{"id":14909,"date":"2016-08-02T20:22:11","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T00:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=14909"},"modified":"2016-08-17T17:09:08","modified_gmt":"2016-08-17T21:09:08","slug":"brocks-banter-a-place-to-call-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/brocks-banter-a-place-to-call-home\/","title":{"rendered":"BROCK’S BANTER: A place to call home"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

A town is many things\u2026
\nIt has a spirit of its own, its own character
\nIts own reasons for being, its own causes
\nFor growth and for making people happy.
\nAurora is such a town. It is home to 9,000 people. To thousands more throughout York County, it is the pleasant town where they meet friends when they come \u201cover to Aurora\u201d or \u201cup to Aurora\u201d or \u201cdown to Aurora\u201d.
\nFor pleasant living, we have grand old streets lined with tall old maples; we have spanking new subdivisions with new lawns and shrubs and people who care; we have parks and schools and playgrounds. We have space for small boys to roam and to hike. We have a town that is \u201chome\u201d.
\nIndustry too, finds that Aurora is a good \u201chome\u201d.
\nOur town leads the county in industrial assessment.
\nControlled expansion protects the homeowner and the industrialist against sky-rocketing taxes. And all the while, Toronto, Canada\u2019s largest and wealthiest consumer and industrial market, is just a few miles \u201cdown the road\u201d from Aurora.*
\nFor people and business alike, this is a good hometown.<\/em><\/p>\n

A lot has changed over the last 54 years since the above passage was written just inside the front cover of a 1962 guide to Aurora published by what was once known as the Aurora Junior Chamber of Commerce.
\nFound in a mysterious cardboard box of seemingly random artefacts from across Canada and around the world, apparently with no threads tying it all together, the vivid yellow and red cover immediately caught my eye. As I was leafing through it, I made a note of the featured businesses still serving Aurorans to this day \u2013 less than five, but five on a technicality \u2013 and wondered what the Chamber of Commerce members behind this publication would think of the business climate today and those who have come and gone.
\nBy the time I got to the front \u2013 and, admittedly, I am one of those weird people who often leafs through a magazine back to front \u2013 I couldn\u2019t help but stop and consider the unattributed essay above.
\nIn some ways, Aurora is still such a town. It might be a far cry from the bustling community of 9,000 people it was in 1962 \u2013 and, then-mayor Keith Nisbet noted on the next page, over half of these 9,000 flooded Aurora in the previous four years alone \u2013 but people throughout this newfangled Regional Municipality of York probably still have pleasant thoughts of coming over\/down\/up here (unless they have to drive the Yonge and Wellington corridor to do so).
\nWe still have some grand old streets lined with tall old maples, although some of our more venerable tree species and the houses they\u2019ve overlooked for the better part of a sesquicentennial have become something of an endangered species.
\nWe still have \u201cspanking new\u201d subdivisions of new lawns and shrubs; they have just moved further east and, while the \u201cspanking new\u201d communities of 1962 have matured over the years, they still welcome new and growing families. People who care.
\nWe still have a growing number of parks, schools, and playgrounds and above and beyond providing spaces for \u201csmall boys\u201d to roam and to hike, but 54 years later we\u2019re probably mature enough to admit that \u201csmall girls\u201d like to roam and hike as well without risk of being blackballed from the Junior League.
\nMany of us can proudly say we have a Town that is \u201chome\u201d \u2013 and if it isn\u2019t, maybe you should rethink your strategy.
\nIndustry, however, might be a different story.
\nThe primary industries touted in this handy dandy brochure \u2013 the precursor to Sterling Drugs being one full-page example \u2013 have gone under and industries Aurora could only imagine being in the offing arrived to take their place\u2026only to be preparing, with Magna being just one example, for an exodus.
\nExpansion is still controlled \u2013 well, depending on who you ask \u2013 and growth assessment is keeping taxes from taking flight, and, the last time I checked, Toronto hasn\u2019t moved out of place, although it has expanded considerably since 1962. (Oh, in case you\u2019re wondering about the asterisk: \u201c*To be exact, 12.9 miles to Metropolitan Toronto limits, 25 miles to city hall.)
\nIf today\u2019s Chamber of Commerce were to take this manifesto as a blueprint, I wonder what it would say to promote as a place to do business. Today\u2019s motto of \u201cYou\u2019re in Good Company\u201d is not far off from the principles put out there in the publication but, for better or worse, things have changed.
\nIf you were to take what the Juniors put out there in 1962 and craft your own, what would it be?
\nAurora might still have a spirit of its own, its own character, its own reasons for being, its own causes for growth and making people happy \u2013 but what are they today? Are these characteristics definable for you?
\nI\u2019d love to hear your thoughts. Send them to brock@auroran.com.
\nFor the record, here are Mayor Nisbet\u2019s thoughts on the subject: \u201cYour town has been one of Canada\u2019s fastest-growing small towns. Over half of the 9,000 population has moved here during the past four years. Yet aurora has kept that small town spirit of working together. Citizens, old and new, support our churches, sports, our Boy Scouts and Guides, service clubs, the drama workshop and dozens of other organizations. This helpful activity of the Jaycees is typical of Aurora organizations who will work and make sacrifices on behalf of their community.\u201d
\nMaybe the spirit of its own is: \u201cAurora \u2013 hanging onto its small-town feel since 1962.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir A town is many things\u2026 It has a spirit of its own, its own character Its own reasons for being, its own causes For growth and for making people happy. Aurora is such a town. It is home to 9,000 people. To thousands more throughout York County, it is the pleasant town […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-3St","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 16:20:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}