picnic and have instead adapted the fairly recent British tradition, The Big Lunch. The Big Lunch (BL) is a program of the Eden Project in the UK, funded in part by the British National Lottery and the idea is that for a few hours on a Sunday in early June neighbours get together to have some fun and share a potluck meal together. According to the Eden Project webpage “9.3 million people took to their streets, gardens and neighbourhoods to join in for a few hours of community, friendship and fun (in 2017).”

IMAGES From Big Lunch 2018

• St. David's Big Lunch 2018
• Jean Campbell, Jeanmarie Rushton, Cal Campbell
• Claire Forster, Margaret Malloy, Gillian White 
• Parishioner Ollie Peters serving at dessert table

Photos: Mary Horton