Photo by Sabrina Pankratz 4-H members from the Burr Bustlers club squirted water at the crowd from their float in the Canby Hat Daze parade on Saturday.

CANBY — The rain did not stop Canby Hat Daze this year as the town’s events put on by the community brought the crowd this weekend.

Craig Kaddatz, the treasurer of the Canby’s Chamber of Commerce, said that the Chamber acts as a facilitator of the event.

“We do a lot, we have a lot of community participation, so when Hat Daze rolls around we have a lot of these events that people have been putting on for the last few years,” said Kaddatz.

Groups in the community served food during the day. Walking tacos sponsored by the Connection were sold during the afternoon for lunch and the Midwest Cattlemen’s Associations served a beef dinner later after the parade.

“I’ve been here for probably 15 years doing it. We do this event, we do the Canby fair, and then we do the Montevideo fair, and then we do a steak fry at Canby here in late August,” said Jim Pearson, president of the Midwest Cattlemen’s Association.

Community food trucks and vendors sold food, such as, mini donuts, snow cones, fried Oreos, hamburgers, etc. throughout the day into the evening events.

Canby Hat Daze featured face painting, bouncy houses, raffle drawings, and many other events.

“We sell raffle tickets today mostly for the bounce houses. We really wanted a way to keep kids in town and interested. We buy these and they use them for the initial ninja run that the hospital puts on and then we pay for them and keep up them all day,” said Kaddatz.

Different from years in the past, there was a lot of community participation this year with the floats Kaddatz said.

“The parade is a lot of fun, I think this parade is going to be a lot of community people doing their floats, as opposed to paying a lot of people to come and do things,” said Kaddatz.

Music was later in the evening sponsored by the KLQP-FM “Q-92” station from Madison-Dawson, and live band Uncle Chuck finished off Saturday evening. An airshow was put on at the Canby Airport all day Sunday.

“I think its good to get the community together, because it’s fun to see people wandering around,” said Kaddatz,“It’s fun to have all the chamber members just doing their thing. It’s really taken of.”