Falun Gong procession

Falun Gong flag procession

By Minghui reporter Ye Linghui

(Clearwisdom.net) An annual Santa Claus Parade was held in Pickering, a city east of Toronto, on November 12, 2005. Sixty groups participated in the parade to send holiday greetings to spectators. Falun Gong practitioners took this opportunity to show the beauty of Falun Dafa and to give a traditional China performance.

Pickering is a city of one hundred thousand people, very few of them Chinese. A parade sponsor said that this was the first time a Chinese group had ever joined the parade. More than 10,000 people watched the parade.

Eighty Falun Gong practitioners from Toronto participated in the parade. About ten practitioners distributed flyers to parade spectators along the parade route. Ms. Wang, a team leader, said they were very happy to introduce Chinese culture and Falun Gong to the residents of Pickering.

A couple of parade spectators read the banner out loud, "Falun Dafa is Good!" They gave the Falun Gong procession "two thumbs-up." Spectators rewarded the drum-players with applause. Some even started dancing to the music.

Some parade spectators get a closer look at the Falun Gong procession

Two women read Falun Gong flyers

Two students of the Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning interviewed Falun Gong practitioners at the parade assembly location. Falun Gong practitioner Lin Shenli, who had been subjected to two years of inhumane abuse in a forced labor camp in China, told his personal experience. Tortures that he had endured included being forced to sit on a "small stool" for extended periods of time, being forced to watch Falun Gong-slandering videos, and being forced to do slave labor.