CANTON — It won’t be the gala dinner and dance they had planned, but residents will still celebrate the town’s bicentennial with a parade Feb. 5, exactly 200 years after its incorporation.

Selectmen authorized the Bicentennial Committee’s “plan C” on Thursday.

Committee members Phyllis Ouellette, Anne Chamberlin and Loretta Blancato spoke to selectmen Thursday via Zoom to request the original dinner-dance be postponed and a parade held Friday, Feb. 5.

“We went from plan A to plan B and now we’re on plan C,” Ouellette said, because of the coronavirus pandemic that struck the country last year.

“We’re postponing (the gala) to May 1, which we’re hoping, fingers crossed, that’ll work,” she said.

According the committee, parade participants will assemble at the Highway Department garage on Jewett Hill Road at 5:45 p.m. and proceed along several streets throughout town. The committee plans to set up decorations around town, including a 6-foot inflatable birthday cake and signs.

They are inviting residents to “decorate their houses like it’s a birthday party,” Chamberlin said.

“We wanted to do something that was safe but also recognize the importance of the day, so this seemed to fit the bill,” she said.

Fire Chief Jason Vaughan will lead the parade in a firetruck, with hopes that Highway Department trucks will wrap up the end of the procession, Ouellette said.

“We’re going to flash our lights and honk our horns and make a big commotion just to celebrate the fact that we’re now 200 years old,” she said.

In other business, selectmen voted to open the Town Office lobby with restrictions of mask-wearing and one customer at a time. Hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday, and 8 a.m. to noon Friday.

The Town Office and lobby will be closed Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Selectmen also:

• Decided to obtain a quote for a 10-page town website rather than a seven-page one proposed earlier.

• Announced the town is accepting applications for the Boston Post Cane to be awarded to the town’s oldest resident.