McIvor lights up the sky with fireworks display

Posted By Sheena Read, Editor

Twenty years of doing the fireworks display in Nanton has been a blast, says Time McIvor.

McIvor has seen enourmous changes to both the technology of fireworks and the industry in the past two decades.

“I've gone from running around at Centennial Park with a propane torch to being involved in some of the biggest fireworks of this country,” he says, having taken part in the Montreal fireworks competition,

formerly called the Symphony of Fire, with 10 or 11 countries competing.

“It was absolutely massive,” he says.

“We use computers now. This show in Nanton is going to be fired from my iPod,” says McIvor. “We used to have a tape that we used to run, we changed that to cds, and now I work from an iPod,”

McIvor says the technology of fireworks has gone through an evolution as well.

Fireworks as we understand today are basically 300 years old. Originally fireworks was basically gold in colour because of the charcoal used.

“What changed is they started to make it as an entertainment thing – prior to that was for religious purposes or for combat.”

McIvor explains that black powder used by the Chinese was used for traditional aspects. Europeans turned the use of powder into cannon, and added chemicals to get high-energy colours.

As a result, Spanish fireworks are renowned for using a wide array of colours.

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“It's possible to literally shoot a rainbow of fire.”

When McIvor first started doing the Nanton fireworks, he operated on a budget exactly 1/10 of what this year's event will cost. At that time, he purchased the fireworks by retail, but now deals with several distributors. He says Hans Pyrotechnics is one of the oldest companies in Canada for pyrotechnics, and has been in operation for over 100 years.

“We first started bringing in a lot of American, then Spanish,” says McIvor. “the difference between the americans and Europeans in terms of shells, is that the americans (and this is a very broad statement) uses salutes, which means there is lots of noise,” as opposed to the colours used in European style fireworks.

Using Chinese fireworks has been a learning process. First shipments were low profile and low quality, says McIvor, with fuses that had fewer threads, and as a result, were not up to standards. Chinese fireworks were introduced into the American market when the market was demanding quantity, rather than quality.

In Canada, every colour and every package has been analyzed by the government to ensure standards are met.

After that initial supply of Chinese product, McIvor says they insisted on better materials, and now they have three or four lines of fireworks they deal with.

McIvor also uses some Italian fireworks, which are famous for a particular type of shell. While all fireworks use a ball or cylinder shell, Italians build a multi-break cylindrical shell.

“I have seen some italian shells that have had 13 breaks, half gong off on the way up and half down,” he says. The downfall is that you never know where it's going to come down.

“The first time I fired a multi break in Nanton, the third break went off about 15 feet over my head,” he says.

In order to determine how far a shell will travel, you take the calibre inch and add two zeroes to the end of it.

“That's how many feet high it will go and the size of hole it will blow in the sky,” says McIvor.

Although one year he shot an 8-inch shell, tightening up of regulations for safety distances has meant a change in sizes. He's using a 4 to 6-inch shell for part of the finale, and will be using 60 5-inch shells for the primary part of the show.

The change in regulations has meant that Lions' Park is almost becoming too small for the fireworks. To meet the changes, different sizes of shells are used.

“Even though our shows are going down in size, the intensity and impact of the show is going up. What we're seeing is busier shows with more product,”

The show will be a fire musical, scripted and synchronized to music.

McIvor says it's the perfect opportunity to do something he's never done before. Although most other fireworks shows have done it, Nanton's 20 anniversary of fireworks will be the first time he has ever used the 1812 Overture.

“We can make fireworks literally dance, because of the technology.”

The show will be a minimum of 12.5 minutes, based on the musical score, but that can be extended, he says, if additional funds are found for the display.

McIvor has come a long way from those first fireworks, where he and wife Maggie did the entire show themselves, which took them until 4 a.m. to finally clean up after. Over the years, he has used Nanton as a training field for others interested in learning the craft of fireworks, and Nanton has enjoyed incredible shows because of the talent and work being brought in.

“I'm very proud of what we've done here,” says McIvor, and continues to pass on the lessons he's learned in Nanton.

He says the event would never take place if it wasn't for all the volunteer work that occurs to make the show a success, from local volunteer efforts for such issues as traffic control, to the volunteer crew that helps put on the show. He's hoping to have between 12 to 15 people helping him in the display this year.

The end result, McIvor says, is something that everyone, regardless of age, “can enjoy with unreserved joy.”

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