From Staff Reports

CANTON — For Labor Day, the town will feature — in its skies — aerial acrobatics performed by a procession of airplanes, instead of its annual Labor Day Parade, which was canceled because of safety concerns related to the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’ve had to cancel the event and the parade we’ve been doing all these years, however the Cruso Endowment is providing a parade celebration of a different sort,” Canton Mayor Zeb Smashers was quoted as saying at an Aug. 13 Canton Town Board meeting by The (Waynesville) Mountaineer newspaper. “There will be a celebration in Canton on Labor Day — it will just be in the sky.”

At midday Sept. 7 (Labor Day), the Bandit Flight Team of Raleigh, will fly over Haywood County through Waynesville’s airspace, circling around Haywood Regional Medical Center, then performing an airshow above Canton.

Smathers was quoted by The Mountaineer as saying, “It’ll be a celebration of Labor Day. Especially for our essential workers at the nursing homes and medical center.”.

Meanwhile, the Smoky Mountain News reported on Aug. 19 that “Canton’s Labor Day Festival, the oldest in the South, has been one of Haywood County’s most-anticipated events each September since 1906. This year, it was to be pop-country icons Diamond Rio and bluegrass legend Doyle Lawson, but, as the live music industry began to experience the disruption of lockdowns and bans on large public gatherings earlier this year, Canton’s annual festival just didn’t make sense and was officially canceled in late June.”