It’s the end of an era for a mega-Christmas display at a Cloverdale home.
This is the last year a massive Christmas light display will illuminate the night on Jersey Drive in Cloverdale.
Homeowners Dan and Andrea Bonneteau have to decided to pack it in, and up, after two decades.
“Sadly, after 20 years, this is our last year of putting on the Bonneteau Winter Wonderland Display,” Andrea wrote in an email submission to Black Press Media.
Their light extravaganza usually attracts both people and donations as the Bonneteaus have always had a charity component as part of their display.
“We’ve had 1,000s of visitors up the driveway listening to the Christmas music,” she added. “(We’ve) raised 1,000s of dollars for various charities.
The Bonneteaus have a big, handmade nativity scene and more than 80 blow-mould characters imported from the U.S. They set up a Santa’s workshop too and put lights across their roof that cascade down in a waterfall effect.
The blow-mould decorations are very hard to get in Canada,” Andrea told the Cloverdale Reporter last year. “They are old-fashioned plastic Christmas decorations. You have to put a single light bulb in there to light it up. We have a beautiful Nativity scene with the Three Wise Men and Mary and Joseph and Jesus and some animals. We’ve had (the Nativity) for a long time.”
There are also six-foot nutcrackers, five-foot angels on pedestals, and an array of other Christmas decorations.
It usually takes the Bonneteaus have about a month to put up their whole display. They usually start around the end of October and finish around the end of November.
The Bonneteau Winter Wonderland Display can be seen one last time at 16951 Jersey Drive in Cloverdale.